Site Review Blog

Most webmasters are on the prowl for the next tidbit of info that will push their site to the 1st page of the SERPS.  Now, the SEO Haiku blog might not have that tip, but it is an interesting blog on SEO-related issues.  They comment on a variety of current SEO-related issues that are of interest to most webmasters.

Anyone who has looked up Haiku will know that it is a 5-7-5 format of poetry that originated in Japan.  Now, apart from some great SEO commentary, I was expecting to find a little bit of Haiku on the site.  I only found one in their header -

Discover Secrets
To Optimizing Your site
Through ways of Haiku

Now, while it is reasonably clever - 1 is never enough!  So, I have made my own attempt -

Referers from Search
Google, Yahoo, M.S.N
S.E.O. Success

Ok, as much fun as that was, lets take a bit of a closer look at the site.  A nice header, the usual static pages, typical blog navigation of latest articles and archives are easily found.  The content of the posts is reasonably closely aligned to what are the current “hot SEO Topics” on the Webmaster Forums.  The Blogger reviews the issue, and either makes a comment or poses a question about the topic.  It gets you thinking a bit about the subject of the post.

While there is not a post everyday, SEO Haiku generally gets updated about once a week, so in your overall blog -reading, it won’t take a lot of time to stay up to date with what is going on.  Reading it won’t make you a SEO professional overnight, but it will give you additional things to think about that might improve your results.

Visit www.seohaiku.com/blog/

And when you thought that the bargains were just in the $2 shops along comes an Online Discount Mart to change your Ideas on shopping for home and Garden accessories. The Online discount store has a range similar to what you might find in a Discount Homewares/Garden store in your town, with the usual conveniences of shopping online 24/7.

Like other online stores we have reviewed in the past, the Online discount Mart provides s Toll-free Telephone number, a contact form and a physical address. It is always a good thing to have the assurance of several methods of contacting the person behind the website. The site itself is focussed on being a shopping cart - you browse the catalogue, add items to your cart and once you have finished, check out and pay for your goods. The FAQ tells us that they ship to the 50 states using Ground service, so you will have your order in about a week.

The site offers a bit more than just a catalogue where you can purchase your goods from - it also has an articles section. The articles are fairly closely aligned with the type of goods in their catalogue. There is a heap of gardening and home decorating Ideas to be found.

Visit www.onlinediscountmart.com

Looking for an Ipod, Plasma TV or even a Car or motorbike for only a few $? Yes, you could bid on one of the above Items and purchase it for a few measly $. At the moment, the site is in Beta testing, and during this time you have the chance to put a bid in to Win an Ipod each week. Last weeks winner only paid $1.35 for a Brand new Ipod shuffle! But the best part of this is that during the Beta testing, there is no cost to participate and place a bid!

BassaBids is an online Auction site with a difference - It is a reverse Auction, where the Lowest unique bid wins. Once it gets out of Beta, you will simply pay a small amount to place a bid, and the winner will simply pay their bid amount. In order to bid, you only need an email address and a Paypal account. They are also planning on offering SMS bidding in the future.

Don’t understand what this is all about then take a look at their Reverse Auction instructions page - it is very clearly shown with a description and a picture.

The website is quite clan and easy to us - the front page has the list of current Auctions, the how it works, about and My account pages are all easy to find and easy to use. Anyway, there is 3 days left on the current Auction, so I am off to put in a bid to try and win an IPod!

visit www.bassabids.com

… Cheetah Find. Cheetah Find is a Web Directory. Yes, we have reviewed a few other directories in the past, and at a first glance the Cheetah directory is not that different from most other directories. It has categories and sub-categories, it offres free and paid submissions. It has a reasonable number of links in it -like you would expect.

Ok, I’ll cut to the chase - the focus of this directory is free stuff.  On the main page of the site, the Free Categories are the ones that are featured, and all other categories are “almost hidden”  in a small box - and a small font for the links!  With Frebies from graphics, hit counters and web templates there is a pretty good collection of freebies that most webmasters wopuld find useful.  Then when looking again, the site has a nav bar right at the top that links to the Web Directory and all of the other Freebies.

