She Knows SEO contains affiliate links and is a member of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you make a purchase using one of these Amazon links, we may receive compensation at no extra cost to you. See our Disclosure Policy for more information.
Travel Blog Audit: Complete Tutorial To Improve Your Website
Table of Contents
ToggleTravel blogs are some of the hardest blogs to run, and to monetize.
Everyone wants to start a travel blog for fun, but few actually know how to set it up in a helpful way for their audience.
To celebrate my $110k month in June, 2023, I gave away a free travel blog audit to my audience. I audit the blog in real time so you can see the exact steps to take to audit your own website.
This audit isn’t some 5 minute review. It’s a 2 hour, in depth walk through into how to do a detailed blog audit for site speed, user experience, and writing helpful content.
Watch The Audit
(00:00) hey everybody Nina here today we are doing a custom blog audit for the San Pedro scoop now this is free and available to y’all because this person won um a raffle that I did because I made over a hundred thousand dollars in one month in June 2023 and I always told myself when I did that I would give back
(00:18) so I thought this was the perfect way to do it now we are going to go through and analyze this site um we’re gonna go pretty in depth so this is a longer video but it’s really really informative so I recommend you stick around in fact I recommend you watch it maybe a couple times and Implement some of the things
(00:35) that I talk about here on your own website I do think that getting a custom blog audit for your own site is also super beneficial so just so you all know I do sell those if you go to she knows SEO dot Co slash services and I’ll pop a link down in the description however I am off for September so they are not
(00:54) currently on sale until after September so here we have this website it’s really pretty lots of stuff going on here so let’s dive in I wanted to show you what it looks like Incognito because right now I have my um what’s it called my ad blocker turned on for the blog audit purpose but I want you all to see like
(01:14) what it looks like for a general user I think it’s just good to know so we’re actually going to switch over to my other tests that I’ve run the first thing I always do is I start with speed tests so here I have webpagetest.org and then I also have the typical Google page speed if you don’t know about web page tests I have another
(01:34) video on this go check it out so with page speed insights I’m basically looking to check the mobile and the desktop it looks like I ran the wrong URL that’s on me so we’re going to run the original and give it a second while it’s thinking we’re going to come over here and do a web page test so it looks like it’s loading in 4.9
(01:56) seconds but it seems pretty usable around 2.4 it seems like it’s just that main image that’s taking a bit longer to load which is pretty common for a home page now definitely under three seconds is the goal is it achievable it’s tough to be honest especially when you’re running ads now the repeat view is really good
(02:16) it’s loading in 2.5 seconds but it seems like it’s more usable around 2.1 or 2.2 but we’re going to go in and actually take a look at this now I ran three tests that way we have kind of an average something went wrong in the third test this happens sometimes it looks like maybe the ads loaded a little
(02:36) too quickly and kind of scared it or something so we’re gonna go through the first test as it in the second one seem pretty similar so this waterfall test will let me see everything that is loading on this site and so I’m going to go through as best I can to pick all these out now remember I am not a tech Guru that is not my thing
(02:58) I do this at kind of a more basic level but definitely someone who’s into technical SEO would go way way deeper so the first thing that loads is your database so that’s going to be your host your backend plugins things like that that are loading every single time now it’s loading at about eight like 0.8
(03:18) seconds so 800 milliseconds which is pretty good we basically want it to be under one second then it looks like it’s redirecting us to the main one so that’s on me that’s okay probably shaves a couple uh milliseconds off there it looks like it redirects every time to the www dot though for some reason which
(03:38) is not typical so that might be something you want to look at with your host and registrar then we have an image so that’s going to probably be that giant jpeg that loads don’t remember where that was on the site okay it’s there so it looks like that is a like uh what’s it called thumbnail image for
(03:59) that thing taking a bit to load and loading pretty like it’s loading above other things so that’s not great I would definitely want to defer that image your logo is taking 0.7 seconds to load that’s a lot for a logo and I know it’s like pretty and at the top but I think we could compress that and reduce it
(04:16) got a bunch of font files w o f F2 are all font files so you should be able to depending on your theme defer these it looks like you might have a plug-in in but we’re going to go and look at the plugins so we’ll see if that’s there now we’ve got some CSS it looks like your CSS is not minified so we may need to check that out to see
(04:42) how your cache is performing because that should be reduced okay then we’ve got some other big images so jpeg is good however the size of the image is still going to have a huge impact and I definitely recommend webp where possible even avif short pixel does that highly recommend it it speeds things up you also have a bunch
(05:04) of PNG photos but what I’m noticing is like some of them are taking a second to load and like yes it’s concurrent loads but still that’s a fair amount of time for a picture that like is likely just one of these ones pretty small so that can very easily be compressed and I don’t know what the Banger is
(05:24) that’s interesting oh I don’t know what that means that is too much tech for Nina it looks like that might be related to some of your plugins we’re gonna take a look at that okay and then I think based on this you’re probably running izoic ads but I’m not 100 sure but gravity forms a lot of gravity forms a few plug-ins
(05:50) Wonder plug-in accessibility a pixel so we’re going to take a look at some of those things but we’ll do that when I’m in your back end looking at the plugins you have you have a couple gifts and I don’t know why I didn’t see any on your home page what are you open nope it does not want to let me open it
(06:16) okay I don’t know what those gifs are because I don’t see any on your home page maybe it’s a part of the ads but I would look into that because if they’re not if you don’t need them I wouldn’t have them running now here you’ll see that it has like this blue line that’s when like it’s completed load and then these are the
(06:34) things that load after so anything after the Blue Line isn’t a major concern and that’s why like I’m pretty sure all of these are ads and then the plugins as well so not a terrible issue anything before that though definitely needs some work um over here is where the first contentful paint is at this like green
(06:50) line so it is usable around just after two seconds which is good however we definitely want to try and compress some of these if we can so it’s more usable before the four and six second mark now for your repeat View okay so yeah your repeat view the major issues are these images so I would definitely look at turning these into
(07:17) jpegs and getting a compression uh sort of system running because that is massive for a picture especially for something that’s pretty small on the like for the user on your home page it’s not a massive concern those like are like the perfect quality and like I don’t know you’re not selling them they
(07:35) don’t need to look the best so I would definitely compress those okay so now we’ve actually run the right one on page speed insights so you’re scoring 51 out of 100 I would try and improve that for sure I typically say like 70 to 80 is okay like I would leave it 60 I might leave it depending on like
(07:51) what our priorities are right now but 50 is not great and I would definitely want to improve that because Google is mobile first they care about this stuff and it’s not great for the user so on desktop yeah you’re doing 61 too desktop I would say is like you want to have an even even higher quality of this
(08:09) because even though it’s mobile first most of us design for desktop so usually we can get around like 99 for desktop pretty easily but for mobile we’d want to have this better now first content full paint largest contentful painter around the numbers we saw with web page test so let’s take a look okay so you’ve got your ads that are
(08:33) causing some JavaScript to just kind of sit there so I would definitely will take a look at that properly sized images if you had something like um like short pixel that would help there it would help with this as well void serving Legacy JavaScript okay so you have some older JavaScript interesting looks like it’s all from the
(08:54) ads though this is something that did happen when I had ezelic ads that’s why I think you might have a silicon um okay then we’ve got some off-screen images it’s interesting that you have some that are SVG and others that aren’t typically when people convert them they convert all okay so we definitely need to look at
(09:19) images for sure and then yeah the ad code is definitely causing you problems your cash needs to be checked but these are all ads as well okay so the main issues here that I’m seeing are images and then your ads and then probably your cash something’s up with it so we’re gonna take a look now before we look at plugins I always
(09:43) just like to check accessibility usually I can kind of spot it off the bat but sometimes I’m just not quite sure so I figured we would just do a check here so I just use my Color Picker and then I just grab the colors and I use web aim I’m just gonna grab the specific colors of your stuff here yeah I was wondering about this because
(10:10) it seemed a little bit like the contrast isn’t quite high enough could you get away with it yes however like you have to remember people are often looking at this stuff on their phone when they’re busy they have glare they have all sorts of stuff happening so like on my laptop right now in like perfect lighting
(10:28) conditions I can see this very easily but if you were outside and your screen’s a bit dark and things like that this could cause issues so I really do recommend checking stuff like this and if you can like adjusting the color of it so you can see we kind of need to go into like a deep red for it to clearly
(10:46) pass otherwise it does pass if it’s bold enough and then you have more leeway but you can see like when it kind of there it is that’s kind of a color that would be just slightly darker than what you have um but would help with passing this now the blue and black seems totally fine to me those colors seem fine except
(11:09) for this this is the one I want to check too so we’ll take that one put in the background and now I have to do like surgical level precision which is hard because I have the shakes from having too much coffee yeah okay so that’s not again it needs to have either a lighter background so if we go like
(11:30) more white it helps a bit or oops I have to get that color again this is the problem sometimes with colors it’s like we really need to check the accessibility first before we decide what we’re going to go with so if you go a bit darker here that’ll cover it and especially because this is for links we
(11:48) really want it to be easily readable easy to see I’d also say it’s probably a bit small but we’ll look at that in a second so I think those were the main colors we had like this one you can just see how much clearer and easier it is to read this versus a lot of the other content here so we really want to make sure that
(12:07) we are having things pop and they are super easy to read I totally get the like ideal of having something pretty colors and like really really nice there’s a reason that some of the blogs that make the most money are sort of ugly like they’re just white on black not really much happening because it’s
(12:24) beneficial to the user so at first glance of your homepage there were a few things there I’ll see if I spot any others we’ll just take a quick check of a sidebar um because those would be things that would be worth changing it’s just not gonna work for me what’s Happening Here yeah and if that’s your hover color yeah
(12:49) that’s all your link colors that definitely needs to be changed um something’s happening with the sidebar I’m going to try this in the Incognito and see if it likes me better over there maybe it’s mad about something I did or something or oh your sidebars just adds that’s why okay that makes more sense I mean well
(13:12) it doesn’t it doesn’t but now I know it’s happening over there okay that answers some questions for me cool so your sidebar doesn’t have anything in it that’s fine uh we’ll deal with that later but I would definitely say if this is your link color it pops for the wrong reasons it pops because it’s hard to see
