Can you critique my site? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

First thanks a LOT for your time and any feedback you can provide.

I could really use some help here. As I have mentioned before my referral and direct traffic is quite pathetic. I am not sure how to improve them and I think it is crucial for me to know if I am making any fundamental mistakes. I want to know if you find my blog off putting or something like that. May be it is my writing or the topics or design or anything.. I would like to know how I can improve it. For example, I know from a few other bloggers Plutus award voting brought quite a bit of referral traffic, for me it brought close to nothing and the interest.co.nz round up this month they have included me 4 times but that brought in 19 people altogether. What am I missing? I would love some criticism so that I can work on it.

1) Your writing sucks : This could be a good reason for not having regular/referral traffic.

2) You don't comment much elsewhere

3) Topics not interesting enough to bring back people

4) Too boring/long posts

5) Design problem with blog

6) Not intuitive

7) Any other criticism – positive, negative, neutral… whatever you can throw at me, I am ready to take…

Thanks a lot!

I love your posts, Suba, and I get a lot out of them. Your site is also well-designed and easy to navigate, so no problems there. I think the issue is that I don't run across your blog that often – I mean, I'm a subscriber, so I get your posts in my reader, but I don't see the things that would remind people to check in more often. Comments on other blogs, maybe a little Twitter action… If I didn't know you through Yakezie, I don't know how I would come across your site.

I think a stronger social networking presence would go a long way. But I'm also aware how much time it takes to maintain that stuff! Twitter has turned into a huge source of referrals for me. At first I didn't get much out of it, but I was just posting links to my posts and an occasional retweet for someone else. Now I spend time on there just talking to people and being goofy, and it has paid off.

Maybe host an awesome giveaway or post something REALLY personal/controversial… Sounds kind of silly but if traffic is your goal… 

Sometimes it's the silly stuff that brings people in. I had 137 visits from a mention on interest.co.nz, and of course it wasn't one of the posts I was super proud of. It was an idiotic post about Victoria's Secret credit cards, of all things! So maybe you should consider something related to boobs… ;)

I feel like I'm not being helpful at all, but I promise I'm trying to be. The excellent content is there; it's just a matter of getting people to go read it.

THANKS a lot for the feedback guys! It is much more than I hoped for. Thanks!!!

moneybeagle said:

One of the things I do regularly (or at least try to) is if I see another PF blogger leave a comment or two that I don't recognize, I'll click back to them.  Often times this builds a relationship.  On the same token, if I continuously leave comments on a blog that I really enjoy, but never once see a return comment, I might sort of drift away.  Once you build those relationships, you'll see more inclusions in roundups, which aren't a huge source of traffic in most cases, but every now and then it does help.  And it builds momentum.

I would also try to shorten post lengths a little bit.  People reading blogs have short attention spans and long articles, as great as they are, can exceed what time someone reading is willing to put in.  You write great, but I think others suggested splitting some of your articles into shorter posts. 

Do you submit to carnivals regularly?

I have no complaints about the look of your site.  It's actually one of my favorite looking sites I visit.  Very clean, bright, and easy to navigate. 

Experiment.  Often when I write something that I think my readers will hate or pass right by, it gets the most comments and linkbacks of all my posts.  Conversely, something that I think is a 'can't miss' post that will surely 'rock the blogging world' gets crickets.  You never know what's going to hit.

 

I have to most certainly concentrate on commenting. The problem for me is as I have mentioned before English is not my first language and the post that gets published are 7/8th revisions. [For example, today's post was drafted first in May!] Also when I want to comment, I really want to add something to the conversation and make it meaningful. Both of them put together, I take 15-20 minutes to write a comment. Pathetic. I know, but right now that is how long I take. I reread it a few times to check for spelling/grammar mistakes.. I have spent a good half an hr on one comment. It was really a time consuming effort for me. That is why I decided to between reading 50-75 blogs a day vs reading 10 blogs+commenting. I will have to work on faster commenting.

Sustainable PF said:

Suba, please take anything I say as my being super fond of you and the site.

I was given some advice from Canadian bloggers I consider "big guys" (as in 2500 RSS is the lowest of the bunch).

One thing they told me when I asked for help was that my long articles (I write some long ones too – not as long as your 2500 word wonders, but 1500 words is regular for me) had paragraphs that were too lengthy – that a lot of people are so used to seeing 2-3 sentence "paragraphs" and anything longer loses their interest.  Bloggers try to absorb mass information quickly and putting real effort into reading quality – like what you write – doesn't always work.

I have no idea how you handle commenting but one thing I learned is I had to pick and choose – some strategy – as to where I put my commenting efforts.  Some sites were driving a lot more traffic to mine, and, when I got "known" to those bloggers they tended to include me in roundups.  For example, Frugal Trader @ Million Dollar Journey – a top Canuck blogger, links to some of our tips (seemingly randomly!) and we get hundreds of hits on those when he does.

Which brings me to round up.  Do you do one regularly?  I found when I did the weekly roundups of my fav articles it "bought" me a lot of exposure to bloggers in and out of Yakezie.

I've also been told, recently, that losing the anonymity would help us personalize our site and built trust.  When a guy with 100k+ page views a month imparts this advice we need to strongly consider it.

Just some thoughts … hope you find some miniscule value in them.

 

I won't take it wrong SPF. I needed the feedback and it is very valuable to me. I will def. start splitting my posts into smaller paragraphs. That is a great suggestion! Thanks!!

As I mentioned in my reply to Money Beagle, I don't have a strategy for comment right now. Commenting takes me almost 30 mins. for one comment :( I can see how the bloggers I admire will never know I exist. That is something I should really work on. May be I will come up with a schedule for commenting.

I don't do round ups. I used to, but as I write only 2-3 articles a week I thought 1 round up for every 2 regular article was too much and I stopped doing that. May be I will start a monthly round up. I could spend more time on that and make it more thoughtful too like you and Len do.

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I really appreciate it!