I’ve been around the block more than a few times.  I’ve designed and developed hundreds if not thousands of websites. If you find this useful and want some tips and pointers on your website and how it could be more successful email me your url and I’ll try to make this a regular segment.

Today, we will review the website of Spencer McDonald at MondayMorningGold.com.  According to Spencer’s Twitter Bio, he is an avid writer and speaker on the subject of life motivation, leadership, team building, and productivity. Also love, Pinot Noir, comedies, and family time.   I assume that his blog is about these subjects mentioned in his bio.

Blogging is not my specialty, although I’m getting better at it.  However, usability and website interaction are right up my alley.  So, hopefully I’ll be able to give Spencer some useful advice.

Design: The overall design of the site is fine.  Nothing ground breaking, but clean and legible.  A professional design would help, but there is nothing here keeping you back.

The content design is not good.  All of the fonts are the same color, headlines don’t stand out too well and the structure just isn’t as well designed as it could be.  It makes it difficult to scan the site and find an interesting post.  You should also design the links and “functions” of the site to really promote people to interact with it.  Big graphical buttons, well-placed will go a long way to prompt people to post comments and interact with your site.

I would recommend finding another theme that does a better job of content design.  It will almost always require some customization to get it right, but this is necessary to get some life into the blog.

Content: The focus of the blog is not 100% clear.  From the content, I am getting a self-help, motivational kind of vibe.  However, I am not sure.  The focus is the hardest part and what many people fail to deliver on when it comes to blogging.  You need a market to get traffic.  To find a market, your blog has to have a focus. That focus needs to be more clear to your users.  At least give me a tagline or something to let me know what the blog is about.

SEO: You want traffic, so you need some way of getting it.  Good on-page SEO is one easy way to get some traffic on whatever topic you are blogging about.  The main issue I see with your SEO is the page names.  I assume you are using wordpress.  If so, get the page names fixed!  It’s easy, no excuse not to do it.  You need to also work on the title of your home page.  It should contain a line explaining what the blog is because the name doesn’t really do that for me.

After you get these items straight, promote the blog.  Search Twitter, find people interested in your subject and follow them.  They’ll most likely follow you back and you now have some one that would be interested in your content.  There are a ton of other ideas to promote the blog, but we won’t get into them here.

Hopefully, Spencer, my useless opinion will help you improve your blog!