(13:31) and that’s not helpful I would also say that like this background kind of Pinky beige is not great to be honest with you it’s just a little bit hard for the eye to process and there is a reason that crisp white works so well if I lower the brightness this is going to get harder and harder to see and it just yeah it
(13:55) just doesn’t have enough I don’t know oomph I guess like it needs that Spotlight a little bit more there is a reason that some of these colors are just standard um so yeah just be careful with that so let’s go take a look at your plugins I’m going to just close these as we go otherwise I will get distracted
(14:16) okay so you’ve got 28 plugins and four are inactive my tip for everybody watching if you’re not using a plug-in delete it period you can always re-download it like this isn’t the kind of situation where you just like keep it in the shopping cart for later like get rid of it because it’s like your site holds on
(14:36) to the code of these the way that like I hold on to my childhood trauma and there’s a reason I’ve been in therapy for 20 years and it costs a lot of money so like don’t do that instead just offload it you can always re-download it it’s super easy so like just get rid of things that you are not actively using
(14:54) deactivated plugins still slow down your site Okay so we’ve got the 428 monitor you have to look into that accessibility new window warnings make links open a new window accessible by adding a warning never heard of that we’ll have to check that out active campaign I’m not familiar with activecampaign but
(15:15) I’m not sure you need that like I feel like there must be a way you can just add code I’m not a big fan of anything that is um like a newsletter plug-in because you can just add the code so much easier and unless you’re running pop-ups like you can just embed it in the post as well so then you don’t need this code to run
(15:35) across your site okay I’ve never heard of this either the spider pro pack we’ll take a look Advanced custom Fields I’ve kind of heard of it but I’ll double check it okay some anti spam thing that you’re not using so delete it better search and replace I’ve always wondered why people use this and keep it I guess like if
(15:56) you’re looking for something once just get rid of it after you don’t need to keep it and then I know you have the builders for your theme so if we will take a look at the settings for those uh gravity forms okay so you’re using okay so active campaign is probably more for your funnels uh okay I’m not a big fan of forms either I just
(16:15) think forms attract spam they tend to not work they break super easily and you get no alerts when they’re broken and then you just get unhappy people so I’m not a big fan of them um I wouldn’t say you need plugins to run it as well because then you have gravity forms and this one and I believe there’s just an integration isn’t there
(16:35) but we’ll take a look I like easy Toc I hate azoic as you all will know from my isoic review and I’m gonna make some comments on that throughout this for sure but um I mean if you desperately need that money for the ads go for it Force regenerate Plug-In or thumbnails well that’s not working so I’d get rid
(16:55) of that happy files Pro don’t know why anyone cares to organize their files like your files sort themselves for a reason and if you need to check them or adjust things um hire someone to do that because you can break things super easily so I would get rid of that I don’t think I just don’t think it’s needed
(17:17) imagine fi imagify image if I imagine if I’ve never said that out loud um yeah I don’t like that one I’m much more of a fan of short pixel and I would delete it looks like you also have a bunch of notes over here which is interesting um okay perf matters we’ll take a look at that it’s it’s a good plug-in it just doesn’t cover
(17:37) everything plug-in notes so you literally have a plugin just to add notes Here I don’t know why I don’t know that you need that so I would get rid of that because you can just keep notes somewhere else power pack Builder so it’s for Beaver Builder we’ll take a look at that I’m not a big fan of any Builders I just
(17:57) don’t think you need page Builders I think like blocks are good but like Beaver Builder all those sort of things they’re notoriously slow and there’s a reason that like people that have big sites where they have like private hosting not on a shared hosting plan which like is what most people have like
(18:13) lyrical shared Zoe can share that sort of stuff if you have your own server it’s really expensive and so then they can get away with a lot of stuff that other people can’t get away with so those things do slow stuff down now for redirection plug-in and like yoast I do not like yoast I think it is like just weird with the stuff that it
(18:34) doesn’t like that you have to pay for there’s so many things like rank math just gives you all these like the redirection stuff is included for free you get five keywords rather than one to track you get like all sorts of stuff per post that you just don’t get from yo so I just I don’t really understand why
(18:52) people still use it I guess um also I found it to be a little bit slower not terribly but like enough that I’d get rid of it um but that was back when I used it years ago maybe they’ve set it up the usability though is still definitely a problem to me so like we do want to have fewer plugins that being said I know some people like
(19:13) really don’t want to switch stuff over so then fine stay with yoast keep redirections but you could get rid of it and just use rank Math instead and it would do both of these things uh never heard of this one I’ve always heard of like grow social by mediavine so I’ll take a look at the settings there
(19:33) make your RSS emails look more like your website uh I I’m gonna be honest RSS emails are kind of ridiculous to me I don’t know anyone that enjoys receiving them um it doesn’t make sense to me like that I don’t know that that would be your whole email strategy so I hope this isn’t the bulk of your email strategy
(19:54) equally yeah I’m not sure um I’m not really sure why you need it I guess is my point like it it’s going to be another thing weighing down your database and we just don’t want to have all of these extra things so then you have SVG that way you can upload them fine that’s okay um don’t know what user Centrics is
(20:18) so I will take a look at that but it looks like it looks like you’re not using it because of we have to use esoark if you’re using ezoic you do have to use their consent pop-up so I would say the answer is delete this uh thumb press that’s that doesn’t make sense get rid of it like I get the intent behind it
(20:44) but ironically it’s like save your server space don’t generate extra thumbnails but add this plugin that will take up server space not just have the plugins or the thumbnails is fine um and embed plugin and widget I recommend you like WP YouTube Lite l-y-t-e it’s very good so I’m not sure about this one we’ll take a look
(21:06) manage your WordPress database backups I’ve never heard of this one I used um or I still use updraft Plus for backups when I need to but my host now does Backups for me but if you’re not like if you’ve deactivated it thinking I need to save space because it’s deactivated no all of that like trauma like memory is still
(21:28) there so you need to actually delete this to clear up that space and then yoast I also do recommend keeping stuff up to date um it does actually matter okay so let’s check out thumb press we’re going to click through so we have disabled thumbnails for certain ones oh you just decided to like to disable
(21:51) some sizes that’s like it’s fine it just doesn’t I don’t know I I don’t think it’s worth the time and effort to be honest it’s not a necessity and like there’s a reason like they make all those sizes it’s just easier to have them to be honest it doesn’t really take up that much space okay then we have gravity form so you
(22:12) have a contact form and a subscribe form looks like your contact form does pretty well so okay if you want to keep it you can I would just have people email you I mean I have that it works very well okay and then your theme was a one I’ve never heard of before which is the 428 child theme never heard of 428 designs before
(22:34) oh there’s your theme right there I think it’s pretty I just think pretty themes can be problematic but yours seems to be doing pretty well so not the end of the world which is good okay and then we got the Builder has a bunch of layouts it’s interesting that you have like a beaver Builder thing but then you just have something
(22:56) called just Builder which I’m guessing was like developed by those 428 people so it gives you the different formats for sections which is fine um I’m more concerned that things might conflict between it and the Beaver Builder one like are you actively using that Beaver Builder thing or not because if you’re not again anything you are not
(23:18) actively using regularly get rid of even like I have so many plugins I adore and if I am not actively using them I will delete it from the site momentarily as long as that doesn’t like undo what it’s doing so like even I love query Hunter now query Hunter Pro if I am not actively updating things I will off it for a minute if I’m doing
(23:40) a bunch of other stuff because like I will admit like I have too many plugins at this point because I have so many things happening so like on any site where I’m like okay I just need to clear up some space I will get rid of things I’m not using but especially if it’s something that like is used for a
(23:55) one-off or you just like don’t actually use it you used to use it go fix that convert it to the newer version and then like get rid of that thing okay then we have search and replace which like it’s just something I’m not I’m not very familiar with it so I don’t necessarily understand its purpose so
(24:15) I don’t understand it so we’ll leave it alone for now you got regenerate thumbnails you get redirections okay you do have active redirections it looks like you when did you create them I thought it used to say that if any of these are more than a year old I would get rid of them if they’re not then keep them typically I say keep a
(24:41) redirection for about six months if it’s just for the sake of Google but if it’s getting actual hits not just like um hits from Bots and things like that or something crawling your site map then like for example if you had like a Pinterest pen that did really well and it’s still linked to this then I would
(24:59) keep it otherwise I just get rid of it okay let’s go to your settings that’s fine that’s fine okay so it looks like probably a plug-in or not plug-ins you probably have comments turned on I’ll take a look at those so setting the width to zero does not get rid of it just to be clear like that still exists now you just have
(25:37) a weird sized image okay permalink is something I definitely want to talk about because you have yours with year month post name and then HTML and I don’t know why because that’s not good um we do not want to have the date in our URL because it dates the piece and so some of those redirects you had to
(25:58) have is because of this because you have the date in there and so when you updated it you wanted to change the date to be more current the problem is when you do that then that Old Post ceases to exist and you have to change it it’s kind of the same as having the category in there which means that like you can’t
(26:14) have multiple categories you can’t change the category you can’t change the category name itself and it makes the URL crazy long and like I know some people say Google cares about the length of the URL I don’t think it massively does but it’s definitely annoying for you like just when you have to use the
(26:31) different urls I also think dot HTML just like is kind of old school we just don’t really do that anymore so I know it’s a project but my advice would likely be for the best longevity for your site take the hit right now undo this so change it to be just like post name like we have here or like I mean you’ll adjust it so maybe it’s not
(26:59) the title of the post but it’s like the keyword that you’re going to put in but I would get rid of any numbers in this URL and I would get rid of the HTML because again I’m just not really sure why that’s something you’re using that is quite an out of date thing that we used to do in blogging but we just don’t
(27:15) really do anymore um so yeah things things to adjust now then when you do that you have to do redirections for every single page and I know that sucks and I know it’s going to cause some issues with specific backlinks I would contact anyone you have backlinks from to get that changed and I know everyone’s always like I just
(27:33) don’t want to do it today and I get that I get that like it sucks to put in that effort today however it is so much better to put in that effort today and then have better longevity going forward you do not want to wait until you are making twenty thousand dollars a month or something and then change your whole
(27:51) site and then like trash it then in terms of like traffic and income for a minute because like it’s not gonna fully trash your site I’m definitely trying to I don’t know I prefer to tell people it’s going to be worse than it is just in case um but like your traffic will likely go down you will likely have some shifts of
