During our latest SEMrush Chat, we evaluated OnlineRockersHub with the help of our chat participants. This site provides posts on various topics, including entrepreneurship ideas, educational posts, shopping deals, and more. Site visitors can also find blogging ideas, WordPress guides, SEO strategies, and other educational materials. In addition, the site sells eBooks written by Nirmal Kumar, the site owner.

Q1: After the first glance, what is one thing you would definitely change on onlinerockershub.com?

It seems that the ads and the lack of information about the site are the two things that frustrate the site visitors the most:

• Explain What the Site Is About

If you are unable to give a clear answer about the purpose of your website, there is a chance that it is underperforming or even counterproductive. What is the mission of your site? Why should people visit it and read your content? Every website should be able to provide its visitors with the answers to these questions.  

More importantly, you need to explain why people should follow your advice. Value proposition is a critical element in any site; it explains how your site can help users, address their needs, and solve their problems. It tells them why it is worth reading your content and ideas, instead of information on many other similar sites. Without a clear and easy-to-understand value proposition, it is very difficult to retain people on your site.

Here are six tips to help you start creating your value proposition:

1. Define your target audience.

2. Do a competitive research analysis.

3. Identify which benefits and value your site brings to your audience.

4. Create a clear message.

5. Make it clear how you are different.

6. Explain why your audience should choose you over your competitors.

• Get Rid of the Ads

Many site owners place paid ads on their site in order to gain revenue. However, advertisements can distract your site visitors and even irritate them. If the ads force people to click off your site, you should consider removing the annoying ads to provide a better browsing experience for your audience.

• Establish a Brand Direction

Andy Drinkwater -‏ @iqseo recommends that a site owner start by creating a professional logo for the site in order for them to have a clearer brand direction. 

Brand direction helps to differentiate your brand from your competitors and ensure that all messages and communication inside and outside of your brand is consistent and compelling.

As Bill Slawski‏ - @bill_slawski pointed out, the site needs a foundation to build trust, authority, and expertise.

It seems that the site owners have some work to do.

Q2: Out of the top three issues we detected with SEMrush site audit tool, which one should the company fix ASAP? Why?

To find out what issues OnlineRockersHub has, we analyzed the site using our Site Audit tool:

• 54 pages have low text-to-HTML ratio.

• 46 internal links contain nofollow attribute.

• 35 images don’t have alt attributes.

All of these issues can negatively impact the site’s performance. But which of them should be fixed as soon as possible? Most of our chat participants believe that internal links with nofollow attribute should be addressed first.

The nofollow attribute is a way to tell search engines not to count some of their links to other pages, however they can still offer some SEO value. In the past, some site owners used the tag as an internal linking strategy. They nofollowed most of the links on a page to increase the link juice to a single page.

According to the former head of the webspam team at Google, Matt Cutts, this type of PageRank sculpting is not the most effective way to utilize your PageRank. He pointed out that, in general, it’s better to let the link value flow freely within your site.

However, there are always exceptions to the rule. For example, Matt Cutts explained that you can add a nofollow to a link pointing to a login page, a shopping card, or other “useless” pages, because these pages aren’t very helpful in showing up in the search engines.

Every site owner should definitely keep things free and fluid. It’s important to make sure that Googlebot can crawl all pages on your site.

On the other hand, some of our chat guests recommended that the site owners fix other issues first. It is important to ensure that the text-to-HTML ratio is balanced, even though it is not a direct ranking factor for search engines. When this ratio is very low, it can be a signal of other important issues, such as inefficient coding techniques or a slow page speed.

Also, you should never forget to give images alt attributes, because these elements improve the accessibility of your site. If the image, for some reason, cannot be displayed, the alt tag provides an alternate text for this image. Therefore, a good alt tag must describe what is on your image.

To find out more on the topic, you can check our study on the most common on-site SEO issues.

What would you suggest the site owners fix first? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section!

Q3: Which techniques should OnlineRockersHub use to increase their online presence?

We have figured out what issues OnlineRockersHub need to fix. Now, let’s see what techniques they should use to increase their online presence.

1. Create a Rich User Experience

Today’s users have very little patience and very high demands. In a time of fierce competition, it’s highly important to provide your site visitors with the best experience possible; everything should be intuitive and not overly cluttered and complicated. The navigation should be easy to follow, content should be concise and explicit, and visuals must enhance your text content, instead of detracting it.