To start with, I had trouble identifying the directory script that runs this directory, but after carefully looking around I finally guessed it was using phpLD.  Now, what made it so hard was the fact that the site looks like no other directory I have ever seen.  Next to every category, there is a little graphic that is in some way representative of the category.  The visual appeal of the main categories page is just soo much better than any other directory I have looked at.  I really wish that everyone who used a common script took the time and effort to actually make it look different rather than being just a clone (or nearly) of the default template that comes with the script.

visit www.cheetahfind.com

I bet you have seen all of the TV offers for various household products. Yes, I thought so. If you are like me, you think that sometimes some of these products may be useful but they always seem to be pretty expensive for what you get. Well the good news is that it doesn’t have to be. At TV Products 4 Less you can browse their online store and purchase most of what you see on TV for a lot less!

The site is of course an online shopping mall and their product lines are quite varied. Like all good online stores, they provide offline contact information in the form of a Toll-free number. I always say if you are purchasing from someone online for the first time you should pick up the phone and talk to someone. It can give you the confidence to know you are dealing with a real person!  They also have an online contact form as well.

The Home page has several items that are from several categories. What I like about the TV Products 4 Less online store is that they show you the TV price, and also their online price - and how much you save by shopping online. I guess that the TV ads cost a lot of money and that is why the TV prices are soo high.

When shopping online you want to be able to pay for your purchases in an easy way - they offer the convenience of Credit cards and Paypal to pay for your purchases.

Visit  www.tvproducts4less.com

You sometimes hear of all the weird stuff that goes on in the world, but  for all the things that just make you say “WTF!” you just need to dig a little deeper.  All the WTF stuff can be found in the one place.  Now, we don’t need to mention what the letters stand for now do we - you are smart I am sure you can work it out!

The site, if you have not worked it out, is a News site with a difference - it is all the really weird stuff that you would never beleive that people actually do!  The site itself is blog-styled, which is perfect for news articles that are presented.  As a Blog, it has all the usual things you expect to find, such as archives and categories of previous posts.  You can comment on various posts as well.  The only thing I would have liked to see on this site would have been somewhere to submit or suggest stories.

WTF Stuff grabs various newsfeeds from media sites, provide a snippet of the article and add value or a twist with their own commentary.  They don’t simply grab the syndicated content - they add it it as well.  I like what they are doing - grabbing ony items that make you sit back and say WTF!

When you are bored at work, take a look at the site, tell your work collegues about it and you can all enjoy reading about the weird and not so wonderful.

Visit www.wtfstuff.com

Sisters are doin’ it for themselves - it is not a Spice Grils song, but a philosophy for a lot of Girls.  The typical jokes about men never asking for directions is what Rustic Girls is all about - they have a whole lot of articles with useful info so that Girls CAN do it for themselves!

The website is what I would call Rustic - as it has that distinctive 1999 look and feel to it.  It is very minimilaistic.  Now, this is not a bad thing in this case - as what the site is all about is providing useful and quality content.  As the content is useful, then the desgin can be olde worlde and you still have a useful site.  It could do with a little bit of work on the navigation to make the site easier to use - but what site couldn’t do with further additions and improvements?

The Articles are mostly about DIY & Home Improvement and are written is a way that is easy to read and understand.  They cover such broad areas such as Inside your home, Outside your home and Yard & Garden.   I am telling you, that even though the target Audience for the Articles are Women, there is a lot of uselful info for the handyman as well (only if he would bother to read the instructions). 

A random article from the front page - I selected Solar power for home and Garden.  The article was about 2 screens long for me and broken up into paragraphs with Bold headings.   The info was all relevent to the topic, presented in a way that is easy to read on-screen and would probably print out just fine as well.  The default text size is a good size - not real small like some sites.  All of the articles are of a similar format except where a topic contains a lot of info.  in these cases, they are broken up into more than 1 page which does make it easier to sit down and actually read.

As we said, the main focus are the DIY Articles and info, but on the homepage of the site there are also other general lifestyle/home hints type of info.  So, go on Girls, read up and you might just surprise yourself to find out how easy some of this stuff is!

Visit www.rusticgirls.com