(28:08) stuff for a little bit as Google figures out what you’ve done with your website it’s kind of like if you I don’t know get a nose job or like dye your hair a different color and people are like wait I think I know you what changed that’s what Google has to do here so we just need Google to like understand that and
(28:26) it takes a minute and then it kind of comes back however for backlinks it is definitely best practice to go ask those people to change it to the new URL otherwise sometimes backlink Checkers will tell them that backlink is broken and then a whole host of issues happen there so yeah well many people are like I just
(28:43) don’t want to deal with it I just don’t want to do it right now do the hard thing early it sucks to like move from Squarespace to um WordPress or from Wix to WordPress I get even early on that like WordPress is not the easiest system necessarily I do think it’s easier and more user friendly once you take a second to learn it and I
(29:04) would highly recommend everyone move over to it from any of those other systems but like do it now because you won’t know how much better your blog could be until you do that so for this I think that like any post you have that has 2022 2021 or any other year in that title or in that URL even if you change the title
(29:25) is not going to perform as well and it’s going to be easier for a competitor to steal I believe it was like Niche site lady or someone on Twitter that said like anytime they see a year in a URL they like basically my version of this is like laugh maniacally and go for it because even if that person ranks this
(29:43) year next year they’re Sol or they’re starting from scratch because they’ve changed that URL of it and then privacy policy everyone please set your privacy policy I get that we can like have it but I do find connecting it helps like connect it to your site um just having a privacy policy but not like setting it can be a problem
(30:06) um yeah just just set it guys it takes two seconds it does not take long okay then we have perf matters so I don’t know why everyone disables emojis I think they’re a good time they are good okay just reading through these quickly remove contact URLs is good those seem fine okay so if this is what you’re using for
(30:35) um a cache plugin that is incorrect proof matters is not a good cash plug-in I would stop using it if you want a good cash plug-in at WP rocket best there is um even like uh Auto optimize better than perf matters I would not use perf matters for this purpose it’s just it’s not as good honestly it’s just not
(30:56) now if you’re like dead set on using it you need to delay JavaScript for sure um I think that’s fine delay is probably best for now definitely clear unused you have to for some reason manually select that I don’t know but I don’t fully I I got rid of this for this purpose because it doesn’t really work for this it’s more
(31:19) about the general optimization stuff but yeah like I had like an old um I know I did some old course that recommended it but I wasn’t really a fan so it’s not lazy loading your images or your iframes or background images if you were using it for that I would do it but not it’s not working I always disable Google fonts just use like the
(31:42) base font so you don’t need anything fancy okay now on to my arch nemesis not really I just don’t like them because they’re bad um I get oh it’s gonna please don’t take me too because I don’t have the login even their plug-in has problems oh my goodness okay well this is just going to load into Infinity
(32:12) so we’ll just go back because I don’t know what’s happening there um I’m not a fan of zoic I do not think it is worth the time or energy or speed suck but that is my opinion okay then we have happy files so you’re sorting by file size so I guess so you can see all of the files I don’t know why you need this I would get rid
(32:33) of it social sharing fine if people actually use it I find it just like I just find people don’t actually share from a website they just copy the URL anyway um because like the things people want to do with it are typically share it or send it to a friend and it doesn’t let you do that like that’s not its purpose
(32:52) it shares to a post like on your wall or something on Facebook where people want to like DM it so yeah I just got rid of mine mostly to be honest okay then we’ve got the images to RSS fine if you care about it I think it’s unnecessary okay I would Minify SVG and again all this is my opinion I am not a tech SEO this is from my
(33:19) understanding of this stuff don’t know what power pack is table of content is fine I don’t want to subscribe to things please okay we have posts I think it’s important to have that okay initially hide that’s where you would collapse it that’s up to you show hierarchy I do um none because the problem is the
(33:42) decimal is going to be one dot and then whatever it is so if you have a numbered list now it’s going to be 1.1 1.2 and it just is weird and so since Google even though I know they’re phasing out Snippets for sge and things like that the ones that still exist and even just Google’s understanding of a list it
(33:59) helps it so having like the numbered lists be clearly one to ten not 1.1 to 1.10 is going to benefit you smooth scroll is good that’s good that’s good and then those are just settings for colors okay then we have so it seems like this is also for email which is interesting I don’t know activecampaign very well
(34:26) um okay I don’t even know what this is fun to go through other people’s plugins and be introduced to new things okay so you’ve got all these different settings for the Builder it’s fine if that’s how you need to build things let me custom Fields you have events and holidays as Fields I don’t know why
(34:48) could those not be tags want to see what’s in US oh do you have a calendar or something I don’t think I saw oh you have your events link here this could be categories and tags this doesn’t need to be that thing I don’t think yeah I don’t know that’s necessary I think that plug-in is unnecessary okay and then yoast
(35:23) check out the settings to make sure they’re all good that might be a little bit long for a tagline um not terrible but a little bit long I do recommend having a site image set okay that’s fine I recommend having your personal info tied here so it knows who the author of the site is okay then for posts I always recommend
(36:04) turning off separator site title the thing with that is that like we are not Forbes we are not some big company where our name matters it just doesn’t like no one really cares that you wrote this to be rude and I know it is rude but like it is um we like we have 60 characters for our title and the problem is your site name is going
(36:29) to take up a ton of that so like yours is one two three four five six seven eight nine and eleven twelve thirteen you have 13 characters there so you have just cut down your title length by 13 characters if you want to include this and actually 15 because of the separator and then the space so now you only have 45 characters to work
(36:47) with for a title that makes no sense because having your site title is not going to benefit the user it’s not going to benefit click-through rate for you either that’s why with titles we spend so much time creating a title that like is clickable it’s short enough it fits otherwise Google cuts it off and if
(37:05) Google cuts it off they don’t like it or they’re going to change it to some nonsense so like much better to have the right title than to just have a bunch of extra stuff and like when we think about it the thing that’s going to help a title convert is not that we wrote it it’s going to be like okay this is by a
(37:21) local it includes prices it’s whatever but also it’s kind of an old school thing because nowadays like when you search something on Google like if I just search Belize it shows me the name of the site already at the top and the URL so I don’t need to know that it’s like okay I wrote this and then it’s like buy this site it
(37:42) doesn’t really matter and even as we look here most don’t have it the ones that do that I might care about are like BBC News United States Department of State um maybe like the travel Belize I guess that’s a tourism board yeah it is so like those would matter because they’re a big name we are not a big name so we
(37:58) don’t do that instead we just make a really good title so I would delete that I do the same for Pages even though like I know Pages don’t rank as much but like it’s it’s still beneficial to have it be proper when it is going to rank um categories and tags are fine I know a lot of people like know index these I
(38:18) think it’s fine to index them um I don’t that’s not true I know index my tags just because they’re for internal purposes not for Google but I index my categories okay breadcrumbs just fine so for your author archive you want to have one you want to have something that tells Google who wrote this who did this
(38:42) how do we know that they know what they’re doing and you’re having an author archive is a part of that so in your site which I will I bounce around a bit I know when I do this but I will look at the actual site a bit more after so like here I can see the category I don’t see who wrote this so if I didn’t
(39:02) know what ambergris was ambergris was I would think this could be a person’s name to be honest with you and then it’s like okay this person wrote it no that’s not true so right now I have no sense of who actually created this like I don’t even have an author bio at the end so Google doesn’t know who created this Google’s
(39:23) like yeah I’ve got kind of an idea but I’m not really sure now if you have multiple writers have multiple off author archive Pages simple as that it’s super important um oh I don’t remember who it was on Niche Pursuits that talked about this but after they did I started doing um author schema and author boxes oh my
(39:42) God it changed things like Google loves it so definitely enable author archives and then enable it to show in search results it naturally in rank math and yoast no indexes itself and you want it indexed just like our about page just like our category Pages we want Google to know what we are about we wanted to
(40:02) know that it doesn’t matter they’re not going to get traffic from Google doesn’t really matter that like they might not rank for other nonsense it’s about the topical Authority and the expertise that we are showing to Google so definitely index that date archives I ignore that don’t format based interesting
(40:25) not familiar with that and those are just going to be extras that’s fine okay uh then I want to check out this Wonder video in bed what are you looks like you haven’t do I have to get started have you started it before if you haven’t used it before just get rid of this don’t don’t use or not not before you’re not using this just get
(40:47) rid of it if we don’t need things that we’re not using okay now let’s go to the site now I did ask for the analytics but you gave me the universal analytics which does not exist so I don’t actually know anything about this site at this point um because I don’t have data for like the last recent period so yeah I don’t
(41:06) really know what’s happening um but I’m going to use ahrefs for that instead so if we come back here let’s just first take a look at the site itself and its architecture so I have already gone over the issues with accessibility here um but beyond that when I first glance at your site like yes I can read this
(41:26) here I want to make sure that if someone was visually impaired they could read this no they can’t so if my screen reader was working right now and I had it running it would go over this logo and say SPC logo so I’m not actually going to know what this site’s name is or any of these taglines you need to put that in the alt text for
(41:48) that is important alt text is a hill I will die on I will say it over and over and over again because it is so vital so definitely have that now for your menu bar you’ve got six things I would say other destinations believe is a little bit long and awkward so I might just put like even just like Beyond I guess to some point because it
(42:10) says it up here or even just bullies generally would also work I typically try to keep things to like two words up here it’s fine it can kind of go either way so you start here oh you have a lot of drop downs Let’s test your drop downs when I reduce the screen okay it looks like they do pretty well and they’re good color blocking to some
(42:39) extent maybe it still has like slightly I’d still say it should be bolded a little bit but okay so they do work that’s good sometimes they don’t um so we got start here which has first timers guide map of Belize popular posts my book expat life I am already overwhelmed start here should be I click on it and
(42:59) it starts and it doesn’t it goes to a hashtag if I click on any of these top ones it seems like okay so my blog did go somewhere Amber gray just does it are you going to do something are you not going to do something so it looks like maybe so these ones all show Belize travel blog and then hashtag so it seems like these other ones aren’t
(43:36) working somehow so Belize events and my blog are working none of the other bass ones are if I come here let’s see if it’s different okay so that’s ambergris k yeah same issue so it seems like your menu is broken um which is not good definitely fix that and this is the problem is that like so many people will just click because
