1

Dec 1, 2016

Jacquie Lamer

Intro. To Web Publishing

Rachel Noh

Search Engine Optimization

I. Keyword Research - 3 Recommended Keywords (Cr)

1. The 3 keywords/phrases I think will drive the most traffic:

1. Grass Seed

2. Kentucky Bluegrass

3. Types of grass

2. Current ranking of my 3 keywords

Ranking of Recommended Keywords on NaturesFinestSeed.com

Keyword Google Bing Yahoo!

Grass seed 20 no no

Kentucky Bluegrass 16 no no

Types of grass 25 no no

Ranking of Recommended Keywords on HomeDepot.com

Keywords Google Bing Yahoo!

Grass seed 1 2 no

Kentucky Bluegrass 11 18 18

Types of grass 10 no no

2

According to Mikes-Marketing-Tools.com, NatureFinestSeed is ranked 20 and 16 with

each “Grass seed” and “Kentucky bluegrass” keywords on Google SERP. For “Types of grass” I

used Smallseotools.com because Mikes-Marketing-Tools.com only show “error” or “no”. The

screenshots below from Smallseotools.com based on Nov 21st, 2016 show Google search engine

result ranks of each keyword for two Websites.

3. Explanation of my choices:

1. Grass seed:

This is the keyword focus given to me by the client. My research on “Grass seed”

leads me to believe that this keyword will drive traffic. Google Trends graph shows that

interest in “Grass seed” has steadily increased over the time especially during the summer

season.

Ranking of “Grass seed” on NaturesFinestSeed.com is placed on the second page of

Google’s SERP, meanwhile, the ranking on Homedepot.com is within top 3 on Google’s

SERP. NaturesFinestSeed is in the business of grass seed. The primary goal for

NatureFinestSeed is to drive more traffic to their website and sell their products.

Figure 1 Google SER ranking for naturesfinestseed.com Figure 2 Google SER ranking for homedepot.com

3

According to Google Keyword Planner, “Grass seed” has a high competition level

and searched average 10k-100k times a month. It might be hard to be within top 3 on SERPs,

but even placing on the first page of SERP will increase traffic to NaturesFienstSeed.com.

2. Kentucky bluegrass:

From studying the website and Google Trends, I determined “Kentucky bluegrass”

will drive traffic into NaturesFinestSeed.com. The graph below shows that the gap between

highest point and lowest point is smaller than “Grass seed” graph meaning “Kentucky

bluegrass” gets slightly less influenced by season. As “Grass seed” keyword, by looking at

the “Kentucky bluegrass” graph from Google Trends, it is shown that it increases each year.

According to Google Keyword Planner, “Kentucky bluegrass” has a medium

competition and searched average 10K – 100K times a month. Compared to other types of

grass name, it is searched more often. Also, NaturesFinestSeed provides many different

Kentucky bluegrass types. Users search the name of grass type when they actually want to

buy seeds. I believe this keyword can target their niche market and drive traffic to the

product category page.

3. Types of grass:

4

I chose “Types of grass” key phrase because this also is keep increasing throughout

the years according to Google Trends. Each keyword has its seasonal ups and downs, but the

overall trend is going up. Even though, NaturesFinestSeed has specialized in different types

of grass etc. and offer information, the ranking of “Types of grass” on

NaturesFinestSeed.com is 26 on Google SERP which means it could be on the third page

where people hardly care about except first search result page. According to Google

Keyword Planner, “Types of grass” is searched 10k-100k times a month but lucky has low

competition. It would be easier to go up to top 3 results on Google SERP.

Also, I think people search this key phrase before they decide what type of grass they

want to get some information and then purchase. By increase awareness of

NaturesFinestSeed to users, it is likely to improve profits.

II. Current Traffic

NaturesFinestSeed.com Monthly Unique Visitors: 2.80K.

HomeDepot.com Monthly Unique Visitors: 118.30M

Analysis: Based on SimilarWeb.com, the unique visitor of NaturesFienstSeed.com, tends to

decrease due to the weather is getting cold and it increase during the summer time.

However, the unique visitor of Homedepot.com is steady because they offer more products

besides grass seeds. It also slightly decreases during the winter.

