The problem with website graders
February 17, 2009 – 12:43 pm by Hugo GuzmanThis past week, I was given a somewhat unusual assignment. One of my clients asked me to advise him on the best website grader tool - you know, the ones that tout their ability to grade your site for SEO friendliness - so that they could use it as a baseline for a new SEO program that we’re about to launch for a new site.
Disclaimer: No, the client is not completely clueless. They are actually very intelligent and analytical marketers and are therefore aware that this is not the end all, be all in terms of benchmarking their site’s performance in terms of natural search. Their explanation was that their legal department needed something tangible and objective to hold us accountable for “fixing” on-site SEO elements.
Now I must admit that here at Zeta, we really don’t use any of these online grading tools. Typically, when a client needs a benchmark, we use our own proprietary report that covers site-side elements, offsite/link-building elements, social media, and analytics. We feel this report is much more comprehensive than these online tools, delving into specifics where most of these tools only scratch the surface, and delivering specific commentary and recommendations for each line item.
In any case, the client in question was definitely down with our proprietary report but also wanted at least one of these third-party online tools, preferrably with some sort of number grade they could use as a general measuring stick internally.
The first thing I did was ask my team to dig around and give me their recommendations in terms of what they thought was the best tool out there, and it really came down to two of them:
Website grader is a free tool that delves mostly into site-side factors. When I pulled a report on Saturday, it said that the reason they didn’t pull inbound link data was due to a bug they were working on, but even then, it didn’t seem like they delved very deeply into the inbound link universe. There was a very light treatment of social media, but it was nothing to write home about. Still, it did provide a number grade, so that made it worthwhile in some sense.
SEO Automatic does offer a free report, but the meatier version costs $20 per report. It gets into a bit more detail in terms of commentary and recommendations for individual site-side elements, but like Website Grader, it left inbound links completely out of the equation. I will say the owner and creator of this tool, Scott Hendison, was very responsive and cordial. He was easily accessible via his contact form and via twitter. I had a few issues with my paid credits and he resolved them quickly and professionally.
Note: Jim Boykin offers a bevy of tools, including measurements relating to inbound links, both on his main site and on his dedicated tools site; Internet Marketing Ninjas (FYI - I would drop the keyword density tool…that’s an archaic relic of old school SEO). Aaron Wall also has some solid online tools as well as an SEO toolbar over at SEO Book.
In the end, I felt compelled to tell our client that while both of these tools had some semblance of usefulness, they and all others fall way short of being comprehensive assessments of a site’s SEO health. While there are some great tools out there, for everything from assessing server-side optimization to checking for duplicate content none of these can substitute for human evaluation, analysis, and recommendations.
Moreover, without the experience and professionalism needed to work with clients to actually implement those recommendations, any meaningful insights rendered by these tools become completely moot. That said, if you feel obligated to go the website grader route, I hope that this post helped you out in some way.
P.S. I encourage readers to leave comments regarding other website graders that are perhaps stronger or more comprehensive than the ones listed here. We’re always open to new ideas and suggestions!
22 Responses to “The problem with website graders”
Website Grader certainly isn’t of much use to we in the SEO field, but I do widely suggest it to non-technical clients. While it doesn’t provide much actionable information, it is a good high-level snapshot that can help someone who knows nothing about SEO get an idea of how search engine friendly a site is on a very basic level.
The fact is that non-technical people can easily understand a score from 1-100, even if they have no idea what the rest of the report means. They get that a score of 67/100 means there is significant room for improvement, even if the report doesn’t help them understand what exactly needs to be fixed or how to go about fixing it.
By Alysson on Feb 17, 2009
Great little writeup, totally unbiased. Now, let me share my thoughts on tools that supposedly grade websites.
They are marketing gimmicks, that is all. Unless the creators of these tools have the backend processing of a major UA and can crunch the data properly, the value of the grade is a moot point as it cannot effectively grade anything. There are way too many variables at play.