(44:06) they’re overwhelmed by the drop down so now the main thing isn’t working so I’m going to go to First timer’s guide and we’ll see what that is I’ll do your home page afterwards this is really awkward for a table of contents I would recommend having it vertical but also it’s just like like this makes it look kind of like
(44:26) um a massive paragraph It’s just overwhelming it’s hard to skim yeah this is not the best way to format this So Okay so we’ve got our looks like this is a pillar page or maybe just a post it looks like it’s a post okay because there’s not links in it so you’re just linking to specific posts you’re not linking to silos
(44:56) I’m very much not a fan of maps it looks like this is a static map and the problem with that is it has no functionality so you’ve included a pretty map it is pretty um but I now and especially on mobile where this would be shrunken down if I want to try and find ambergris K I can barely see it there but then I have
(45:19) to scroll back up to click on it and that’s annoying I would be very annoyed by this page as a user to be honest with you I don’t think this has um I don’t think this provides a function to users I think this should be something that is just incorporated into I think you need to have a start here post or page I guess I think it should
(45:38) be a page um where it is maybe this first timer’s guide I guess if you want or it could just be there’s a few options okay so there’s you could just have a pillar page which is like basically a page with a ton of text then links to things um yours currently doesn’t so I would have like the first timers guide as that
(45:57) and then include this in it and then link to things or it could be a navigational Silo which I’ll talk about after um or it could be yeah just like kind of a a very basic intro page um that would be kind of a pillar post but shorter tons of options there I guess uh I don’t think you need to have a separate page just for map of Belize I
(46:21) don’t think that’s super beneficial and then popular posts and topics like this should all be in one post sort of a thing like this would be something that I would put inside of the first timer’s guide if you’re even gonna bother with it but start here really should include this kind of stuff and then yeah again
(46:43) I’m I’m not liking the way the light the color is interesting so if I hover over it oh it just tells people it opens in a new window I don’t think that plugin is useful also internal links shouldn’t open a new window it irritates the heck out of me um and most users okay your book um so my book and a lot of people do
(47:05) this this isn’t just at you but like for anyone watching if you do my book or buy my thing you have not helped your user why do they care why do they care and why should they open their wallet and give you money they shouldn’t is the answer just by looking at this like my book my first question is like why do I
(47:25) care and I don’t know from this line here I also don’t know why it’s the starting point because you haven’t so far fostered anything in me that tells me how this will help me doesn’t even tell me what the book is about doesn’t tell me if it’s about bullies it just says my book so I would call it more like 50 big
(47:44) experiences on Amber green K Amber Greece Amber I don’t know I’m gonna say it differently every time my pronunciation is terrible y’all just accept that it’s not going to get better I’ve tried it’s I learn words by reading and then I cannot figure it out so ambergris cables now that’s a bit long so I might just say 50 big experiences
(48:03) book or something or even just like um 50 yeah start here could be a page about like kind of a basic guide and then this could be a section where it’s like or it could be a drop down probably put it somewhere else though um and call it either the title of the book or summarize it like best experiences ambergris k or something
(48:27) um just that way people are going to be able to know what it’s about because like I’m clicking on everything because I kind of have to as a user I wouldn’t I wouldn’t click on anything that’s not going to help me we have expat life the problem with saying expat life is it’s confusing as to whether it’s expats
(48:50) in Belize or expats leaving Belize and living elsewhere so you have to be really careful with the language there um it’s also I think a big change on who your customer Avatar is because all the other stuff I saw was more about like see more about like visit visitors coming to Belize and like yes people
(49:12) that move there also visit um but yeah I think it confuses it a little bit I do think this is closer to what a silo page should look like for your site um I think this part up here is a little bit long to be honest um so like when I moved from New York to Belize in 2007 I just thought hooray it’s just like vacation but permanent
(49:34) I’m on forever vacation I had no idea that like this is just not really the way we write in a blog post um it’s also quite long like we would have I’d usually say three lines maximum so this is a bit long here then yeah I think it’s just a bit awkward and this should be compressed now this is the kind of stuff you put on an
(49:58) about page the expat page would be more about like The Silo of links so that’s saying that go to your about page okay yeah so we need to hit enter a bunch of times and it’s not I try to share it I share um the problem is we need to be like not wishy-washy about things so users will automatically reduce anything you say
(50:36) you can say a certainty they understand it’s the internet so they’re going to reduce it so if you’re like I try to do this they’re like oh they fail if it’s I do this they’re gonna be like oh they try that like genuinely that is the way it happens so be careful about the language be very definitive on a Blog it
(50:50) is so important um and then I want to tell you it’s I just I tell you I teach you what makes a vacation to Belize fantastic so then and this is kind of a common misconception about an about page people Dive Right into themselves really quickly you do need to tell people like some of the answers your about page
(51:11) needs to give how are you going to help people what’s the purpose of the blog what are the values and missions of the blog like remember your about page isn’t just about you it’s about the blog as a whole so we really want to make sure that we’re getting those values across and the mission of the blog really really
(51:27) early then we can go into our personal experience and expertise but users don’t care about you they care about them and how you’re going to help them so it is really important to make sure that you are very clear about how you’re helping them right off the bat and how you are going to benefit them right now I don’t
(51:47) know I know that like you’ve got some experience here and if I was skimming like most people when they skim naturally read the first five words of a paragraph and maybe the last like three to five which is another reason why we do hit enter a lot even beyond having ads beyond anything else um so if we hit enter a bunch of times
(52:09) then people can skim and see some of this stuff a bit more but I also want to know like okay so I’m going to tell you what makes a vacation to Belize fantastic and all the big and little things that you can make at the place you want to return to immediately first off it’s a run-on sentence but also it doesn’t really tell me how
(52:25) you’re going to do that so what is the mission of the blog is it to get people to move here or is it to tell them about visiting here that’s where that like customer Avatar comes in from the expat page then it’s about like okay here’s my mission like here’s how I’m gonna do this here’s what you can expect from
(52:43) this site here’s what’s going to help you and then we say and here’s why I’m the person to do it so you’ve done the here’s why I’m the person to do it I would still hit enter a bunch um but you haven’t said here’s what I’m gonna do for you yet and that’s kind of what you have down here with the why I started this blog I
(53:03) guess um but even then it’s still a bit more about you it’s still about like you want to share things you want to do these things and then you leave me with SEO blue balls down here what’s next not even SEO blue balls just blue balls generally I guess like I’ve I’ve now I’m a die-hard fan I’ve read this about Paige I’m not as critical as
(53:22) Nina is because I am a nice user and I am not a mean SEO auditor um so now what now what should they do next and we don’t have anything here so that’s where we want to put something so yes you have stuff down here but remember that on mobile that is likely going to show up oh for you it’s interesting oh right
(53:42) it’s because of the weird collapse so on mobile for a user we would have this and then we’re going to have all your ads here in this blue sidebar thingy and then we’re gonna get this stuff so you might think oh well I do have my book there so it’s fine actually on mobile they’re going to get a bunch of ads
(54:01) first so they’re gonna think it’s over they’re gonna think it’s done that’s why I do recommend like if someone has gotten this far and most people won’t like to be honest with you most people like you lose about 30 of people I think it’s more than that actually I don’t remember the number some you lose a lot of people 30 into
(54:17) the post so by the time someone gets down here they are a Die Hard fan but if they have to scroll down to find these bits they’re kind of done like they probably have left already so give them something to do here give them a call to action to learn more in a certain post to start in one of these sections send them somewhere else but
(54:39) you really want to make sure you are taking advantage of the fact that they are paying attention and give them something to do now I’ll also just like make a personal note but these ellipses like feel very old school to me they’re very early 2000s method of writing and talking and like it just it comes off very oddly and
(55:01) it does feel a bit old school blogger nowadays we just don’t really talk like that or type like that and it does come off like slightly unprofessional I guess is the way I want to say it even though like I know blogs are very casual and like not quite professional anyway um but you have a ton of them too like I
(55:19) just kept seeing them all over the place and it reminded me of like the emails my aunt sends me that like I love her to death but like I hate reading those emails because there’s just so many ellipses and it feels like nothing ever finishes feels very awkward they aren’t really used for emphasis I think the way that you’re using it
(55:40) um like this should be a comma Belize is my home so much so that I became of citizen of Belize like that’s a comma maybe even a period to be honest in the blogging world so yeah I think you need to double check those that’s very nitpicky again that’s the point of this though okay so then interestingly you have my
(55:59) blog but then you have these that are also blogs are like well silos for the blog so I guess this is where someone could see everything I don’t think you need that and I think that is kind of wasted in your um in your menu all right that I can’t click on okay so yeah it looks like you’re using pillar Pages again
(56:32) so this one does have more links but not super clearly so I think the problem is that like you understand where things are on your site I don’t think a user would like I think this is semi more helpful but 248 pages if I was coming to your site and I want to learn about Belize and like and I don’t know anything about Belize I know
(57:01) that like one time my stepbrother stepsister and my stepdad went there to go scuba diving and then like their flights got canceled for a few days my mom had to like reroute them on like eight different flights to get home in time for school or something so like I know that it’s like quite remote I know
(57:16) nothing else so how am I going to figure out what is in all these places and I don’t want to click through 248 posts or pages to find a post there’s even more posts than that that’s just too much a really good exercise to do is to find a friend or family member who like doesn’t go to your site regularly and
(57:38) doesn’t really know the place like it’s preferably your ideal user but kind of like more on the ignorant end of the ideal user Spectrum so like I did this with my roommate um back when I was living in Ottawa and I was like okay sit down go through my site try to find this specific post and I gave him a post to
(57:55) find and then I watched the way that he moved through my site because he’s not super familiar with it he’s not a blogger so he doesn’t know like where things are I told him he couldn’t use the search function so he had to click through to find things and then I learned so much so like yes my ideal audience tends to be women not men but
(58:12) he’s in the right age bracket the right like kind of demographic for me so I went with it anyway and just from that I was able to see like the way that he thought about things versus the way I thought about things so those pillar posts he would go to and be like okay this is the post it’s just text it’s not
