Basic Review
Site Name: Familial Ramblings
Site Type: Blog
Age: 5-6 Months domain age
Appearance
A very pleasing semi custom design from a decent design studio, makes this blog look very welcoming, I'm not sure about the word "Familial", I'm not sure where you dug it up from !, I think it's a made up word, and I'm not sure of the meaning either. The banner is what I would large ! the main menu is also large, in most cases I would find this a bit off putting, but here it seems friendly, and very user friendly, you are left in no real doubt as to what the blog is about.
I also like the way that detail has been attended to, the favicon is directly related to the blog, a nice touch there.
On the down side however, is that I do like to see fully justified text, like a newspaper column, this would make things just a lot tidier, one thing I hate is random capitalisation in headings and titles.
Layout
Layout is the typical Blog layout, nothing really exciting or very different about it. The theme has been well chosen, and there are no real problems layout wise.
Navigation is easy, finding your way around the whole blog is an easy process, and will stay that way as the entries increase.
Statistics and Activity
Activity looks good, you have a decent amount of comments to all the articles you have written, some names I recognise from promotion forums but quite a few I do not, so you are reaching the wider internet. The articles are also developing debate from subscribers, which shows you are writing some though provoking stuff.
Content
You have a broad spectrum of content and subjects, you have also been brave enough to touch on some of the more risque ones, I would have liked to see more of this, not to be sensationalist, but to provoke even more debate on the subjects, and encourage people to be more open about their idea's and relationships.
Organisation and SEO
As I have said the organisation of the blog is good, the layout is good.
However, as is so often the case you are being let down by the SEO, it's number one on the list, but so many blog owners and forum admins completely neglect it.
Google Pagerank for: familialramblings.com 1/10
Alexa Rank for
http://www.familialramblings.com - 1,800,513
DMOZ.org listed? - not listed.
Google Directory listed? - yes
Yahoo! Directory listed? - not listed
Domain age? - 5 months 26 days (According to Whois created on 08.01.2012).
Domain history? check...
It's good that you are listed in Google, but that on it's own is not enough, get indexed as well, ( you will need to set up a Google account)
DMoz is a priority, I would imagine that 99% of the directories and search bots on the net, get sites to crawl from DMoz.
I am assuming that that you are using a custom blog software, I honestly cannot see the reason for not using wordpress, it has all the SEO plugins, and loads of others a blog could need, thats why it is so popular.
Words from the Reviewer
I'm giving you 3 stars, which at first may seem a little harsh, I do feel however that a great looking blog is let down in two very important areas, grammar and SEO, the random capitalisation is a real put off for me,( yes I know this site suffers from it too), and the pure lack of SEO is a massive failing.
This blog can go places, and can become a lot more popular, with the right SEO, it's time to start working on that, promotion is the hardest part of any online diary/forum/website, you have to go to people, it's very rare they will come to you without a prompt.
Star Rating
3.
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