SEO: Dark Matter Coffee

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Jocelin Harper
5 years ago
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Sarah Kovathana COMM 327 Prof. Kamerer 25 October 2016 SEO: Dark Matter Coffee URL: http://www.darkmattercoffee.com/ Part 1: The Page Markup A.

1 Sarah Kovathana COMM 327 Prof. Kamerer 25 October 2016 SEO: Dark Matter Coffee URL: Part 1: The Page Markup A. Snippet of SERP Figure 1: Google Results for Dark Matter Coffee s website B. The home page is image-dominant with very few typed words. There is no first paragraph and the only text is linked. The tabs on the top of the homepage are highlight-enabled which means it can be read as text by search engines along with the word coffee under the home top banner. Other than that there is no text content on the homepage. The page focus keywords could be coffee, beans, dark roast, and blend. This conclusion is drawn from the focus of the website to sell coffee. These words should be the focus of the page because the page is about coffee. One detractor from the focus of the page could be the top

2 banner talking about Mexico and El Salvador. The headline isn t relevant to coffee immediately, yet takes up the majority of the opening screen on a small desktop platform. C. The title of the page is Dark Matter Coffee (<title>dark Matter Coffee</title>). D. There is no meta description put in for this site ( <meta name="description" content="" />). E. The site uses hierarchy up to H2. H1 (example): <h1 class="hometitle h4-style align-center"><a href= /collections/ coffee"><span>coffee</span></a></h1> H2 (example): <h2 class="h1-style title"> <a href="/collections/coffee/products/dealers-choice-bean-flight">dealer's Choice Bean Flight</a> </h2> F. (For inside page only) G. Three examples of anchor text: 1. SIGNUP: Allows you to input to get updates from the brand. This anchor text is pretty clear for what it s supposed to be. The user doesn t exactly know what the signup is for from the anchor text though. 2. COFFEE: This links to the sale page for coffee. It s not descriptive in the way that tells the user that they can but the coffee by clicking on that link, but at least the user gets redirected to coffee products. In context of the page with the image slide show it makes sense, but the text alone does not. 3. SEE ALL: This link takes the user to the same place that coffee does which is the sale page. See all is not descriptive at all and could really refer to anything from photo gallery

3 to listed locations to buy the coffee. The words out of context of the page are meaningless. H. One image is located at the top of the homepage and is labeled logo.png with the alt tag (alt= Dark Matter Coffee ). It is the logo of the brand. Another image is in the home top banner named slide_2.jpg with alt tag (alt= Slide 2 ). Part 2: Keyword Search The page isn t obviously catered toward any keywords based on the analysis in part one. The words coffee and the brand Dark Matter Coffee popped up most frequently on different elements of the page s code. The keyword lists from keywordtool.io provides insight into what consumers might be searching related to the Dark Matter Coffee website. Figures 2 & 3: Keyword listing results using keywordtool.io for coffee (left) and Dark Matter Coffee (right.)

4 Part 3: Critique the Markup and keyword choices Overall, this site s SEO could use some tweaking. First off, the page title isn t bad because the brand s name is being used and the brand s name provides the type of product that s being sold. Using plugins, the title can be more descriptive with an addition of vertical bar and more keywords, but the title works as a homepage. The meta-description in the SERP snippet could use some work as well. The current one just lists different coffees and some unique ingredients, but still uses the word coffee and the brand name. To improve, the meta description should entice a potential user to click on the website link. The homepage itself is poorly constructed for search engines. The page is largely image dominant with little text. There is actually no main paragraph of text on the homepage which means Google and other search engines cannot read the page to account into their algorithms. the website should add more text to their homepage with relevant content even if it s only a paragraph. The hierarchy seems okay with two distinct levels. The anchor text seems okay within the context of the website. Coffee and see all are not descriptive text on their own, but lead to selling coffee which is the point of the website. It could be changed to coffee offerings instead to provide more context. Signup also is not descriptive because users don t know what they re signing up for. I would suggest a text sub-line to describe what the listing is for. The images could use a lot of work. First off, both images listed above have very poor titles that aren t descriptive at all. For example, the logo photo could be named DarkMatterCoffeeLogo2016 to provide search engines with more to work with. Additionally both alt tags could be improved. The logo one is okay with the brand name, but the other one is just Slide 2 which doesn t describe what the image is at all. I would suggest making the alt tags more descriptive.

The keyword tool I used was a free one called keywordtool.io. The list generated provided a couple insights that could help the client format the homepage better.