(58:29) going to have the link gone anything like this he would go oh I’m gonna try to find it somewhere else first and then I’ll come back to it and that’s really important to know that people are frustrated by this and these pages are meant to help people learn more about the topic that they didn’t realize like yes if someone’s like I
(58:48) need to know about this specific restaurant does she talk about it they’ll use the search function but someone who’s just browsing trying to figure out like more about the subject maybe like learn things they didn’t realize before this is daunting to them this is way too much so you want to make sure you have
(59:06) something accessible for your users and that’s where a navigational Silo page comes in now I have them on chinos SEO I have them on all my websites but I’ll show you the manchinos SEO so all of these Pages here the SEO and the travel blogging this is a navigational Silo you can find every post on my site on one of these two
(59:28) pages sometimes they’re on both so it just depends like for example how I grew my travel blog this is on both of them but like it’s not the most organized for sure I could organize it better I could do other things I’m not going to um you can still like very quickly find everything on this page it’s categorized
(59:47) for you so you can like find the different things um it’s not super long if I had more I’d probably put um a table of contents at the top but right now you can come here and find information you need to know you’re like hey does Nina have anything on keywords you could search it or later on you could come here and then be like
(1:00:05) oh I didn’t even know what SEO writing was I didn’t even know to look for that now I can see it here that’s why we do this we want to make it as easy as possible for our user and the problem is that like Pages like this the nesting means that it’s going to take me 248 clicks to find the thing now another reason we do this is like
(1:00:28) the two-click rule so with travel blogs it does kind of become a three-click rule often but essentially from your home page you should be able to do to get to any post on your site in two clicks so if I’m on the home page here yep there are some on my homepage I could click or I can come up to this page click on it that’s one click two
(1:00:47) clicks I’m on the Blogger personality quiz page that’s how much it took now I’m here I’m done now on travel sites we often like for you it’s less of a concern because you have a specific destination but if you have like a ton of destinations even your Belize page if there’s so much like if you have that much about just
(1:01:08) ambergris k then like you must have I think it’s actually key now that I’m thinking about it please don’t comment my mispronunciations I know it’s bad I fully appreciate that guys and like I’m sorry I’d once did one where I called Oaxaca Oaxaca the entire time these things happen I don’t check pronunciation I check SEO
(1:01:27) so um yeah but for us we often have like a destinations page and then that page will have like then you’ll click there and then it’ll take you to the different countries like you can just list countries if you want to and then that’ll take you to the specific pages for you could go either way I’m guessing
(1:01:44) you have enough content that it could be either one um but yeah ultimately you need to find a way to make this more digestible to your user so I do get fun spots hotels and lodging restaurants I think those are like a nice idea that could all just be on one massive page for ambergris key I guess I’m gonna try say that now see if
(1:02:04) that sticks probably won’t um because let’s see even here even here there’s still five pages to go through think of your user and this is what I always try to picture myself it’s like your user is a busy mom even if your like ideal user isn’t a Mom it just helps they’re a mom at Starbucks they’ve got a kid hanging off their arm their
(1:02:23) dog is barking outside they’re trying to wait for their coffee their boss is emailing them about nonsense an hour before work and they’re just like oh I hate this I just want to book a trip get out of here and I’m so tired and exhausted I didn’t sleep last night because like the basement flooded or something
(1:02:38) we’re working with that person we want to make this as easy as possible for them and if we can’t do that we are going to lose their clicks we are going to lose their attention and we will ultimately lose them as an ideal customer so you really want to work to keep them and you don’t want to make them do the work that’s why we create
(1:02:56) pages that are a little bit easier for them now for other destinations I definitely think we need to have some sort of like overall what these are because even the map I don’t think it had like northern southern outside did it okay Northern Belize Southern Belize what’s outside Belize does that just
(1:03:16) mean anywhere in the world where’s Kyle okay Kyle’s there Kyle Caulker there okay I don’t know and then Belize City and District there so this would be more helpful on like I don’t know just Belize or something I would do this as a silo page it’s like Belize you open it up it has this map and then it has
(1:03:47) these buttons and then they can click that and then they’ll go to that specific page but then this page should be a silo page with just links because this is too much for people and ultimately you’re going to have posts about all this stuff so we just don’t need one page about it they typically don’t rank they just don’t
(1:04:03) really help us now for this yeah you you’ve I think you’ve overdone it unfortunately I would just have one page again for like Northern Belize where you can go and you would just like get all that information there because this is a lot to go through and then to have to go through individual posts and then deciding between it and
(1:04:21) the Articles as a general user not a blogger I wouldn’t know the difference I’d be like what is happening guide versus articles which one do I need what’s the difference um even this like outside bullies I think that’s probably just you writing about other stuff okay so it looks like you did some stuff
(1:04:40) about Mexico for a while Rhode Island that’s a lot of 23 pages of things not about bullies I don’t think you need those I would um likely give those away to be honest with you I want to actually see if they’re indexed or not looks like they are interesting titles too long as I noted that would be part of it but it looks like your titles
(1:05:06) are generally too long we’ll take a look at post after sorry I’m just interested in this now because like yeah I it just it’s not your Niche so like why are you going outside of your niche yeah it is indexed okay um I think you have too much stuff Happening Here if none of these rank give them away and get get back links
(1:05:30) for them update them and then offer them as guest posts it’s a great option for anybody who has content that like they just well like it just isn’t serving them if it’s not serving you it is dragging you down like an anchor so let it go and it’ll let you fly much much higher I always picture like the house from up so
(1:05:48) if the house from up is floating high but it’s got like a hundred anchors tethering it to the ground because they’re just like not ranking posts they’re not really in the niche they’re just a mess um either no index them to cut the cord and then like you can still see the anchor but it’s not attached to anymore
(1:06:02) for Google’s sake or delete that post you can then give it away as guest post you have to wait a little bit that way it’s like Google doesn’t recognize it anymore and then you also need to edit it because if it wasn’t ranking there’s a reason for it probably Beyond just topical Authority issues um likely you just need to update it a
(1:06:23) bit anyway especially for some of these were like 2017. give them away get a great backlink from it and then you’ve you’ve already done the work of writing the post so I get people don’t want to just like toss it out um but same for any post on your site that is like not serving you in terms of rankings cut it Loose if it is over six
(1:06:40) months old and you do not have time to update it right now no index it for right now if it’s helpful to the user or just delete it if it’s not helpful at all okay uh then this events one it just seemed like days of the week that was con like it’s just awkward to me I guess days of the week like what’s
(1:07:00) happening this week would make more sense but day of the week makes it sound like it’s just telling me like maybe Belize has its own type of calendar and it uses different days or something I do think it’s a really cool idea to have activities I think that’s interesting but I feel like this could just
(1:07:19) be an accordion on its own and not need that special Advanced custom fields for it like interesting but I also so I think this one um sorry I can cut myself off my own thought process this one is hard to uh at a glance understand what this thing is that’s a ton of text quite small a lot for someone to skim
(1:07:50) easily and see what it’s about also out of date because a lot of uh the stuff would need to be updated per year so like 2022 definitely does this is like that’s a massive chunk of text um I would have specific posts about the activity and then to be like Thanksgiving and then give the date and update it annually and then link them to
(1:08:11) a post on this um otherwise it’s more overwhelming than it is beneficial I think and I want to see what your search looks like okay that does look good oh it shows a ton before it nests interesting okay now we’re gonna do your homepage anyone who’s watched other of mine um like other audits I’ve done I always go
(1:08:37) in different orders so just to be clear now we’re going to go to the home page usually I start with it so you start with I guess your most recent post uh snapshots from my week I really hope this is no indexed because this is not SEO content no just want to make sure because I don’t actually know if yoast does it the same
(1:08:59) way that like it would show up there for me in ranked math but but I want to check for the host on your back end but this is not going to be beneficial to the user okay where does one no index things in used here I guess yeah so you have things indexed that shouldn’t be if it does not have a specific keyword no index it stuff like
(1:09:27) this I would say first of all this is an email this isn’t a post um this is something that your users would care about in an email sense but I don’t think it’s super beneficial as a post it has no longevity um it’s obviously going to like it only matters this week and then it’s going to keep changing
(1:09:48) um it just also doesn’t really have a lot of text so yeah this should be no index anything like that should be no indexed now your home page is the highest page Authority post on your site or yeah well technically as a post because it’s a static page the problem is you’ve got a lot of random stuff on here so if you’re
(1:10:08) putting your latest post that’s good we do want to have those but the first thing I want to see is something significant so if the first thing I see is just the latest thing it’s not always the most on topic thing it’s not always the thing that matters the most to the user or would help them most so it could be a recent post but not
(1:10:27) always because sometimes we have those posts that are just like kind of random or supplementary or whatever so be really specific with your home page remember that like this is but yeah it’s not the most searched post or anything on your site but it is a place a lot of people end up to understand more about you and
(1:10:47) especially if you want to work with Brands and stuff they always check your home page so be really careful um yeah so I just don’t think this is super beneficial it doesn’t really tell them a lot so don’t know that I would do that then you have my blog so I guess these are other recent posts I would have more than two
(1:11:08) so I usually try and do 12 that way it gives them a longer chance to be on my home page and get more just like get a boost so being on your homepage for new posts gives them a really powerful internal link because your homepage like it is a ton of page Authority because we build a ton of links to it by accident or on purpose
(1:11:29) whatever but like if you’re on a podcast or something they’re going to be like oh Nina of she knows SEO and then they’ll link to she knows SEO um if you get any Haro backlinks all sorts of stuff like that if you just run out of backlinks for a guest post your home page is the default so you’re gonna
(1:11:44) have a ton of authority on your home page then it becomes about moving that Authority through your site for brand new posts they do need that boost and I always give like the very um not child friendly example I guess of like it’s kind of like giving a kid Red Bull so it’s like taking your kid to a soccer match give them a Red Bull launch
(1:12:07) them onto that field they are gonna dominate they’re also going to probably get you arrested if they tell anyone about that so this is not parental advice guys but it is going to give them a leg up at the beginning and the problem is if you only have a couple or if you’re replacing posts pretty quickly like I’m recording