Figure 3 NaturesFinestSeed.com monthly unique visitor graph Figure 4 Homedepot.com monthly unique visitor graph

5

II. Content Analysis (Cq, Cw, Vt)

NatureFinestSeed.com Score: 6/10

HomeDepot.com Score: 9/10

Analysis: According to readability score.com, the readability score of Nature’s Finest

Seed is 71.2 which means it has a 7th-grade reading level based on Flesch-Kincaid Grade

Level Formula. Overall, Nature’s seed category page is fairly easy to read.

Home Depot, of course, has a better score of 101. This is actually excess the

standard score of Flesch-Kincaid Score range (0-100 scale). I think this means that the

grass seed page on Home Depot is very easy to read and easily understood by an average

11year-old student. I believe it is because the category-level page doesn’t have much

information except products’ name.

Figure 5 NaturesFinestSeed category page score Figure 6 Home Depot category page score

Figure 7 NaturesFinestSeed product page score Figure 8 Home Depot product page score

6

Therefore, I run score test on a product level page for each site. The content on

the product-level page on Nature’s Seed is 48.2 which means fairly difficult to read while

Home Depot’s score is 66.1, easily understood by the 13-year-old student.

Above screenshot shows how many syllables they have in one sentence.

NaturesFinestSeed.com has 6 of sentences that have more than 20 syllables and 4 of

sentences have more than 30 syllables in a sentence. The text is considered to be hard to

read if the sentence has too many syllables or words in a sentence.

According to plagspotter.com, 0% of their content matched other websites content

which means their content is very “unique.” Google send users to the website where has

“unique” information that they can’t find somewhere else.

Figure 9 NaturesFinestSeed.com text quality Figure 10 Homedepot.com text quality

7

I also used Microsoft Word to check typos or grammar error. I figured that there are no

typos and well written besides there are some long sentences. Overall, Nature’s Seed contents are

well written. For example, they are using conversational descriptions to explain what the

advantage of the seed is.

Recommendation for improvements: To make the website better, firstly, I recommend more

explanation of figures. Now, Nature’s Seed has suns or water icon to explain how much this

grass required those. However, it seems to be vague to understand. I recommend putting

additional alternative texts for the icons.

Secondly, Nature’s Seed also can add the review, rating and comment section on the

product page. It will also keep the content “fresh.” One of Google’s algorithm called “ZipLock”

prefer to send traffic to the website has fresh newly and up-to-date content. I will discuss the

rating, review and comment more detail on next topic, the engaging content section.

I recommend adding more images or a video of a progress of growing grass. Now, each

product only has 3 pictures. They should provide a picture of seeds, the whole view, close-up of

grass after the grass dies etc. For example, Scotts.com has a video link of how to the product.

This will make users more likely to share their information to social media and it will drive more

traffic to the website. Below screenshot is an example of the product page from Scotts.com.

Figure 10 A product description example.

Figure 11 an example of the product information

8

Lastly, I recommend use subheadings and bullet points for content to let users scan the

content easily and quickly. They can increase the readability score by breaking the content down

and making sentences shorter. The scotts.com has bullet points of overview and then more detail

information on the bottom on the product page.

IV. Trust

1. Authority (Ta)

NatureFinestSeed.com Score: 5/10

HomeDepot.com Score: 9/10

Analysis:

According to Moz Open Site Explorer, the authority score of Nature’s Seed is 33

out of 100 comparing to Home Depot’s is 89 out of 100. According to

Whois.domaintools.com, NaturesFinestSeed.com created on Jan. 29, 2011 (about 6 years

ago) and it will expire in 2 months from now. On the other hand, Homedepot.com created

Aug. 4, 1992, means it has existed for about 24 years and will expire in 2022. If that

website has existed longer and will exist longer, Google considers that the website is

Figure 12 The video example form Scotts.com

9

more reliable, and send traffic to that website, but doesn’t send traffic to the website

might not be remaining in the business anytime soon.

