Internet Babel

Review of emailhoaxesurbanlegends.com

Domain Name - Ok, from the outset I’d say your first problem is the domain name. Never buy an overly long domain name just for the purposes of the search engines, it’s people that will be visiting your site and people that you want remembering your domain. Always try and go with the shortest, most snappy domain name possible so that it’s as easy to remember as possible for people who see your site. Here people will easily forget it, some people will view such a long domain and simply discount it as a spam domain or simply, unconsciously block it out because it’s so long. Most likely they’ll glance it and click back or whatever, then never return. Can you imagine somebody going to a friend “Have you been on… emailhoxesurbans? no! emailsandhoaxinglegend? no! hangon, email-hoaxing…” see the problem? you’ve got 4 words in that domain and they easily blend to the eye. Try thinking up a more memorable domain which is short and easy to remember, buy that and use that domain instead of this one!

Design – Nice deisgn, simple and easy on the eye. I would recommend defining the navigation more though by having the heading ‘menu’ or ‘nav / navigation’ above the navigation links. Always do whatever you can to make your site as user friendly as possible. Also try bordering the site and maybe defining the footer more by having an upper border on it or a panel around it.

Ads – The ad placement is fine but a little too ‘classic’ in my opinion, you’ve blended well but I think blending is dying out. More n more people are realising what Adsense looks like and therefore more n more people will realise you trying to trick them into clicking. I think clearly defining your ads is the way forward. Blending to such a degree where people are meant to believe that an ad block is content, makes a site look cluttered and tacky.

Conclusion – Overall I’d say you have a semi-decent design with tacky ad placement. This ad placement is proven to work, yes and is proven to bring more clicks. But the people who realise they are ads will only get annoyed by them and the ones who don’t realise they are will click and be gone for good. On the outset you’ll probably get more clicks but in the long-run I think it can only damage the perspective and traffic flow of your site. I think these days, with the web growing as it is and people becoming increasingly more aware, it’s much better to define your ads clearly. Physchologically the user should appreciate it more as they know you are letting them know what is what. Also it allows for them to read your content fully, and basically that should be your aim. If your whole entire aim is to get clicks from a site… you wont get far, focus on the content first. Ask yourself if your site as helped anybody… if it’s given them anything useful. If the answer it no, do something about it!