(1:12:28) this on the 27th so this is a week ago that you published this one about 24 hours in belmopen Belize which is Belize I didn’t even say Belize right there geez given up on pronunciation entirely apparently yeah but basically right now you have three posts on your homepage so if they get a week’s worth of that boost
(1:12:47) they’re gonna crash pretty quickly and then they’re not going to be known for like their skills they’re going to be known as the insane kid who just broke the soccer field but the longer they can spend on your home page the better most of us publish like anywhere from one to three posts a week so typically we want
(1:13:03) to try and give them a month’s worth and that’s why I would do 12. so then you have like if you’re doing like 12 posts a month then they each get about a month on your home page that can vary a little bit based on like your schedule and things and it’s not an exact science it’s just to help them a little bit and
(1:13:20) then even when they get off your home page naturally because you add more it’s kind of like that kid crashing halfway through from all the caffeine they’re still going to be known as a legend they’re going to be like that ledge went out there and just like scored every goal and like it’s the team is going to
(1:13:34) keep winning because the other team is now terrified of them and like they did really well so that everyone’s gonna know that kid as a legend and these posts Google’s still going to know that they are authoritative and beneficial because they had that early start so that’s why we add those to the home
(1:13:53) page then most popular posts and things like that I really hope you’ve done this um as like a manual thing but you may have used a block for this the launch Builder and see if I can understand how Builder works wow this takes a while to get started oh I do not like this this looks completely different what
(1:14:19) okay so it looks like this is a power pack content grid that is showing but what content is it custom query post random okay so it looks like you have a tag for popular so you must have manually set that which I think is better definitely set me like manually choose any of your popular posts anywhere on your site
(1:14:51) um it oh God I don’t know what I did there let’s just go back and save anything so I can get back to where I was there we go um so I do recommend doing these like as things that you set and typically I say have like six to twelve and then at least three should be like beginner stuff so Steph get like someone new to
(1:15:10) your Niche would need to know so that’s kind of like the start here content of like okay um where is Belize or whatever the stuff that’s like kind of it used to be called Cornerstone content it’s not often called that anymore but basically just like the foundational stuff people need to know to then use your site or kind of
(1:15:27) common questions so like if someone for she knows SEO always asks me like what is SEO that would be a good post do I have that no because I neglect this site heavily um but that would be beneficial whereas it’s not beneficial to have three random things and yes it does give them a boost as well so it’s also good
(1:15:51) for the other things so if you do the first three that are helpful that are things that like might just need a bit of backlinks so like that’s why we don’t want um it to Auto populate but we do want to manually select so I often do three that are like kind of Cornerstone content then I do three to nine that like just
(1:16:09) yeah need a bit of a boost so they’re things that like will get me a ton of traffic they’re things that could be an affiliate post it just needs like backlinks I don’t have time to build as many and this just gives kind of like an internal link and a half almost it gives a little bit more um so it’s just worth giving it that
(1:16:25) extra time right now at a glance I think like a singular Resort not super helpful to your user um Furnishing a new place in Belize not super helpful to a general user languages I think is super helpful um could this all fit here yes but I would add more then life on ambergris k key whatever okay sorry this my five thing is really
(1:16:58) confusing me because then you list three things I guess there’s more in there but I don’t know sorry um just got distracted for a second the 80d is flaring up clearly the coffee is wearing off so if this is about your life I think that’s very different than being about their life and your user remember we’re
(1:17:16) doing all of this for our user we kind of don’t matter we are not the focus and then sponsored posts your user doesn’t care if they’re sponsored your user has no understanding of what a sponsored post is and also just having one looks kind of awkward I guess um so I would just build that in to like the number of the most popular ones that
(1:17:36) you’re going to have up here and then yeah from like from this home page at a glance I don’t understand the focus of your site I don’t know who you’re talking to I don’t know who your idle user ideal user is um it’s kind of all over the place where like yes it’s all Belize but there’s that it’s a full country like there’s a
(1:17:55) lot there so I want to know like what is the focus of this site I want to know who you are like there’s nothing about you on here for why I should trust you and who you are um and like who runs this there’s it’s quite unclear what part of Belize we’re focusing on we kind of get into ambergris k key whatever God I’m already
(1:18:14) annoying myself with it I’m sorry guys um but it’s hard to tell so it is it’s quite challenging to understand your Niche and who you are and again like who you help from this home page so I think that needs some reworking I do often recommend having a little blurb about like just answering kind of those
(1:18:35) questions almost um because right now I’m just yeah I’m just not sure okay then I did realize that I forgot check your work with me and contact me this is a very big chunk of text and should be broken up a little bit okay so how do they contact you keep a tiny little message me thing there but you don’t finish with it so
(1:19:13) they need something at the end now you contact me okay so that’s your form cool so then you have this book here don’t get caught in ambergris key without it so okay with to sell stuff we want to start with the pain Point what are they worried about are they worried about not having this book are they worried about
(1:19:37) um I don’t know buying the book no they’re worried about something else they’re worried about uh missing out on the best things to do only doing touristy stuff spending a million dollars they’re worried about the common travel issues that they see and this works for like literally anything you’re selling don’t sell based on features
(1:19:55) sell based on emotions so the intro line here should be pain Point like are you worried about whatever address their pain point however then the button should be the conversion no one wants to buy now no one wants to buy more stuff people want to solve problems so this should be however this is going to solve their problems so
(1:20:18) um don’t get to ambergris key and uh or no are you worried about only doing tourist trap things and Amber Amber grease key get the locals Guide to the area whatever that’s not very good but I’m just making it up on the spot now this here should be about the benefits and features that it offers and instead it
(1:20:42) gives you a little bit about like um I was smitten uh but it was all the small experiences and amazing people that really made me fall in love with the country I think this is the important thing it’s about the people clearly and the experiences that’s what we need to highlight here that is buried in here if I was skimming
(1:21:00) remember people start at the top to skim they wouldn’t see that so you need to like bold that or pull that out then this I don’t think tells me anything and so I wrote this book and why like why does that matter to them just from like I am being very nitpicky obviously that’s a point so like I want to know like every word
(1:21:27) should matter every word should touch on an emotion or a logical reason to purchase and this doesn’t so we’d be really careful with that stuff and that will increase conversions because you want to make it clear like I know you are struggling with this thing and I will help you with it when I change that
(1:21:46) messaging across my site for like everything for anything I sell everything started selling better it was no longer about like okay this has four lessons and I wrote this because I don’t know I was worried about x no it was always about them it’s about the user and how we’re helping them everything becomes about the user and that’s when
(1:22:07) things convert now um this down here same thing get the scoop in your inbox what that says to me is you’re gonna get one more email in your inbox that you do not want to deal with and it’s going to like add some unread message that you have to handle and it’s work for you instead it should be like uh something about like how this
(1:22:26) helps them how this benefits them a way this is going to change their life now oddly their first name and last name is required but their email is not required that seems incorrect so I would adjust that um also conversions will be a lot higher without last names just so you know okay and it looks like you restate them
(1:22:49) down here um I would redo this to adjust it to what we talked about in the menu okay let’s look at the privacy policy okay good you do have one cool cool so it doesn’t mention Amazon does mention Google good I think that’s shorter than Google’s actual one though I feel like Google I thought the one that they gave us was much longer
(1:23:18) um so I’m guessing you’re not in Amazon’s then and then you don’t because you don’t have it listed anywhere and you legally have to if you’re gonna be in their program um just trying to see if I can spot any affiliate links because if you’re using Affiliates you also need to have a disclaimer above and before any link
(1:23:44) ever so usually it’s better to have it at the top okay and also you just linked to individual sites that’s fine I just want to make sure like what is happening okay so if you’re gonna have affiliate links you definitely need to have a disclaimer for that on every post just an FYI and if you’re in something like the Amazon
(1:24:13) affiliate program you do need to have that in your privacy policy cool okay now let’s check out a post um mostly for a real what not the uh there we go okay so 11 reasons that you should be in Belize in October so that is not great practice for the URL we don’t want to include numbers so like even just like the 11 reasons
(1:24:43) because what if in six months someone else does 15 reasons now you need to do more and now it’s weird when you have like 20 reasons but your url says 11. it’s just confusing to Google confusing to your reader so not not something I recommend um then as I said before we need to have the author byline and I would definitely
(1:25:01) do an author bio at the bottom now your title is a little bit too long so this one probably is long enough yeah so it’s 56 characters without the extra so that’s why I say get rid of the extra for sure uh you do have a meta which is good it’s a little bit short I would probably try to make it a little bit longer I don’t
(1:25:20) know why you’ve like capitalized only conch for some reason oddly I can say that but I can’t figure out any other word Jesus Nina I watch a lot of below deck so like they do mention konk a lot to be fair okay so 2250 words it’s got so look at just the outline here this is the way Google’s kind of going to glance
(1:25:44) at this randomly the solar eclipse is just screamed at the bottom you also see that there’s like a ton of different variations in um the like the structure here keep a pretty like similar structure so it’s going to be like things to do you don’t want to go from like visit the CN tower to CN Tower at the next one you want to
(1:26:05) have it be obviously you don’t want to also restate the same thing but you want to keep a similar structure as you go okay so then I also just don’t think that the colon year is super helpful I’d probably take that out and I don’t think you need that like reason that you should be in Belize in October
(1:26:24) now it also looks like you’re kind of targeting reasons it looks like Belize in October and October weather kind of what you’re targeting but let’s check out Belize in October looks like that’s the keyword that’s not what I intended to do if I hover will it show me nope why would it be helpful oh yoast I’m not a fan of you
(1:26:51) okay Belize in October okay so if the keyword we’re looking at is Belize in October whoops I just want to like compare this to a competitor to see their structures we have weather crowds and costs where to go what to do events in October uh some itinerary list so yeah okay so not like it’s super intensive post and
(1:27:25) to be honest most of the time that you do like country or city in month usually pretty easy and you do kind of have carte blanche I think with this as well I mean first of all you do have topical Authority you have a higher da so you’re going to be able to get away with some stuff um to be fair though I will actually do
(1:27:43) this in an incognito window just in case yeah you’re still ranking really high so that’s good um I just wanted to make sure the structure of your competitors because sometimes with like those country in month ones we should have a different structure but I think we’ve gotten away with it here um okay so that’s fine I would try and