2. Develop a Business Concept

A website provides an amazing opportunity to reach out to a global audience of potential readers, followers, or customers, depending on your site’s goals. However, this great opportunity is equally challenging to get these millions of people to find your site. In order to reach these people, you need to outline your vision, build a business model for your site - including the revenue streams your site will have, develop strong marketing and SEO strategies, and research your competitors to better understand how you can differentiate yourself.

3. Be More Active on Social Media

Like it or not, social media has become an integral part of our everyday lives. The good news is that social networks can be a great way to get people talk about your brand. One of the major benefits of having active social accounts is real-time communication with your audience. In addition, a well-planned SMM strategy can help you to collect social proof, increase brand awareness, and run low-cost, yet effective advertising campaigns.

When choosing a social network, it is better to research where your audience spends their time. For most brands, there is no point in having a presence on every social platform, especially for a newer brand because developing a strategy for each will be an unnecessary drain on resources. You can choose just 2-3 websites where your target audience is and aim your efforts on these certain social networks.

4. Connect with Bloggers and Influencers

One of the best ways to grow your online presence is to reach out to authoritative bloggers and influencers in your niche. They are trusted voices who can bring new audiences to your site and help you build your own online community. With search and reputation management tools like BuzzSumo, you can identify influencers in your industry. Before reaching out, invest your time and efforts in establishing a solid relationship with a person. Try out the following tactics:

• Follow them on social media and subscribe to their blogs.

• Comment on their posts.

• Link to their content.

• Offer them something new and valuable.

Most of our chat participants also pointed out that OnlineRockersHub should provide more quality, valuable content, which is one of the building blocks of a great website.

Increasing online presence is an ongoing process, you can improve your site by experimenting and analyzing what works and what does not. It will help you to figure out which techniques to continue and which to avoid.

Q4: What website features did you like and would suggest that OnlineRockersHub utilize more?

So far, we have talked a lot about what should be improved and changed on this site. But it definitely has some strengths and positive elements that need to be leveraged. Here are several things that our chat participants like about this site.

• Free downloadable content.

• Good blog content.

Simon Cox‏ - @simoncox pointed out that the site has several good blog posts. However, it is difficult to find this content. It is better to pinpoint the site’s strengths and bring them to the fore to win over the new visitors and turn passing by users into loyal readers.

• A well-planned site structure.

A good site structure improves your chances of ranking well in Google’s search results and ensures that your site visitors will have a great experience. The site owners need to better organize the menu in order to improve usability. It is important to help your users find what they want as quickly as possible, with just a few clicks.

• An effective click to action.

Some of our chat participants liked the CTA button on the homepage. It says “Start Here” and guides the users by providing a clear message. 

• “Income Reports” section.

The site has an “Income Reports” section that hardly ever see on other websites. It contains an income reports archive with one yearly and several other monthly reports. It may be a bold strategy, but it definitely builds trust with the audience. These trust elements can help you to win over new visitors.

The more information you provide, the more transparent you are, the more solid and trustworthy your site may become in the minds of your first-time site visitors.

Check out a few more of OnlineRockersHub’s handy elements in the following recap.

One thing that most of our chat participants agreed on is that the site owners should keep on creating quality content.

Q5: What are some bold strategies that OnlineRockersHub can take to improve their website

At the end of our chat, we discussed some bold strategies that can help to improve the site:

• Website Redesign and Rebranding

Every website needs a bit of makeover sooner or later. It takes a considerable amount of time and efforts, but it is a highly effective strategy that can help you to reach an extensive audience, attract more readers to your content, and build your online community. A logo will help the site look more professional and trustworthy.

• High-quality Photography and Video

A good photo or video on your site is the first thing that a user will notice. Having it on your site is the first step in building trust with your audience. Adding high-quality photos or videos to your site improves your chances to make a killer first impression and effectively connecting with your audience.

• A New WordPress Theme

Some of our chat participants suggest purchasing a new WordPress theme. A WordPress theme is a collection of files that determine the overall look and layout of your WordPress site. Default themes are fine, in case you only need a very simple site, but if you are looking for more options, better styles and layouts, and want your site to look more professional, you may want to consider buying a new theme.

• Learning From Others

Learning from others can be a powerful tool that will help you to succeed. JP Sherman‏ - @jpsherman shared his own experience that OnlineRockersHub can try out as well.

Look for pages that rank well for their target keywords and adopt best practices their competitors use. No matter what your site is about, you can benefit greatly from thoroughly studying your competition.

Let’s sum up!

And so we have analyzed yet another website together with the help of our guests. Together, we figured out how the site owners can improve this site and attract new visitors.

Many thanks to our guests who were kind enough to join us for our website analysis!Make sure to join us this Wednesday with Dido Grigorov!