Just think, if there were any value in these tools, don’t you think the SEs would have figured it out already and we’d see Website Grades next to each listing in the SERPs?
Too funny!
You want to grade your website? What do you get when you run it through this?
http://www.SEOConsultants.com/tools/semantic/extractor/
And then, how do you fare when performing an in-depth analysis?
http://www.URIValet.com/
Nah, this type of stuff is best left for organic intelligence. The search engines have proven that this is a difficult challenge. Do you really think one of these website grading tools can even come close to determining the quality of a document? Not unless we have the next big thing in the making.
By pageoneresults on Feb 17, 2009
Thanks for the great feedback!
Aly - I hear what you’re saying, but the fact that core SEO elements (like inbound link composition) are absent can give a non-SEO marketer a false sense of confidence (example: “yay, I got a 97 out of a 100″ meanwhile the site has 6 inbound links).
Ed - Thanks for the brutal honesty. Like Aly said, there is some residual value, but in general, these tools are not a viable option analyzing a page and/or site for SEO health.
By Hugo Guzman on Feb 17, 2009
thank you for this blog, its something that my clients always discuss, if they dont understand anything about seo, they run one of these tools and come back with report saying that of those 6 pages on the website they got graded 95, so what help can a seo campaign be…
then you examine their website traffic of 1-2 visitors/day and point out that although their competitors may only be getting 60-70% of the competitive analysis, they have 100 times as many links, and 100 times as much non-duplicate content…
so while some of these reports are a useful overview, they arent often the complete story
By david on Feb 18, 2009
Great post and I totally agree. The local web firms around here actually repackage some of these reports and give them to clients as their “expert recommendations”, which we find quite humorous if not a little sneaky… I did have one question in regards to one of the measurements for Website Grader’s overall score. While I understand the time your site has been indexed in Google can be a factor in organic rankings, I have yet to read any positive claims that the time it has to expire makes a difference. It sort of makes sense, but is there any proof to that?
By Megan on Feb 18, 2009
I agree that a grade like the one provided by Website Grader is not the only metric people should look at. It is just one of many tools, meant to automate the really easy and boring parts of online marketing. For an SEO or marketing expert, the details of a Website grader report are somewhat useful, but will certainly not provide the detail you want. For a beginner or non-expert, the report is really useful to get the basics down. This allows the SEO experts to focus on more value-added work.
The point of these tools is to do a quick evaluation of your website, and give you a score that provides some useful comparison vs. your competition and help you fix the simple things. I think tools like Website Grader do that pretty well.
As far as the inbound links issue, I can say that from our experience it is VERY difficult to get an accurate inbound link universe for any website without traffic log data, therefore nearly impossible to do for your competitor’s websites. The most extensive source (Yahoo Site Explorer) has been having major issues lately, and given the status of the company I think it is unclear if the service will ever be fixed. Other sources (Alexa, Google, etc.) typically provide very inaccuarte data based on the research we have done.
Finally, someone mentioned that these tools are useless without a lot of processing power and a huge database. I agree. That’s why we at HubSpot have raised $17m in investment, have 65 employees, and use the cloud equivalent of 100+ servers to power everything we do. Website Grader has data on over 700,000 websites and we track lots of keyword, rank, social media and other data.
Being able to compare your website for free, in seconds, to a bunch fo competitors on a number of metrics is pretty powerful.
By Mike Volpe - HubSpot (Website Grader) on Feb 18, 2009
You client might like the Quality Score Tool over at http://www.linkvoodoo.com. This checks a number of crucial factors such as inbound links, external links, links from social sites, old authoritative directories and a whole lot more.
You’re right about nothing beats a human review though, the tools only can give you a little taste of what a trained eye can come up with.
By Ryan @ Linkbuildr on Feb 18, 2009
I’m surprised you didn’t address any of SEOmoz’s tools. While far from perfect, they provide some interesting and at least somewhat useful results.
By Brian Combs on Feb 18, 2009
Heh! I can’t help myself, I really can’t!