(1:28:06) move bullies in October earlier sorry the neighbors are playing with bubbles on their porch and he sees it they’re allowed to have Bubbles and they live there they pay rent unlike you reload do it don’t you do it okay chill okay I think we’re good sorry guys so I think we’re good with the structure then I would say for the title though
(1:28:34) Belize in October early on is definitely best practice and then having something like yeah travel tips weather and more like what you’re gonna cover in it what is the focus for you it could be 11 reasons to visit Belize in October even just like moving it a little bit closer um because we want like best practice is
(1:28:52) to have our keyword as close to the start as we can okay now for the actual post should you visit Belize in October what will the weather be like in October this isn’t really an intro oh there’s more here okay this is a very long intro okay you include good information um I would take a look at Jamie if’s
(1:29:21) spear framework for intros uh to learn how to write a better intro to be honest with you just because like first of all having an image in the middle of it I fully thought it was over here I thought we were done so I thought we were over it but I didn’t know anything about why I should listen to you about this
(1:29:37) also warm weather Belize is a warm country specifics we need to get specific we want to know like exactly what’s going to happen so I’d also say the dot dot isn’t again super necessary but I don’t know who you’re talking to I don’t know like what your like what people are worried about what we’re trying to help them with if
(1:29:57) it is weather just saying warm doesn’t mean a lot because warm for Alaska warm for I don’t know Belize one for like um Morocco all very different levels it’s always going to be variable which is why we want specifics then I want to know who are you and why should I listen to you what is your experience and
(1:30:17) expertise why should I trust you um I do want to know like what are you going to tell me about and so you’ve kind of done that I think that is good we’ve checked that off I want to yeah get a sense of like who you are and how helpful you are to me I think you do have like your own personal tone here but I think we need to build
(1:30:33) trust with some specifics I think that will help a ton and you have answered user intent which is great now this is just a lot like this is that’s a full header unto itself it’s like what is the weather like but you never tell me a temperature I don’t see a single temperature I don’t see um anything about specific like
(1:30:56) percentages or of like chance of hurricane or how many days of rain or blah blah blah you just say many days are warm and sunny but good chance for rain what does that mean I don’t know um even like hurricane season talking about that as somebody from North America in a place that doesn’t have hurricanes
(1:31:18) I don’t know anything about hurricanes so we do have to remember again to work to our users kind of level of ignorance I don’t say that in a bad way like I genuinely like I am ignorant about beliefs I do not know about it I don’t think that’s a bad thing I think I need education and that’s where blogs come in
(1:31:33) okay then we have table of contents this is good structure but you see what I mean with the 1.1 like that’s why I take out the decimal with table of contents or easy Toc okay so then for um images I put the image either I I like it above the header people will fight me on this um they like it below the header either one I think works but
(1:31:55) I think having it in the text is just a bit confusing and again a bit the older style of blogging nowadays we tend to keep it more succinct and like in a clear spot that has a clear pattern because it just helps people digest it better and on mobile it can be quite like confusing if you have like justice
(1:32:13) information and then a giant picture and you won’t always know that there’s more text coming so yeah I’ve also seen people say that like it confuses Google and when images come in Google like doesn’t track it I don’t know how true that is I feel like they would have figured that out to be honest but
(1:32:31) um just something to think about okay I’m good that you say the 31st now this is where to be careful it’s a Monday that is not future proofing so by doing that you’re now gonna have to come in and um change that every single year so if you’re okay with that that’s fine I wouldn’t because I would forget
(1:32:55) um then you have temperatures 85 degrees I logically know that’s Fahrenheit but please put in that it’s Fahrenheit and Google seems to like not recognize those as much like degrees and stuff without the degree symbol and then like Fahrenheit or Celsius so I do find it’s beneficial just like anyway for a user
(1:33:14) um yeah so just help Google help a user okay and also sorry I was going to say my problem is guys I forget to compliment people good job on original pictures and good job that you’ve like clearly shown that you actually like have been there also that is a cute ass dog that is so cute so I don’t mean to be like I feel like I
(1:33:38) come off very rude whenever I do a Blog audit I’m a nice person I promise I’m just I have to be critical okay that is beautiful so if you’re gonna say like in number eight I recommend hyperlinking to that and the way you can do it really easily is just come up here copy the link for number eight and then
(1:33:58) whenever like someone clicks on it you see it has like the hashtag eight underscore a great time for diving blah blah blah it’ll Auto take them to it so it can be a good way to like internal link to like within the post to another section just in case like someone like I don’t know I have the memory of a
(1:34:14) goldfish I’ve had three concussions so I need like I would want to click that now to see it otherwise I’d forget later okay with conch cool that looks really yummy um so why is pumpkin spice isn’t a big thing in Belize a positive I guess it’s a confusion because like remember people should be able to skim your headers
(1:34:39) maybe I haven’t said this actually people should be able to skim your headers and get an idea of like the answers immediately and so this I think it’s interesting and it does like um bring people to click to learn more I think that’s a very interesting thing the dot dot dot again confuses me a bit um I do like that I have to read to
(1:34:58) figure it out but yeah I’m kind of of two minds I guess of it being up there now this comes from me being a proofreader for a long time I hate inconsistent capitalization either don’t capitalize things or capitalize them but having cool randomly capitalized puts me off and I again am picky so I would
(1:35:14) potentially leave I know other people might not but yeah if it happens too much I get annoyed it’s our cool Birds yes you hear too like cheapest randomly hotels randomly golf carts plentiful um even you could even just take this through chat gbt and tell it to make all your headers either like title text or
(1:35:35) title um yeah title text capitalization or title case that’s what it is title case you could have it say like don’t capitalize any of my titles or headers or whatever all options um but I would just make it consistent and then we want to hit enter a ton of times now overall I think you’ve got you’ve got
(1:35:54) original pictures which is good um I would write a bit more because right now I’m getting like some info but I’m not it doesn’t feel like it’s quite finished and especially those specifics if our Target is like Belize in October especially the weather I don’t feel like I know enough about the weather here so that’s something I
(1:36:14) would definitely add I would also add a clear conclusion because I don’t know when it ends technically I think this is kind of where it is um but we definitely want a clear like this is the end section I would also recommend when we were looking at oh I don’t know where it is here um here we had like these questions here
(1:36:35) Factor those in these are clearly questions people have can you swim in Belize in October that I don’t think that was mentioned uh we talked about hurricane a little bit but like I want to know these in specific details and just being able to find out a bit more about those specifics will help people a
(1:36:52) lot um so that they actually like have yeah really hyped for specific data for themselves otherwise like what the problem is right now I would come here read this and then I would leave to go read a competitor to find out more and you can even see for your competitor Kim Kim here um the part that’s being highlighted by
(1:37:13) Google is about the specific temperatures so you definitely need to have that and be really clear on it and you can see by October the weather in Belize is cooling down what does cooling down mean temperatures of this on the coast and Inland this but it rains it believes really hard this month October
(1:37:32) sees the most with an average of 10 inches so we’re getting very specific numbers and I think that’s what’s missing from this post now I also want to check your alt text is a loofah I just think it’s so funny um no I think this is good I think you’ve at least started to describe things the problem is October Sunset
(1:37:57) wear purple like I don’t know I was gonna say green I don’t think any sunsets get green or else that’d be bad orange yellow like I went into the colors you don’t talk about the person like canoeing in front of it you don’t talk about like a lot of the specifics so again get specific my rule for alt text is what’s in the
(1:38:14) picture why does it matter to this post um so I think having that would be really beneficial for you you also like just don’t use any variation of the keywords really in here so try to it would be beneficial then let’s check internal links so I need to scrolled bottom so we get past all the other stuff
(1:38:39) okay okay so those are from your table of contents we got one two three four five six seven eight so we need ten so do two more um try to vary the anchor text a little bit more then uh I want to make sure you you link to a lot of things going outgoing I believe but I just want to double check that they’re all do follow
(1:39:16) okay so those are all from the header so we have your stuff okay so we have Atlas obscura birding Festival no so you only actually link to two things so link out to more stuff I recommend three external links that are beneficial to the user and then I want to just check General like your backlink profile
(1:39:39) to make sure we’ve got some good varied anchor text what is that Theo don’t you dare leave the neighbors alone okay so expand me um something weird is happening there hey looks like you have some sort of like either syndication with this or that this opens off thing Theo leave the
(1:40:40) neighbors alone um that this might be spammy kind of thing I’m not really sure see if we can get away from that hmm okay we’re gonna just like exclude them Theo could you please chill like a little bit okay it looks like you have a lot of spammy backlinks coming in so be really careful about that okay until you have something in a forum
(1:41:37) interesting okay we’ve got one for secret Beach that seems specific at least that’s good okay so I think you have a ton of spammy stuff happening so be really careful about that um that can be a huge problem it looks like you do have some good like actual real backlinks uh I cannot find a ton because I think like
(1:42:09) something’s happening there so it looks like you’re doing pretty well but I would just be yeah careful about disavowing some of this stuff um to try and like get it out of your backlink profile and then it looks like as well whenever you get like one backlink you get a bunch of versions of it again in a kind of a spammy way so be
(1:42:28) careful with that but ultimately like you do have a strong da or da is 48 so like that’s very very good and that’s going to benefit you um still backlinks to individual posts are beneficial now for some organic keyword stuff you have really good positions for a number of things I would expect even better stuff to be honest
(1:42:58) um and like to have even higher position rankings because of your topical Authority because you have so many posts about these places and I think what’s happening here is that the posts that you have are not SEO optimized like I do think that you’re you’ve got some good keywords but you’ve got like that little
(1:43:19) bit lacking like that one we checked where it just needs a little bit more finessing to really get you there um I think also the like the date in the URL is holding you back using numbers in your url is holding you back the dot HTML thing is also just interesting to me I still don’t understand why you have
(1:43:38) it so I would try to get rid of it to be honest it seems manually set for some reason doesn’t make sense to me um so I would work on migrating all of that to just just the post name personally uh as always everything I say is kind of like at your discretion but I think that that would benefit you for sure then