I couldn’t find whether the contents on Nature’s Seed is written by experts in the

field. From “About”, it says Don Bermant is the owner of Nature’s Seed. However, there

is no information if he is an expert in the field. Under “Quality from the Source” content,

it states “we use an extensive network of trusted wildland seed collectors and growers

built over decades of experience. […] As for our turfgrass seed, we only stock varieties

that have been top-rated by the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program (NTEP).” Also,

it shows Nature’s Seed has been featured on Fox10 Phoenix, KSL TV, KPBS etc. Those

press coverage would increase the authority score for Google.

Most of their blog posts are written by Skylar Christensen or Alex Grover.

However, I couldn’t find if they are experts. On the blog page, it only states “Learn from

out experts and explore new ideas on Nature’s Seed Blog.” By this statement, I can

assume that they are experts in the field.

On the product page, they mention “Over twenty years of hands-on experience,

research and customer feedback has gone into developing this seed mix.” It seems that

they have been researching seeds with customers’ feedback. Overall, Nature’s Seed

shows that they are the expert in the field at insightful information, however, there is no

resource or citation information that users can see in one glance.

2. Engaging Content (Te)

NatureFinestSeed.com Score: 6/10

HomeDepot.com Score: 9/10

Site

Bounce

Rate

Page

views/

visitor

Daily Time

on site

Product-level

share tools

Product-

level

ratings

Product-

level

Reviews

Nature’s Seed 29.67% 3.83 2:27 No No No

Home Depot 37.41% 5.85 4:50 Yes Yes Yes

10

Analysis:

According to similarweb.com, Nature’s Seed bounce rate is about 30%.

Compared to Homedepot.com, it is not bad. Moreover, the average bounce rate for the e-

commerce website is 57% in 2015, while the best companies performed at 35%

(compass.co.) But the number of page views and time on site is low. Even though the

NaturesFinsetseed.com bounce rate low, the website doesn’t have various tools such as

sharing tools, products rating, and reviews to

make users stay longer on the website or pages.

Nature’s Seed website has share tools on the

bottom of blog pages but not on the product-

level pages.

NaturesFinestSeed.com has the

testimonial page where customers can leave the

review about their products. The customers

write about the experiences with planting the

grass and what it looks like in process on the

testimonial page. However, users can’t find the

review on the products page where people

make a purchase. People tend to want to get as

much as information before they buy the

products.

Recommendation for improvements to Trust:

The website should be trusted enough to put credit card number to the users. Firstly, I

recommend extending the domain ownership of NaturesFinestSeed before a “drop-catcher” buy

its domain.

The second recommendation to improve the trust of the NaturesFienstSeed.com is to add

resource citations for each content. There is some information that their content is from experts

but they should make this more readable for Google by linking the study materials and adding

the writers’ biography on the website.

Figure 13 the example of social media sharing tool on blog page from the Nature’s Seed

11

The last recommendation for authority is to add links to their press coverage (above

screenshot) to news websites for Google and users. Google is favoring in the websites that are

featured in the press as showing its reputation. Especially, if they can put their links to the news

in Fox10, it will be significant impact on SEO. Therefore, firstly, the Nature’s Seed need to make

the press icon clickable to their articles and then also get linking to their website, too, if that is

available.

To improve engaging content, the website should give the reason users to stay longer on

the website. First, the NaturesFinestSeed.com should add sharing tools on the product pages. It

will be more likely to increase traffic from social media. I will discuss about sharing tools later

on “Social Analysis” section on the paper. Additionally, I recommend adding customer review

which is they already have named as testimonial and ratings on the product pages. Review and

testimonials are the best way to show website’s authority for both Google and the customers.

This will increase the spend time on website because users would read or write the reviews and

ratings.

Homedepot.com has a customer reviews/images and rating section. Not only there is

reviews and rating also users can filter to see reviews by terms such as profile, gender, age etc.

They also provide customers’ frequently asks and answers about products on the product-level

page.

Homedepot.com offers customers the various way to give their experience on the

website. People can rate, write comments, upload images and recommend the product. As they

let consumers upload pictures of their garden, other users can be satisfied with the website and it

will make NaturesFiensetSeed.com content more engaging.

