uISV Class '07 February Grades

Tuesday, February 5. 2008

This year is moving fast. I can't believe its February already. Here's last months results for a reference point. Since it is nice to see how you compare with last month, I added a +/- after the score so you don't have to check lasts month if you don't want to. Page Rank updates so infrequently, I decided to not do it for that, even though we did finally see some updates there. Several of the sites that previously had a 0 page rank, now have a PR score. Here is how we are all doing:

Site	Score	Page Rank
chatspring.com	51 (+6)	2
www.thinklife.co.uk/	37 (-27)	3
joelmarcey.com	80 (+2)	4
www.smallfarmcentral.com/	79 (-2)	4
www.sportavista.com/	29	0
www.sendalong.com/	54 (+21)	3
catchthebest.com	85 (-2)	5
www.heliumfoot.com/	76 (+4)	0
www.lokad.com/	94 (-4)	4
twistedwave.com	77 (-2)	5
www.omnicustomersupport.com/	57 (-2)	0
www.webworkschedules.com/	62 (+24)	2
www.sixproducts.com/	52 (+5)	1

This month marks the first month with a lot of scores that dropped. The some of the drops are likely due to more sites being used. If your score did drop, I'd run WebSitegrader yourself and look at the details to see if something has changed since last month.

Two big jumps this month, Jon with Send Along jumping up 21 points (and a new fancy PR 3). Like always, any advice on changes you made to help you make the jump? I couldn't let Jon have all the fun, so I shot up 24 points at Web Work Schedules. I think part of this has to do with also the new PR 2 score (it was previously a 0). One thing I have done in the last month is increased blogging on the site. I actually outsourced some of the content creation and I've been very pleased with the quality. I can't tell if it is driving more traffic (and hopefully sales) but that is the hope.

Keith Alperin, from Helium Foot +33 points last month, commented on the last update that he launched their first product and did a PR blitz that was very successful (both in inbound links and sales!) If anyone else has updates (product releases, major milestones, etc,) drop me a line and I'll make sure to include it in the update.

A little historical background, I first graded the websites on 11/15/07. At that time the average score was 49. The average score for this month was a 67. Almost a 20 point increase! I think that is pretty impressive. Lets keep up the good work.

--Updated 2/12/08-- Ran WebSiteGrader again on SportaVista.

Posted by Chris Exline in uISV Class 07 at 13:46 | Comments (4294967274) | Trackbacks (28)

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Hey Chris - thanks as always for the round up.

The results are interesting to me b/c I've been keeping track of my score for the past several months, and my most recent measurement for SendAlong saw the same big jump that your numbers show. I kind of thought that maybe the Website Grader algorithm had changed b/c I hadn't really done anything to improve my score.

It looks like that's not the case though, as I'd expect everyone's scores to go up.

Next month I'll shoot for 70!

#1 Jon Chase (Link) on 2008-02-05 18:04

Last month there was there was the big over hall of Website Graders site, but I never saw a reference to changes in the algorithm. I suspect for both of us, finally have a PR has to help the score. Have you seen an increase in the number of inbound links? More content on your site perhaps?

I'm still below the total average so my goal is to get above that and to stop bringing down the group.

#2 Chris Exline (Link) on 2008-02-06 11:46

Hi Chris, thanks again for the round up (and for the mention of Helium Foot 8- ). Last month you asked about our upcoming sponsorhip of Daring Fireball. Our sponsorhsip takes place at the end of March and i'll be sure to send you link to my write-up once it's done.

All the best!

#3 Keith Alperin (Link) on 2008-02-10 20:45

Hello Chris,

thanks for including sportavista in your list. We have been working hard over the last couple of weeks to make sure our site is viewable and accessible by search engines and other bots.

Our ranking will hopefully get better over the coming weeks. We have had some press attention as well, so a number of links to our website are out there.

Thanks for the great initiative. It's now one of our goals to become the best progresser in your list for a couple of a row

#4 boris (Link) on 2008-02-12 00:22

Hi Keith,
I'm looking forward to your write up about the sponsorship. I think that was a great idea to break up the cost and spread it across several uISVs. I'm just getting involved in more marketing, so ideas like yours are a gold mine for me. I hope it works out well for you.

#5 Chris Exline (Link) on 2008-02-12 15:04

Hi Boris,
Nice to hear from you again. Good news about your recent progress. If you don't mind sharing, how did you get the press attention? I'm always on the look out for ways to get more attention to my site.

I re-ran WebSiteGrader and it now works for your site. I'm not sure what the change was, but I'm glad to see your back on line (at least in WebSiteGrader's eyes.)

#6 Chris Exline (Link) on 2008-02-12 15:12

Hi Chris,

we tried two things thus far:

1. Issues a press release. This was picked up by a number of media. A large e-zine wrote an article about sportavista, which gave us a lot of attention.

2. We have partnerships with other sport related websites.

We are currently looking into some other options....

boris

#7 Boris (Link) on 2008-02-19 13:18

PS. In the meanwhile sportavista has a score of 77 at the websitegrader website.

#8 Boris (Link) on 2008-02-19 13:38

Wow. Improving to a 77 makes the largest jump of anyone yet. Great job. Seems like press releases seem to be working for the class of '07. I'll have to think about that and see what I can come up with for my business.

#9 Chris Exline (Link) on 2008-02-19 13:57

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uISV Class '07 February Grades

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