(1:43:58) creating some like Silo pages and internal linking these a little bit more so that it’s clear about their connection because you do have the topical Authority in terms of numbers but I think it’s hard for Google to understand the actual inter connection of it so if Google doesn’t know how these mesh and like fit together
(1:44:17) then that’s going to be a problem that’s why I called my main course the SEO roadmap is because you have to create that roadmap for Google it is not on Google or on your user to connect that it is on you and internal links are a huge part of that having a navigational Silo page for those categories huge part
(1:44:35) of that creating a home page that like directs that Authority throughout your site huge part of that so I think fixing those things is going to be massively beneficial for you I do also think clearing up the accessibility issues of the colors on your home page will benefit you as well I mean the good
(1:44:54) thing is when I look here clearly Google knows what your focus is I do think that’s a lot easier when you have a site that is um specific to a country or region you do however still have some posts like aren’t ranking some things that just like aren’t really getting clicks and connections and some of your old
(1:45:14) stuff too like it’s just not really carrying its weight so either offload it or up or update it or no index it till you’re going to like fully offload it then things that are like not in your Niche and are also not serving you either just delete them or give them away I don’t think that beyond the lead
(1:45:29) or outside Belize is like actually really helpful to your audience to be honest with you because this is about beliefs itself and I get that it’s like beliefs and Beyond but like realistically people are going to come to you mostly for beliefs so if those can rank on Google great if not no index them if that matters to you to keep them
(1:45:50) or honestly I would just get rid of them because to me the Beyond is more about like the yeah like the expat Journey that you’ve had is kind of my understanding of it um but it’s going to come down to your understanding of what your site is about for sure and like how you want to yeah play that then one last thing I would add is like
(1:46:10) I would put your book um on like a resources page or something and add resources to your menu and then create a page with like common links for people maybe answer some common questions uh give them like a way to easily book through affiliate links and then put your book there as like a solution for them I think that will
(1:46:29) benefit you as well and then okay that wasn’t the last thing it’s never the last thing with me then your sidebar uh my voice is getting croaky now the cold meds are wearing off uh then on your sidebar I would not just had ABS because it does not really beneficial to your user also when I am on your site Incognito there are so many
(1:46:48) ads ads load above the fold which is a serious No-No get rid of those immediately that is so bad for your site um because well I don’t know I’m not gonna explain it’s just bad um because there’s so many technicalities for like speed and for user experience blah blah it’s just frustrating for the user get rid of it
(1:47:10) now a sidebar like this is feels spammy to be honest with you and makes me as a user not trust the site as much you also don’t get very far into the post you get like four lines of text so the first paragraph in there’s an ad then one paragraph add one paragraph or I think we got three paragraphs there add so ads are
(1:47:32) everywhere here then you also have the footer ad you just got a lot of ads running absolutely everywhere it’s a little bit spammy right now and I would reduce that so that is going to be a setting in the zoic that you’re going to need to adjust and the zoic is pretty well known for enjoying some spammy ads
(1:47:50) I do like to have ads absolutely everywhere which is a lot for people and annoyingly it’s quite challenging to set your ads and to get it to stop showing like this um you’re at a kind of level now with your page views based on my understanding and like based on what I could see before um UA stopped tracking that you should
(1:48:11) be okay with uh with izoic like they should like you enough that they’re gonna help you more than like a true beginner but I would get rid of some of that stuff it’s also going to impact rankings and impact user experience massively and I just don’t think it’s worth it like you’re pretty close to mediavine as well
(1:48:31) um page view wise so I would get rid of that and then that could boost you um I can’t see your exact breakdown anymore because um did I I closed it didn’t I oh why will you not let me see my history there we go um but in analytics once I get it open I can take a look at like the past breakdown but I don’t know it now
(1:48:59) um but if we go to audience graphics nope that’s wrong I want Geo my bad been a while since I used UA weird okay I want days yeah us is your first you could definitely get into mediavine um this is like half a month so let’s try let’s just do July because it would look like it was still running then
(1:49:34) yeah you’re getting up there so users sessions oh it made it look like it was you said you had 50 000 page views on your um what’s it called on your work with me page maybe uh misread something so 25 000 sessions you’re halfway there which is good let’s see page view numbers from a month ago why won’t you just work with me
(1:50:09) okay so page views 35 000. so yeah you’re really close to mediavine um so I would get Izzo out of there and it’s going to Skyrocket your site like you would be so surprised how intensely things get better after you remove it I’ve had a number of students remove it and like two months later they got into
(1:50:31) mediavine so I would get rid of it um because you are so so close now and then it looks like as well you could you could stand to start doing affiliate stuff on your site a bit more um because Belize has lots of great tours that are expensive so like you could make great money off of affiliates with that and I think that would benefit
(1:50:48) you a lot so yeah this has been the blog on it if you have questions um either Rachel who actually runs a site or anyone else um it’s Rachel right if I already like changed your name in my head Jesus I’m gonna double check I feel bad now but I am running on fumes after two hours of talking straight Rebecca I’m sorry Rebecca oh Jesus that
(1:51:12) was bad of me sorry Rebecca anyway so if anyone has any questions um Rebecca or anyone else pop them in the comments below um and I will answer them when I like either before I go on holiday or when I get back um if you would like to get a Blog audit of your own where you also have me analyze all of your internal links and
(1:51:34) your backlinks and go a little bit more in depth into a few posts um then you can do so I will pop a link into the description as well for you guys and yeah if you want to learn how to fix these common issues and like to be honest most blog audits I do have things that I tell you immediately in the SEO roadmap not to do so you could
(1:51:54) just buy the SEO roadmap and learn how to fix all of this and do even more which I think is to be honest I genuinely think that’s the better option so um highly recommend that and yeah I will see you guys soon so I hope this was beneficial um and pop those questions below again this was a free blog audit that was a
(1:52:14) one-off I do not do freebies all the time please do not post below to do me next or like to email me demanding one that is not going to work and yeah just be chill guys be chill so I will see you guys later and I hope you had lots of fun doing this I hope you learned lots and thank you again for helping me reach my first hundred
(1:52:35) thousand dollar month uh maybe we’ll do another one if I hit a 200 000 a month or something okay bye everybody hey everybody Nina popping back in I realized I forgot to tell you you can also get some of these steps written out for you in an easy checklist this is my free content audit checklist that I will
(1:52:54) link in the description of this video so you can grab it for yourself it is not really a checklist it’s a 12-page eBook checklist of every single step I go through to ensure that my blog is the most up-to-date it can possibly be it includes eeat signals it includes updating old content it includes some
(1:53:11) site speed checks all of the things that I covered in this blog audit to some extent um in this little ebook to help you get started if you have not done a Content audit recently if you have not audited your blog in the last year I highly recommend you take some time to do it as I often say you need to spring clean
(1:53:29) your house before you can invite guests over so before you’re gonna have all that new traffic coming in from Google from your SEO optimized posts you need to clean up what’s already existing because you can put on your nicest suit and tie but if you invite some like hot date over and your house is trashed it’s
(1:53:46) not gonna go very well at the very least no index stuff which is kind of the same as like shoving all your stuff under your bed or into a closet so no one can see it so you know it’s there you know you’ve got to deal with it later but it’s in no one else’s way so when you’re in having your like date with Google
(1:54:02) inviting Google over and all of its friends and users I don’t know what kind of dates you guys go on you do you that’s really going to be a lot better they’re going to have room to move around they’re gonna be able to see that like your shiny beautiful house and like you a lot better than your weird hoarder
(1:54:18) dungeon of terrible posts so if that doesn’t sell you on this checklist I don’t know what will again this is 100 free and you will be able to get it down in the description so I hope this helps you guys out and I definitely recommend taking some time even if it means that you’re not publishing new content for a minute to
(1:54:37) fix up what’s not working
Resources
- WebPageTest Tutorial
- My $110k Month Breakdown
- Silo Page Example
- SPEAR Framework for Intros
- Ezoic Review
- Get my free SEO Content Audit Checklist
- Join the SEO Roadmap
- WP Rocket
- ShortPixel
Timestamps
- 0:00 Introduction
- 1:25 Speed Tests
- 9:39 Accessibility
- 14:06 Plugin Audit
- 40:52 Site Architecture and EEAT
- 1:08:29 Homepage Review
- 1:19:19 Opt In Audit
- 1:22:54 Privacy Policy & Disclaimer Review
- 1:24:22 Blog Post Audit
- 1:39:38 Mini Backlink Audit
- 1:47:39 Ad Network Review
- 1:51:24 Conclusion
Want a Blog Audit for Your Blog?
I’m so glad you’re interested! I only open blog audits to my email list for a limited number of spots a few times per year.
You can join my email list to get alerted when I next open my services for a blog audit.
Starting at $1,000.
Join my list and get my free content audit checklist here.
Read More About Travel Blogging!
- What is a Travel Blog: Definition & Examples from a 6-Figure Blogger
- 100+ Best Travel Blogs that Accept Guest Posts
- 60 Best Travel Affiliate Programs for Bloggers
- How to Make Money as a Travel Blogger: 15 Ways I Made $30k
- Travelpayouts Review: 6 Figure Travel Blogger Weighs In
- 19 Best Cameras for Travel Blogging & Vlogging
- Travel Blogging Summit Denver 2022 Review & Key Takeaways
- Basic SEO for Travel Bloggers: 19 SEO Tips to Scale to Full-Time Income
- Best Travel Blogging Courses: Which is Worth Your Money?
- 500+ Travel Blog Names: How to Choose a Unique & Memorable Name in Any Niche
- 69 Travel Blog Statistics You Need to Know
- 50+ Best Facebook Groups for Travel Bloggers to Engage and Grow
- 140+ Engaging Travel Blog Post Ideas for Every Niche
- How I Grew My Travel Blog by 45k Pageviews in 6 Weeks
- Niche Site Deep Dive: A DA 13 Travel Blog on Adthrive?
- Travel Blog Audit: Complete Tutorial To Improve Your Website
- This Travel Blogger Got Into Mediavine in 1 Year
- “How Is This Legal?” Travel Blogger Calls Out Google’s Knowledge Graph
- How This Travel Blog is Winning at SEO Post Helpful Content Update
Like this post? Share it with others!
My 6-Figure SEO Toolkit
🤩 Keysearch – The best and most affordable SEO keyword research tool on the market. Use “sheknowsseo” for 30% off.
🤩 Lyrical Host – The fastest host with the best support. I host all of my websites with Lyrical. Plus they include free stock photos and courses to help you improve your blogging! Get 10% off with code “sheknowsseo”. (Read more)
🤩 Jasper.ai – 10x your content creation with Jasper! Learn more by reading my review or check out my signature Jasper.ai Course for Bloggers to write 100k words a week like me!
🤩 Namesilo – For affordable domain names. Because a blog can’t exist without a domain! Get $1 off with code “nina”.
🤩 WP Rocket – My favourite cache plugin to speed up your site. Get my other top plugins here.
🤩 Interact Quiz – The best way to grow your email list organically is with SEO and a quiz, built by Interact! (Read more)
🤩 RankIQ – Hate finding keywords? Let RankIQ find them for you! Plus get all the LSI keywords you need to rank #1.
🤩 Link Whisper – Internal linking ensures my pages are indexed ASAP and rank higher. I do it instantly with Link Whisper. (Read more)
🤩 ShortPixel – Compress your images with this epic plugin to improve load times.
Want to learn how to grow your blog to 6 figures with SEO? Check out my SEO Roadmap for Travel Bloggers course! It includes all my SEO secrets and strategies that I used to grow my blog to 50k sessions in 6 months and scaled to $30k/mo 7 months later!