Website for Review
http://www.howrank.com

Additional Comments
I would like a review on my site HowRank.com

If you are into SEO/SEM please review my SEO tools. Please give ideas on how to increase usability and any errors you may have seen.

If you are not into SEO/SEM then please give an overall review, and report any errors or confusion.

Thanks Ahead of Time

Mkay, right off the bat i have to say it is a really great and sound layout... html, css, java... all valid, neat and clean in ie and ff. The external style sheet and lack of images ensures that the site loads really quick. The menu makes perfect sense with the exception of one or two things i will suggest at the bottom of this post.

I like the fact that you have not pumped the adwords like many other sites do, that always gets messy and pisses people off when they try click "ok" and end up scanning their pc's for britney spears. So good on ya.

Now for the little things

I noticed in your page title, meta tags and content that you push your url "howrank.com" ... why? Thing is, not many people are going to search for that and those that do will find your site first regardless of what you have put in your meta tags and content. Rather pull it out and add some more valuable info closer to the beginning of your descriptions etc.

Try make it more obvious that you second (or first?) as a search engine, not many people will realize right off the bat that that is whats going on. I actually forgot about the SE part while i was going through your tools and kinda got the idea  that you had a link farm going on behind your directory link. I would actually consider putting that "search sites" part smack in the middle (top) of your home page - use css to keep your content above it in the code if you are worried about that.

Your direct competition is seochat[dot]com - even though you both offer different things in the wider scope. This leaves you with two choices, join em and feed off their traffic or try overtake em. To do either you are gonna have to prove yourself a worthy resource which means you need to start ranking. Articles would be your best bet for ranking in terms of SEO - every tom, dick and harry has something to say about seo... get it first.

Tough thing is, they actually offer more apps above having the exact same apps as you, so you may end up copying their apps and giving them the link (more apps are just to boost your resources and make your site more useful).

Back to articles: i noticed you had an "ABC's of SEO" article under your apps? that should be your first article in your articles section... not the last article in your apps section. At the moment you do not offer much on the content side and it seems that articles are the best way for you to start popping out - you could always go the rss and blogging route to... that never hurts.

Over all though, you have made a great site with a targeted set of functions, focus on them and i reckon you will do quite well. I have bookmarked it, i prefer your apps to seochat's as they are neater and cleaner. It will be nice to see your site grow Keep it clean because thats what keeps your site a breath of fresh air

Almost forgot, i went through all your tools, they all work well... no confusion other than the SE thing mentioned above.

Ditto on the suggestions made by Ryan. Good suggestions. You might try an article directory for seo related articles only like I have here, http://www.seoserviceprovider.com/articles/

An article directory adds pages to your website without much effort. You can install article dashboard for free, customize the template files any way you want, and you can go to isnare.com and sign up to receive articles based on your topics automatically through a script. Then you go in once per day and approve articles and make sure they go into the right categories.

This will add a resource without you having to write all of the articles and you can invite those who are using your tools to submit their articles. Google and Yahoo will crawl your site several times per day because of the article directory.

I like your dupe content tool that helps turn on mod rewrite for the www and non www version of a domain name, but you might want to mention that people who have a windows server may not be able to use it. no .htacess or mod rewrite on windows servers.

Ryan's blog suggestion os a good one. If you know how to write good tools then you can talk about the tools and scripting and seo in your blog. Do some social bookmarking when you do each blog post and you will build up in no time.

I also bookmarked your site for the tools.

Damn.... I love this site.

Those are both awesome reviews. Just like i went out and hired 2 top of the line analyst .

I will do all of that.

Total Changes:
------------------------
1.) Make search Functions more Profound
2.) Add more tools including tools from other sites
3.) Start article directory and offer users to submit data
4.) Make noted change to duplicate content so windows users will not attempt to implement.
5.) Edit meta/title tags removing HowRank.com

Thanks So Much You Guys!

lol, Great stuff, im glad we could help. Let us know when you made the changes and we will check it out again.

Dont forget about removing howrank[dot]com from your meta tags, title and content. Its fine in the footer but useless everywhere else, you could put more relevant info there.

Good luck

Hello again howrank,

Yours is probably the most useul site I've ever seen....site reviews were covered brilliantly by Ryan and namecritic.

Excellent stuff...you don't need me.

All the best,

Elizabeth

Thanks so much and i edited my message adding #5 as editing Meta/Title tags.

I will most definitely repost when updates are done.

Thanks Again Everyone

Just an update i've done 3 of the 5
1.) Make search Functions more Profound
4.) Make noted change to duplicate content so windows users will not attempt to implement.
5.) Edit meta/title tags removing HowRank.com


all that is left is...

2.) Add more tools including tools from other sites
3.) Start article directory and offer users to submit data

Good stuff, its coming along very nicely, i like the homepage... Search and tools. Im not sure how though but i reckon you will need a way to let people know that they arent searching your site for tools but instead will be searching your site for other sites. Like i said though, im not sure how - its a toughy.