Website.Grader.com 76
^ How come you are not sporting your badge?
SEOAutomatic.com 82
^ And how come you are not sporting yours?
Again, these are all gimmicks for the consumer that should keep a few SEOs busy.
“Hey, how come we only got an 86 and out competitor got a 92? You need to fix that!”
And then you get advice like this…
“Meta Description is too long
Your meta description should be no more than 150 characters”
Where is that in writing? I’ve never seen a hard rule on length. Yes, there are truncation limits and such but the only thing in writing from length is from Yahoo! at 255 characters.
Who came up with the algorithm to perform the grading? Did you notice the information they “try” to collect from you in the process? That email field is golden. And, it just happens be preceded with the proper verbiage for collection of email addresses…
“Enter your e-mail address to receive the final report”
Don’t you get the final report on the following page when the results are returned? Do I get something different if I enter my email?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great little linkbait and email collection gimmick. Problem is, there may be some challenges with certain consumers wanting to use those tools as some sort of benchmark. Get real!
By pageoneresults on Feb 18, 2009
Wow! All I can say thanks for all of the great feedback and tool suggestions. I think that we’re all saying more or less the same thing; that while these tools may have some value, they should never be mistaken for a comprehensive (human) SEO analysis.
By Hugo Guzman on Feb 18, 2009
I agree with Alysson, they are great for non-technical people but do they provide SEO’s with any value?
I have web site grader bookmarked as its a quick and dirty way to get a overview of potential clients site when the phone goes for enquiry about SEO Consultation or our other services.
Would you base a site audit or a project on the outcome? No. Is it good for an initial overview, saving you time/money on an uncertain lead? I think so.
By euan on Feb 19, 2009
I started using seoautomatic when it first came out, and I instantly though, “Here’s something I can give my development people so they stop bugging me about little things.”
SEO graders are great for the SEO beginners or ignorant.
There is no replacement for human intelligence, but it has cut down on the number of questions I get from our development team before we launch a site.
By Springfield Mo SEO on Feb 19, 2009
yeah there are always going to be elements that these type of graders can’t pick up on but humans can.
By Nick Stamoulis on Feb 20, 2009
SEO graders are great for the SEO beginners or ignorant.
By Short selling stocks on Feb 25, 2009
I liked grader.com really helped me out.
Scott Dylan
By Scott Dylan on Mar 15, 2009
it is a learning tool I like it. it does help you.
By m.brulee on Mar 17, 2009
I couldn’t agree more. Just had a prospective client discover website grading. He wanted to know why our sites were not all scoring 100s… Although I knew the answer… and was appalled by the question in the first place. (This client doesn’t have a web site and was totally unaware that he even needed one by the way.) Now he is an expert at SEO? Ha! I didn’t quite know how to articulate my response to this. This post was very helpful. And although I don’t think I will be taking him on as a client anyway.. I now have the articulation to tell him why. Thanks!
~E
By Erin on Mar 25, 2009
Appropriate keywords make your search simple and also help your data searching quick too. Keep posting such interesting tips ….
By Alex @ Health Insurance on Nov 18, 2009
For someone (like me) that’s new to SEO, the Website Grader report is useful in the sense that it outlines the basic areas one should consider to improve the search engine ranking of a site.
And then even a newcomer would be puzzled at the warning that “your site has too many images”… but in the end you learn something.
An issue I had with WG was that I couldn’t get their badge to show the updated grade as I implemented the improvements suggested in the reports.
By Jose Perez on Dec 14, 2009
I’m very impressed with your article here. Great job!
By Skuteczne Pozycjonowanie on May 15, 2010
Can anyone suggest a very good seo book?-.’
By Sean Perry on Jun 24, 2010
It seems “Too Many Images” on WebsiteGrader.com is a common result, but I can’t seem to find any documentation as to what that really means and how many are suggested. I’m new to SEO, so suggestions/interpretation from experts would be greatly appreciated!
By Shelby Skrhak on Jul 12, 2010