5 The keyword tool I used was a free one called keywordtool.io. The list generated provided a couple insights that could help the client format the homepage better. For example, in both lists from Part 2, users are looking for coffee shops nearby and locations for Dark Matter. Knowing this, I would recommend that the top banner of the homepage or at least some homepage real estate be designated to locations of where to buy the coffee. Another interesting keyword provided was dark matter coffee unicorn blood which is one of their coffee offerings. The site could highlight their most popular blends and label them as popular so that newcomers to the site can try out their best blends. Internal Page Analysis URL: Part 1: The Page Markup A. Snippet of SERP Figure 3: Google Results for Dark Matter Coffee s blog site. Figure 4: Word cloud of terms from blog page. B. The page is text-dominant. the first paragraph is an article about their new location. It s about 300 words long with some photos embedded. Using a word cloud

6 generator for all the blog posts, some keywords from this internal page are process, party, Chicago, and Brewing. In the word cloud I factored out Coffee and the brand name but it is important to note that this page is also dedicated to similar things on the homepage which is good for brand-generated content. These keywords are interesting because they highlight more details of the brand. The blog s keywords delve deeper and would provide content for any interested users. However, three out of four of the keywords found don t necessarily pertain to the product which may detract from the site s core objective to sell more coffee. C. The title of the page is News (<title>news</title>). D. The meta description is Exciting news from the delightfully twisted minds of Dark Matter Coffee. (<meta name="description" content="exciting news from the delightfully twisted minds of Dark Matter Coffee." />) E. The site uses hierarchy up to H2. H1: <h1 class="majortitle">news</h1> H2 (example): <h2><a href="/blogs/news/introducing-meddle" title="">introducing Meddle</a></h2> F. The URL provided above is in plain English ( news). G. Three examples of anchor text: 1. INTRODUCING MEDDLE: This links to the article s standalone page as the title. It s descriptive in terms of the context of the site because it takes the user to the article by

7 clicking on the title. The anchor text by itself is also descriptive, but could be better by also including that it is a coffee shop without needing to read the first sentence. 2. Video recap: This link takes the user to a YouTube video related to a project mentioned in the article. In page context, this anchor text is understood, but by itself it could be a video to anything. 3. GHOSTFACE KILLAH CONTEST: Another blog title that links to a standalone page of just the article, this anchor text works in page context and on its own. The user can read it and know what the article will be about. Unfortunately, there is not description of how it s related to the Dark Matter Coffee brand. H. One image on this page is called MeddleBar2_large.jpg with alt tag (alt="meddle Coffee Bar ). Another image is TapHandles_large.jpg with no alt tags (alt= ). Part 2: Keyword Search The keywords for news and blog are largely the brand and the product ( coffee and Dark Matter Coffee ). This makes sense and should be the focus of the blog and news. Using the word cloud, the page was also seen as optimizing the process for Dark Matter Coffee, its home base of Chicago, brewing, and party. This aligns with some of the results further down on the keyword list from the Part 2 analysis of the homepage. Here we can see the more niche keyword searches can be addressed in the blog and news.

8 Part 3: Critique the Markup and keyword choices This internal page is done a lot better for SEO than the homepage. First off, the title and meta-description are both done fine. The meta-description was intentionally done as reflected by the code which is good for the users searching for the blog. The page itself is text-heavy which helps search engines read the content. Additionally frequently used keywords help to differentiate the blog page from the homepage. Again, the hierarchy on this page isn t too complicated using only two levels (title of page and title of post) leaving a simplistic viewing format for the user. Additionally, the URL itself is in plain English which is also user-friendly. Most of the anchor text was titles of the posts which were descriptive in context. The only edit I would suggest is to have Video recap changed to Video recap: the Osmium Project to make the anchor text more specific. Images were labeled well both having the size of the photo mentioned. The second image I found needed an alt tag as do many of the other images on the page. The keywords used on this page are pretty spot on with what the tool recommended. Like the homepage, the page discusses coffee and does give some detail about location which is what people are searching for. Looking further down the list, you can see that users are not only interested in the brand s coffee, but their process and events. While the page does do a good job of highlighting important brand news, they can improve on sharpening their keyword optimization just a tad. This can work by categorizing the posts into topics like DMC s process, upcoming events, and updates on locations. That way people can more easily go to posts that interest them.

What is SEO? { Search Engine Optimization }

What is SEO? { Search Engine Optimization } The use of various techniques to improve a web site's ranking in the search engines and thus attract more visitors. - en.wiktionary.org/ wiki/seo The process