-although.. could you not put something in the input field (search box) that says "eg: travel" which will disappear when the user clicks on the box to enter text. That would be quite straight forward i think.

Thats another great point.

Yea, I think i need something similar so people will know that its not searching my site for tools.

Ill find some javascript code that removed the text (ill use example travel) from the box.

Thanks Again so much for the help

not a problem. You dont have to make it disappear though... it would be nice but not imperative for now.  For example,

<input name="email" type="text" style="width:200;" maxlength="25" value="eg: Travel" />

- use that just until you find the Java (quickfix till then)

Ahh... i did it before rechecking this post...

Here is the code for any future readers... really simple

<form name='form1' method='post' action='http://www.howrank.com/find.php'>

<input type="text" name="term" id="field" size="15" value='eg: Travel' onclick="document.form1.field.value ='';"/>

<input type='submit' value='Submit'></form>

the magic term is

onclick="document.form1.field.value ='';"

Thank you so much again for your help

Ill post more updates when i get them done.

Great ideas as always.

Nicely done, just a heads up, did a search on travel - worked, did a search on "lol" - worked so i tried one that wouldnt work... "porn" (for SCIENCE!! ) it comes up with  the no results found page which is cool, except the button saying "search" changes to "EARCH"

Ryan_steyn wrote:

Nicely done, just a heads up, did a search on travel - worked, did a search on "lol" - worked so i tried one that wouldnt work... "porn" (for SCIENCE!! ) it comes up with  the no results found page which is cool, except the button saying "search" changes to "EARCH"

Yeah...strictly for science... im sure... hmmmm... 

Hey good looking out again i've fixed it now.

No one wants to earch my site anyway... lol

I have a huge filter array that runs against the HowRank bots newest entries. It deletes anything even remotely adult

Better safe than sorry i say.

I'm going to have to create an about page and give you a little credit for helping out so much.

howRank wrote:

Yeah...strictly for science... im sure... hmmmm...  glad

lol... cant say i never saw it coming :P :lol:

howRank wrote:

No one wants to earch my site anyway... lol

Its only a matter of time, your site is still a baby... nurture it and one day you can turn it into an adword tree :D

howRank wrote:

I'm going to have to create an about page and give you a little credit for helping out so much.

...come to think of it... it would be nice to have something other than wildlife in my signature... :lol:

Ryan_steyn wrote:

howRank wrote:

Yeah...strictly for science... im sure... hmmmm...  glad

lol... cant say i never saw it coming

howRank wrote:

No one wants to earch my site anyway... lol

Its only a matter of time, your site is still a baby... nurture it and one day you can turn it into an adword tree

howRank wrote:

I'm going to have to create an about page and give you a little credit for helping out so much.

...come to think of it... it would be nice to have something other than wildlife in my signature...

I was joking about earch... i hope no one wants to earch my page.

If you'll pm me a small bio ill ad some credit and a link to your page of choice on my about page?

Small being a paragraph.

I've also added some more tools from other seo sites, and will work on getting that article directory up in the next week.

Thanks again Man

Cool, i look forward to seeing what you come up with on the article side

Their aint much to say about me hey, South African, studied pc engineering, self taught in web development, web design and graphic design. Currently getting as many compTIA certs as i can. I would suggest a link but i havent any personal sites, i always waste my good ideas on work... and have nothing left for myself.

Ryan_steyn wrote:

Cool, i look forward to seeing what you come up with on the article side

Their aint much to say about me hey, South African, studied pc engineering, self taught in web development, web design and graphic design. Currently getting as many compTIA certs as i can. I would suggest a link but i havent any personal sites, i always waste my good ideas on work... and have nothing left for myself.

Sounds good enough.

Lifes about doing what you enjoy right?

Never been to south Africa, but I would love to go one day on Safari with my kids

Ill use that paragraph on the about page. going to replace the webmaster tools page... since all tools are on the left anyway.

Thanks again so much man.
Mike Koenig

That sounds perfect, thanks

Quick thought about removing your tools page though, The left hand menu links through to the tool itself, which has an entire description of the the tool.

Why not keep your tools page, under each tool have a short description (personalized) and link through to the page with a full description (formal)? It never hurts to get as much content out there as possible, and if you get to describe an app with two different but similar descriptions... why not? - think of the tools page as a descriptive sitemap.

Ryan_steyn wrote:

That sounds perfect, thanks

Quick thought about removing your tools page though, The left hand menu links through to the tool itself, which has an entire description of the the tool.

Why not keep your tools page, under each tool have a short description (personalized) and link through to the page with a full description (formal)? It never hurts to get as much content out there as possible, and if you get to describe an app with two different but similar descriptions... why not? - think of the tools page as a descriptive sitemap.

ok... you talked me into it again.

That makes sense. I imagine there is room there for an about page, and yeah more content is always better.

Ill try n have that up by today, and still need to look into that article management software.

Thanks Man