Figure 14 The press coverage information of the Nature’s Seed

12

Also, I recommend adding sorting tools and comparing tools on the category page even

though Nature’s Seed doesn’t have products as many as homedepot.com has. To accomplish this

recommendation, Nature’s Seed should modify the category-level page. Frist of all, they should

combine “type of grass seed” page and “categories” page which are both considered as the

category-level page and make Google and users confused. Then, make users can see all of the

products on one page and then by adding sorting and comparing tools, users can filter the

products by region, ornamental grasses, types of grass seed, and Micro-clover. The below

screenshot is an example of Homedepot.com category-level page. They have all products on one

page and have sorting tools on the left side. On the sidebar, users can sort products by price,

region, types, exposure, water tolerance, etc. Also, there is a comparing button on the each

product. The below picture is an recommendation example of the category-level page for

Nature’s Seed.

Figure 15 The reviews and rating example on Homedepot.com

13

14

Another tool I would recommend is a “specific recommendation tool.” When a user put

their address or select the location on the map, the website filters the products based on the

weather of the location such as sun exposure length a day, a precipitation rate, humidity, wind,

and temperature, also when is the expectation date to plant the seed. This will help users who are

not sure about their local weather compare to other locations. To operate this tool, Nature’s Seed

will need a data-based algorithm.

V. Architecture (As, Au, Am)

1. Speed (As)

NatureFinestSeed.com Score: 7 /10

HomeDepot.com Score: 6/10

Explanation:

First View Loading Time

Nature’s Finest Seed - Home Page 4.422s

Nature’s Finest Seed – Types of Grass Seed Page 7.516s

Home Depot - Home Page 5.258s

Home Depot - Grass Seed Category Page 7.825s

The above loading time is from Webpagetest.org based on Nebraska using

Chrome browser with a cable connection. Even though NaturesFinestSeed.com has less

information/date, the speed is similar to Homedepot.com which has much products/data.

The Waterfall of Nature’ Seed category page and the pie chart below show what files are

taking up the most space and slowing down the load time on the website. As shown in the

chart a majority of the speed is being taken up by JavaScripts and images.

Figure 18 An example of a “specific recommendation tool.”

Figure 19 the Waterfall chart of NaturesFinestSeed.com – 404 error

15

I also found that one of their JavaScript files errs (the picture above). “404 error”

means the server could not find the page. Also, this file takes almost 5 seconds meaning

by it slows the website speed.

The pie chart shows JavaScript request most

space.

According to Google PageSpeed Insights, The speed score for Nature’s Seed

category page is 26/100 on the desktop while Homedepot’s is 40/100. Similarly,

Homedepot.com also has the same issue with image files and JavaScript to fix.

Recommendation for improvements:

In terms of Google PageSpeed Insights information of Nature’s Seed category

page, they should optimize images by properly formatting and compressing them to save

bytes of data. The biggest images are “Kentucky bluegrass”, “Fescues”, “Bahia”,

“Bermudagrass”, “Perennial Ryegrass”, “Zoysia”, “Buffalograss, etc. on the category

page. Those images should be compressed because they are also used on the product

page.

I also recommend to load the content of above-the-fold first and remove tje

unnecessary files in the above the fold. Nature’s Seed can use the “lazy-loading” as well

on the category page which means only loading bottom content when user scroll down

the page to see more information.

Nature’s Seed also needs to fix the leverage browser caching. Google PageSpeed

Tools suggests “setting an expiry date or a maximum age in the HTTP headers for static

resources instructs the browser to load previously downloaded resources from local disk

rather than over the network.”

Figure 17 Pie chart of requests of the Nature’s Seed category page

16

Also, Nature’s Seed category page has 31 blocking script resources and 7

blocking CSS resources that cause a delay in rendering the page. They could get by with

fixing render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content, reduce response

time, and by minifying CSS.

