The Blog Critic Hits Indiarose’s Blog Hard- Like The Bears On the Saints

When the New Orleans Saints went marching into Chicago to meet the Bears they looked great at first glance, but as time went on they were exposed and soon found out they still need to improve greatly if they want to be Super Bowl contenders in the future.

When the Blog Critic visited your blog “my indiarose” for the first time I simply took a quick glance at it and thought to myself “this is going to be a quick easy review. Everything looked ok until it came time to start prodding and probing around. I quickly found out how wrong I was in my initial thought just like some were concerning the Saints going into Chicago.

I have critiqued your blog based on findings from many areas within. You will receive a grade in each area along with an overall grade at the end using my scoring system (0 to 100) found at the end of this topic.

Appearance

At first glance one would get the feeling of a very clean, easy to read, nice laid out blog (The Saints). I got that feeling also when I first saw it, but it is my job to look beyond first appearances. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be a very good critic.

Before I go into all the details I need for you to remember that I am a search engine fanatic. Meaning, if you are not getting most of your hits from internet searches then you are not going to be very successful. You may or may not care about quality traffic, you may feel perfectly comfortable with just getting the gradual visitor from wordpress tags, only you know. If you want to win in the SEO market with your blog do what the Bears did last week in Chicago by being better than your opposition and follow some of my suggestions below.

Hopefully you are already noticing something I am doing to optimize this page to bring visitors here. Hint: Will the Chicago Bears be able to handle quarterback Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl Sunday?

Starting from the top – As said above your theme has a very good warm feeling about it. Its easy on the eyes, easy to read, and quite appealing. You made an excellent choice to go with the Ttarskitheme by Ben Eastaugh and Chris Johnson.

The Header – Once again a very appealing look from the outside but search engines don’t care a single thing about looks so I did what they do and looked at the image tag. This can be done by simply putting your mouse over the image itself. What I found was that it says “Image Header”. Boy that’s sure going to help you – not! Fix this by going into your CSS file, find the code and change it to 3 or 4 good keywords (not a paragraph) that are about your site. This should also be done every time you use an image anywhere on your blog based on the title of the topic the image is in. WordPress gives you this option when inserting images so use it to your advantage.

Your Title – “my indiarose” I can say for sure that its original but what does it mean? I searched the dictionary and Wikipedia for the word indiarose and turned up nothing. On a positive note when I searched it on google your blog is at the very top. I wonder why? I also wonder how many people use a search using that name for things? My guess is very few. Now the name may mean something very special to you and if that is the case then most definitely keep it. You may however consider adding a couple of hot hey words that fit your blog to it though. I.e. My Love, My Life, My Indiarose

Your Description – “hai friends.. its all abot me” OK what is that? I don’t know and I wonder what your readers think. This kind of grammar is a complete turnoff to your viewers. There is no such English word as hai and what is abot? Again, think about your readers view and also on being search engine friendly. Make your title better by using relevant common keywords effectively.

Your Introduction – A nice introduction overall. Its short and direct to the point. One again check your grammar and punctuation. I will be bringing up grammar issues with you in more detail later in this article.

Overall appearance score 55 / 100

Layout

I mentioned above that overall your layout is appealing to look at. Its clean, fresh, and has a certain warmth to it.

Your Categories – Categories can be anything we want them to be. We can name them whatever we desire and so on. You have done so and it’s good to see them on your blog. Some bloggers choose not to show their categories for various reasons. I recommend that you re-think a few of the categories you have listed and change them to a more relevant wordpress tag if you want others to find your topics. Here is a list of the most common wordpress tags that are being used in searches.

Your Images In The Topics – Images, photos, pictures or whatever best describes them are a definite positive when used properly. They add extra interest to the reader. Lets face it we all like to look at things. What’s that old saying? “A picture is worth a thousand words”. With that being said, how would you feel if I told you that there is a very good chance that persons landing on your blog leave it (give up, exit out) before it even opens for them.

What do I mean exactly? Our society has changed a lot over the last few years. People don’t have the patience of prior generations and they will not have the patience to sit and wait 3 minutes for your blog to open when they land on it for the first time.

Right now your images are hurting you. How? According to recent studies only 28 percent of American households have access to broadband Internet. I don’t know what the statistics are worldwide but I would think overall its probably not any better.

I made that point to bring up this point. If this study is correct then odds are we all have a ton of users visiting us that are still on dialup. How many of them will wait for your page to load? I have no idea so use your own intuition. Of course if they don’t mind the extremely long wait then your photos will be cached and it won’t take them as long next time. Now when you update your blog again they will have to go through that long wait again and the cycle continues. Do you want this?

Alas’ there is a cure for everything. Here is a free download from GifBot that will shrink your images pixel size. Put it to work on all your old images, update the topics with the new images and watch your page views go up almost instantly.

Last but not least concerning layout – Where’s your blog search box? I have no need to go into why you need a search box, its a no brainer!

Overall Layout Score 65

Overall Content and Relevancy

I don’t think your going to like what your going to hear from me concerning this area of your blog. Do you remember what I said earlier about the Saints and the Bears? Right now I’m that bear and this is going to hurt.

Grammar – What the h***? I could simply leave it like that and you would get the point. I will not because if your going to take your blogging serious you have got to take your time and do a better job.

I have taken the below from the very first topic people see right now when visiting your blog. The one currently at the top of your main page with the painting titled “me- my portrait” I have bolded the errs that reap beneath.

I love this pic, because it is me.. lol; but that doest mean i didn’t love anyone..I love everyone..love always come from my heart… from my bleeding heart. my eyes are closed since i didnt know how you going to take my love.. my ears are open since i wanted to hear you, what u are saying..but i am silent..since i didnt want to cry, yell.. may be i could talk to u in silence..

What on God’s green earth is that? I should have bolded the whole thing because nothing is remotely close to proper grammar and punctuation among other things. Its hideous and I see the same thing in most of your topics and post. If you don’t have the time to do a spell check before you post something live then I suggest not posting at all.

On a positive note I did find articles that were perfectly written, sadly all of them were simple copy and paste jobs from other authors. Speaking of that, try and stay away from copying total articles from news sources or anyone for that matter. If you want to copy snips of the articles and then add in your own remarks regarding it that’s fine, but do you have the original authors permission to copy and publish his or her work? This is not a good practice. Some people don’t realize that the search engines are so fine tuned today that they know about all duplicate content across the web. If you do it long enough you will be blacklisted by the major search engines and you definitely don’t want that.

Title and content relevancy – Your content description says or was suppose to say “Hi friends! Its All About Me” If its all about you then why are you copying news articles and stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with your life as your description claims? If your going to write about your life then do so and make it interesting. Your life is huge, its surrounded by something new everyday. You have activities that you enjoy, people in your life and the list goes on. Write about those things!

Put forth the effort to bring out quality topics with meaning that others will enjoy. Do it right and it can become fascinating and intriguing to your readers. This will attract even more as they tell others, but most importantly take your time!

Everything that happens from this point on is up to you concerning your blog. Will you follow my advice or will you keep doing what your doing now? Only time will tell. My hopes are that you will take a deep look and decide to go after that Super Bowl Victory!

Overall Content and Relevancy Score 18 / 100

Total Score For Your Blog After Review 46 / 100

The above blog can be viewed here: “my indiarose“

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