Free Website SEO Analysis - HubSpot Website Grader, a Review

One stop shopping. One size fits all. Take a pill. Have someone else do it for you. With the cornucopia of free SEO tools out there, why doesn't someone make a one-stop-shop (free) tool for SEO? Wouldn't a simple Website Grader be fantastic? Believe me, the thought has crossed my mind, so I investigated the most popular service out there: HubSpot Website Grader. Here's my review.

By Jason McDonald
Senior SEO Instructor - JM Internet Group.
Posted: January 7, 2010


Contents:

The Contradictions of Free SEO Tools and SEO Fitness
Website Grader by HubSpot
Free SEO Analysis Tool, Useful - But...


The Contradictions of Free SEO Tools and SEO Fitness




I often compare SEO to getting Google fit, as I teach my online SEO training classes as well as my real-world SEO classes in San Francisco. SEO isn't rocket science - it's not totally transparent, but after about seven hours of instruction, most people get a pretty good grasp of the basic on-page and off-page SEO concepts. Like getting fit or going on a diet, the hard part is staying disciplined and keeping with a "fitness program."

There are certainly tricks to the trade, and certainly some very good free SEO tools (I emphasize free SEO tools in my training, because quite frankly the free tools are actually better than the paid tools out there). Nonetheless, on my list of projects is to create a quick Website or URL analyzer that can give my students instant feedback about a website or URL, at least in terms of on-page SEO.

On the other hand, there is the whole SEO community out there - a community that largely divides into two groups. One, a very large group of SEO consultants (God bless them), who make their living by assisting businesses to get SEO fit, largely by providing HTML recommendations, content suggestions, and link-building strategies. Two, a much smaller group of vendors such as HubSpot and WordTracker who provide tools that (hopefully) automate the process of SEO.

OK, so let's be cynical businesspeople here. And let's continue that comparison of SEO to physical fitness. Only you can make yourself physical fit - a magical diet pill, the best physical fitness equipment, and even a fantastic trainer really can at most motivate and guide you. But only you can make yourself physically fit. Similarly in website SEO, only you can get your website SEO fit. Tools, helpful SEO consultants, coaches (like myself) - we can only help you and guide you. So the question is - are we a good guide? Do we share information with you? Or do we hide information, seeking to keep you dependent on us over time? Unfortunately in the SEO community, there are many SEO consultants and many tools that obfuscate SEO. They fear giving away their special sauce, and therefore allowing you to educate yourself and break free of their fees and dependence.

• The basic contradiction of the SEO industry is that the "experts" have every incentive not to educate you on SEO, because they benefit from your ignorance and dependence. Sorry to be blunt, but it's the harsh truth.

Website Grader by HubSpot




Among attempts at one-stop-shopping for SEO, Website Grader from HubSpot stands out as one of the better tools. Here's how it works:

1. Go to http://websitegrader.com/.
2. Enter your URL / website address.
3. Enter your email address.
4. Hit Generate Result

Even before we look at the results, we know we are in trouble. Why? Because you cannot analyze a website without reference to keywords. You must generate your keyword list as a function of high volume keywords by (potential) customers vs. your company's unique value proposition. HubSpot does offer a paid keyword tool, but there are so many fantastic free SEO keyword tools - that, there is hardly any real value there. In addition, the real value is in thinking about your keywords - having a keyword strategy - which no tool can give you.

Once Website Grader generates its report, it gives you some useful information but throughout the information is hardly placed "in context." HubSpot wants you to buy their expensive monthly service, and so they must have been forced to cripple the free tool, so as not to give away the family jewels. Here are comments on some of the data provided -

• Rank - it gives you a generic rank, as in
  

  The website www.jm-seo.org ranks 1,098,956 of the 1,939,131 websites that have been ranked so far. A website grade of 43/100 for www.jm-seo.org means that means that of the millions of websites that have previously been evaluated, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 43% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.

  (But doesn't really put this in any context. Isn't your rank on Google more important? Isn't the volume of your keyword searches? And what about PageRank - now that rank, matters...)

• Page Title - it measures the length of your page title. (But doesn't place your TITLE in the context of your keywords).

• Header Tags - it recognizes the value of using the <H1>, <H2> family (But, again, no context vs. your keywords)

• Alt Tags - it reminds you to define the ALT attribute for image tags with (But, keywords?).

• PageRank - it references Google's PageRank as very important and tells you your PageRank. (But again no real explanation of what PageRank is, nor how to influence it.)

• Domain - it emphasizes that new domains are bad, old domains are good, longer registration is better. This is probably its most valuable, innovative comment - as I haven't seen many SEO tools point this out, however minor it might be.

• Inbound Links - it tells you that links are good, and gives a crude measurement but with little information on the value of links, nor what is really hard: building an effective link-building strategy

• Directories - it checks to see if you are in DMOZ and the Yahoo Directory, again helpfully pointing out how valuable these two directories are.

So it gives the SEO analyst a first start at an overview, but unfortunately in touching all the bases it really touches none in detail and is vastly inferior to the free tools out there that are very specific (e.g., keyword tools, SERP rank check tools, backlink tools, etc.). And, most significantly, it provides little or no context or guidance about each element. It's as if a coach yelled jargon at you about exercise technique without clearly explaining each exercise step-by-step and placing these exercises in the context of a coherent physical fitness strategy.

One would hope the HubSpot's paid products are significantly better, so I took a peek at some of their free videos and webinars. I have not used the tools themselves, but the pre-marketing materials are very vague and the monthly price tag is around $750 / month for a small business. That's pretty expensive for what seems like a toolsuite that does little more than you can do with the free tools, and very vague guidance on SEO strategy. SEO strategy is always based on your business' unique value proposition vs. customer needs as expressed in keyword queries!

Free SEO Analysis Tool, Useful - But...

So we rate Website Grader thumbs down. The tool is free (that's the good news) but its failure to provide a coherence context around SEO cripples it from being truly useful. It is neither fish nor fowl. Neither a good overview to SEO, as provided in the SEO classes that I teach (you can also get this from a good book), nor a specific context-bound tool like Yahoo site explorer, or the fantastic KeywordSpy.

My hunch, unfortunately, is that HubSpot doesn't break out of the fundamental contradiction of the SEO industry. The company makes money by selling you "access" to its "secret" store of SEO knowledge. They can't give you that knowledge without making you independent of them and their fees.

But, if...

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32)

HubSpot's Website Grader is a fun analysis tool, but really learning SEO - building an effective keyword list, deploying that through effect HTML page tags, having a coherent link strategy, etc. - these steps can be taught to you by someone else, but you (and only you) can implement them to make your website and with that knowledge, you are truly free (in both senses of that word).

Good luck!