2. URLs (Au)

NatureFinestSeed.com Score: 8/10

HomeDepot.com Score: 5/10

Current URLs:

Nature’s Seed URL for Category Page: naturesfinestseed.com/lawn-grass-seed-types

Nature’s Seed URL for Product-Level page of Kentucky bluegrass seed:

naturesfinestseed.com/kentucky-bluegrass/kentucky-bluegrass-seed-blue-ribbon-blend

Homedepot.com URL for Category Page: homedepot.com/b/Outdoors-Garden-Center-Lawn-

Care-Grass-Seed/N-5yc1vZbx62

Homedepot.com URL for Product-Level page for Annual Ryegrass Seed:

homedepot.com/p/Pennington-50-lb-Annual-Ryegrass-Grass-Seed-100333280/100333280

Recommended new URLs:

Nature’s Seed URL for Category Page: naturefinestseed.com/grass-seed-types

Homedepot.com URL for Category Page: homedepot.com/garden-care/grass-seed

Explanation

The Nature’s Seed’s URL for category page is not too bad, now. According to Google

SEO Starter Guide, the URLs should be simple to understand that allows convey content

information easily. Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on the

website can lead to better crawling of contents by searching engines. “If your URL contains

relevant words, this provides users and search engines with more information about the page

than an ID or oddly named parameter would.” However, Homedepot URL for category page

contains oddly named parameter and numbers that make users and Google confused. Firstly, they

should get rid of “b” and simplify the directory structure by using “garden-care” instead of

“Outdoors-Garden-Center-Lawn-Care-Grass-Seed.” Also, “N-5yc1vZbx62” doesn’t mean

anything to users and Google. URLs should be relevant to the website’s content by using

keywords. The structure is friendlier for users navigating the site.

17

3. Mobile (Am)

NatureFinestSeed.com Score: 8/10

HomeDepot.com Score: 8/10

Explanation:

Overall, NaturesFiensetSeed.com is mobile-compatible so does Homedepot.com.

Nature’s Seed use same URLs on mobile not “m.naturesfiensseed.com” which means

they have a “responsive website.” Homedepot.com has a mobile website separately.

They use “m.homedepot.com”

Both websites use a Hamburger main menu on mobile but remove a sub drop-

down menus. For example, when I clicked the main navigation menu on Nature’s Seed, I

only able to see “Lawn grass seed”, “wildflower seed,” etc. not “Lawn grass seed types”

menu.

Figure 19 Mobile version of website Figure 18 Desktop version of website

18

Their content on mobile is more readable than on the desktop but same information. The

contents have been broken down well, have a good margin, subheadings and the page-loading

time is faster than on the desktop.

Recommendation for improvements

I recommend them to use smaller pictures for the mobile website. It will increase a

loading speed also save up some space since the mobile screen has limited space. I found that

users have to click so many navigation tabs to actually get to the product page. Also, most of the

users come to the website from the back-door through social media. That means users might lose

there they are when they landed on the website. I recommend adding directory fold names on

time of the product page. I made an example below.

VI. HTML: Current Keyword Location Analysis (Ht, Hd)

1. Title tags (Ht)

Current tags:

Nature’s Seed Product-Category Page: <title>Types of Grass Seed | Nature's Seed</title>

Nature’s Seed Product-Level page of Kentucky bluegrass Seed: <title>Kentucky Bluegrass

Seed: Blue Ribbon Blend | Nature's Seed</title>

19

Homedepot.com Product-Category Page: <title>Grass Seed - Lawn Care - Garden Center -

&nbsp;The Home Depot</title>

Homedepot.com Product-Level page for Annual Ryegrass Seed: <title>Pennington 50 lb.

Annual Ryegrass Grass Seed-100333280 - The Home Depot</title>

Recommended new title tags:

Nature’s Seed Product-Category Page: <title>Types of Grass Seed | Nature's Seed</title>

Nature’s Seed Product-Level page of Kentucky bluegrass Seed: <title>Kentucky Bluegrass

Seed: Blue Ribbon Blend | Nature's Seed</title>

Explanation: I would not change their title tags since they are already simple, contain keywords

and describe the page’s content. The title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of

a particular page is. Title tags are displayed as bolded in the first line of the SERPs. Google SEO

Starter Guide suggests describing accurately the page’s content but brief. The category page’s

title tag is shown “Types of Grass Seed | Nature's Seed” on the SERPs.

I would rather recommend Homedepot.com to change their title tags to be briefer and try

to avoid numbers in them. Their title tags are too long and seem like using same meaning words

many times. Also, their product level page title tags have numbers that don't mean anything to

both users and Google.

