In a scale of 1 to 100, how well does your blog site rate? Friends and family will likely give you 101 stars. Critics and been-there-done-that individuals will be less merciful.
Human subjectivity is hard to fathom and sometimes, the only way to know how well or how bad your work has been is to ask an objective rater for a verdict. You guessed it right: Let the machine take care of grading your blog site from header to footer.
I came across a site called Blog Grader today. It does not require any sign-ups or registration... not even an e-mail address or username... nada. The first thing you'll see is a blank field for entering your blog site URL and, after a few seconds of processing some information, the site returns with a numeric grade and some criteria on how the number was derived.
Criteria for Grading
Teecup Limited got a grade of 89, which I think isn't bad for a two-month-old blog site owned by a non-techie female. I'm sure the SEO gurus out there will pass the test with flying colors. Basically, Blog Grader rates your blog site on a number of criteria:
Subscribability
- Does your site have an RSS feed?
- Can readers subscribe to your blog via e-mail?
- Is your blog site linked to Twitter and Facebook?
Article engagement
- Have you enabled your posts for retweeting?
- Can your individual blog entries be easily liked on Facebook?
- How many retweets and likes did your posts generate?
Search engine visibility
- Is your blog site free-hosted or not?
- Do you use unique titles for your posts?
- Are the meta tags of an ideal length?
Blog content
- How often do you blog?
- How long are your posts?
- Do you use images?
- Are you linking your entries?
Some After Thoughts
How did you find the criteria? I found Blog Grader to be a bit biased towards Facebook and Twitter, as both social media sites were included as major grading criteria for at least two categories.. but then again, who isn't on Facebook or Twitter these days?
The report card by Blog Grader is a great resource for newbies and bloggers on a low. It gives you an idea on where and how you can improve your blog. Apart from noting your connectivity with Facebook and Twitter, your report card will also show how well your blog site ranks relative to previously graded sites.
Overall, it's an interesting run to get your blog site ranking statistics from a computer. Whether you like it or not, when you are writing for the web, you will be pleasing both your human and non-human readers. The subjective human aspect remains unfathomable though. What isn't good to the search engine or the computer may well be a brilliant masterpiece for the human soul.
Note: This is not a paid post, but I'm inviting you to go check out Blog Grader today. Then, do come back to this page and post your grade. How well is your blog site ranking?