2. Description meta tag (Hd)

Current meta tags:

NaturesFinestSeed.com Product Category Page: <meta name="description"

content=”Nature's Seed is a top seller of North America’s best grass seed for lawn, pasture and

wildflower seed solutions."/>

20

NaturesFinestSeed.com Product-Level page of Kentucky bluegrass Seed: <meta

name="description" content="Nature's Finest Seed provides the best Kentucky bluegrass seed for

a fast-growing lawn with a beautiful color and texture."/>

Homedepot.com Product Category Page: <meta name="description" content=“Shop our

selection of Grass Seed in the Outdoors Department at The Home Depot.”

Homedepot.com Product-Level page for Annual Ryegrass Seed: <meta name="description"

content =“Pennington Seed Annual Ryegrass Grass Seed is designed for temporary or seasonal

lawns. Convenient to maintain and long lasting usage.”

Recommended new meta tags:

NaturesFinestSeed.com Product Category Page: <meta name=“description”

content=“Nature’s Seed is the best seller of America for lawn grass seed, pasture and wildflower.

We have different types of grass seed and guarantee the best quality. Kentucky Bluegrass Seed.

Perennial Ryegrass Seed. Fescue Grass Seed. Bahia Grass. Bermudagrass Seed. Buffalograss

Seed. Zoysia Grass Seed. Free shipping.”/>

NaturesFinestSeed.com Product-Level page of Kentucky bluegrass Seed: <meta

name=“description” content=“Nature's Finest Seed provides the best grass seed - Kentucky

bluegrass seed for a fast-growing lawn with a beautiful color and texture. Free shipping.”/>

Explanation:

The meta description tags are important because title tags and meta tags appear at SERP

and also social media when people shared the page. A page’s description meta tags give Google

a summary of what the page is about with two or a short paragraph. Google will analyze either

too short, long, or duplicated too many times. Meta tags are important because Google uses

them as snippets for the web pages. When people searched keywords, read the title and

description and decide whether they will click the page or not. Also, it should be “unique”

descriptions for each page.

21

Figure 19 Current description on SERPs for category-level page

Figure 20 Title tag and a description meta tag in HTML

However, I found that the description meta tag and the description of the category page

displayed on Google SERP are different. In HTML for the “Type of Grass Seed” page, the

description is “Nature's Seed is a top seller of North America’s best grass seed for lawn, pasture,

and wildflower seed solutions.” However, when I searched the description meta tag for category

page on Google, none of the result are linked to Nature’s Seed website.

Right now, their description for the category page is a list of their products and several

times of “view products.” Using the same word that doesn’t mean anything seems to waste space

in the description. Nevertheless, providing different types of grass seed which is the keywords to

be searched will help the page rank higher. According to Isca (2016), you should keep the

description to 155 characters or less. Also, it should I suggest a new description meta tag for the

category-level page to include “free shipping” and names of grass seed so that it contains all of

thekeywords also “FREE” word that draws users’ attention. Isca also mentioned that

incorporating a Call-to-Action or offer at the end of the meta description is a great way to boost

click-through rates from the competition. I believe placing “free shipping” at the end of the

description will help to increase the click rate. The below screenshot is an example of new

description tag on SERP.

22

3. IMG names and ALT text

Current Image Tag Details:

1)

Image file name= primary-logo.png

Alt text= “Nature’s Seed Logo”

2) Image file name= shipping.png

Alt text= “Nature’s Seed Free Shipping”

3) Image file name= lawn_1.jpg

Alt text= N/A - because it is CSS

Recommendations for improvement to this image:

1) Image file name=

naturesfinestseed_logo.png

Alt text = “Nature’s Seed Logo”

2) Image file name= freeshipping.png

Alt text= “Nature’s Seed Free Shipping”

3) Remove the lawn image

Explanation: The filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image. Also,

Google use alt text to help determine the best image to return for a user’s query and furthermore

help users with the disability. Three of images that I chose are important because they are above-

the-fold and appear on every page on the website. Nature’s Seed already have decent image file

names and alt texts for three of them. Google webmaster recommend to provide useful

information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately for alt texts but avoid “stuffing” that

results in a negative user experience and may cause the site to be perceived as spam. I just

recommend to change them slightly by adding “naturesfinestseed” of “free” in each first and

23

second image name. However, I recommend removing the lawn picture because it takes a lot of

space on every page on the website. The lawn image is not important enough, and also according

to my analysis of speed this image slow down the loading time.

I also found images without alt texts on the category page from varvy.com. All of the

product images in the category page don’t have an alt text. I highly recommend them to add alt

texts for each image since it also improves SEO with product name keywords.

VII. Links (Ln, Lq)

a. Link Number (Ln)

NaturesFinestSeed.com No. of Referring Domains: 828

HomeDepot.com No. of Referring Domains: 78,924

b. Link Quality (Lq)

NaturesFinestSeed.com Link Quality: 2/10

HomeDepot.com Link Quality: 10/10

Explanation:

# Referring

Domains

# External

Links

# .Gov

Backlinks

# .Edu

Backlinks

Nature’s Finest

Seed 828 5,154 0 1

Home Depot 78,924 6,039,357 1,128 1,382

24

The Number of referring domains and backlinks is also related to authority of the

website. The Homedepot.com has a lot more referring domains, external links and better quality

of backlinks from gov. and edu. Google care about links to your websites in two ways. First,

Google considers the number and quality of links to rank on the SERP. Google wants to send

traffic to the website has gotten the links from .gov or .edu, the top-level domain which is

restricted. Nature’s Finest has zero .gov backlinks and only one .edu backlinks.

However, according to Google SEO Starter Guide, increasing backlinks with an intention

to increase the value of the site could harm the reputation of the website. (Violation of V) that is

considered an “off-the-page” factor that cannot be controlled by the site developer.

According to majestic.com, websites backlinking Nature’s Finest include:

Upon clicking some of these sites, I

found that most of them are blog post or

articles written by unprofessional or the

member of the Nature’s Seed for

promotion. Like SEO rapper said, “Link

quality is more valued than link quantity.”

VIII. Social Analysis

Social Signals: Sharing (Ss):

NaturesFinestSeed.com score: 3/10

HomeDepot.com Link Quality: 8/10

25

Current Share tools:

- Nature’s Seed Blog page.

- Homedepot product page

Recommended improved share tools: Infographic page

26

Recommended improved share tools – Product-level page

Explanation: As I mentioned earlier about sharing tools, Nature’s Seed doesn’t have sharing

tools on product pages but blog. To increase the traffic, they should have sharing tools for the

products. Google SEO Guide said, “Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it

easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.”

Homedepot.com has a share tool on the product-level page. However, they only offer

Facebook, Pinterest, email and print-out option. They should offer more sharing options for

users.

For Nature’s Seed, to get more attention from users, the icons should have color and be

right under the product name where gets more users’ eyes. I also recommend adding share tools

on other resource pages. Even though Nature’s Seed has good information such as infographics,

guides and blog posts that can be shared, they don’t have sharing tools except on the blog post.

27

IX. Priority Recommendations

I suggested some recommendations for the quickest and biggest impact for

NaturesFinestSeed.com. Content, Architecture, and HTML are the elements in the direct control

of the publisher, meanwhile, Trust, Links, Personal and Social are the elements influenced by

users and publishers. I suggest fixing each element regard the score of each factor, easiness,

controllable and the relative weight. You should fix any violation factors first before the website

kick out of Google’s SERPS. NaturesFinestSeed.com have no violation factor committing now,

so it’s not a priority.

According to the Periodic Table, by priority HTML (title tags and description tags) and

Content (quality and research) are the most weighted values that need to fix to impact the site’s

SEO ranking. By easiness, title tags and description meta tags are the easiest elements to fix right

away than content elements. Them Architecture (speed, Mobile, and URLs) is controllable and

the second important factors.

In Off-The-Page factors, the link quality has the lowest score on Nature’s Seed. I believe

they have a possible to fix this element by getting links to their pages from press websites. Even

though Nature’s Seed has a low score for links quantity and social share, the trust (authority and

engaging content) has more weight/important so they are needed to be fixed first over Social

Share and Link Number. The below is the summary of the order of factors to be fixed.

On-The-Page Factors

Off-The-Page Factors