Calandra 0

Northwest Missouri State University

SEARCH ENGINE Intro to Web Publishing
OPTIMIZATION ASSIGNMENT
Nick Calandra
 Calandra 1

SEO Analysis & Recommendations for NaturesFinestSeed.com

I. Keyword Research (Cr)

1. The 3 keywords / phrases I think will drive the most traffic
1. Grass Seed
2. Types of Grass Seed
3. Lawn Grass

2. Current rankings of my 3 keywords

Ranking of Recommended Keywords on NaturesFinestSeed.com

Keyword Google Bing Yahoo!

Grass Seed 19 No No
Types of Grass 20 No No

Seed
Lawn Grass 71 No No

Ranking of Recommended Keywords on HomeDepot.com

Keyword Google Bing Yahoo!

Grass Seed 2 No No
Types of Grass 1 1 No

Seed
Lawn Grass 22 No No

3. Explanation of my choices
1. Grass Seed This is an obvious choice for a keyword, but a very competitive

one for a smaller website like Natures Finest Seed. With other companies
 Calandra 2

ahead of it in rankings like Home Depot and Tractor Supply, it would take

some very heavy optimization for Natures Finest Seed to reach even the first

page of search results for Grass Seed. A better option here for getting to the

front page of Grass Seed would be to purchase an Ad spot, but with the

competitiveness of Grass Seed is a search term, it would be quite costly for

Natures Finest Seed.

2. Types of Grass Seed I chose this term for Natures Finest Seed to focus on

due to their category pages distinguishing the many different types of grass

seed available for consumers. Each product page includes a different type of

grass seed along with some extra information about each type of grass. They

even have a specific page for Types of Grass Seed which could be optimized

to rank much higher in the search results on Google and other search

engines.
3. Lawn Seed This term was chosen for its high search count and word

combination. The word lawn is found on many of Natures Finest Seeds

category and product-level pages as all of their grass seed products are

targeted at lawns so it only makes sense to make this a keyphrase that

Natures Finest Seed focuses on. This is also Natures Finest Seeds and

Home Depots lowest ranking search term and leaves room for lots of room

for improvement and indicates this is not a term that Home Depot is really

focusing on.
 Calandra 3

II. CURRENT TRAFFIC

NaturesFinestSeed.com Monthly Unique Visitors: >2.5K

HomeDepot.com Monthly Unique Visitors: 118.3M

Analysis

Both Home Depot and Natures Finest Seed see higher traffic numbers during the

summer months and see significant drops heading into the fall. This makes sense due

to most people working on home improvement or landscaping projects in late spring

through the summer. This is especially apparent for Natures Finest Seed as you

obviously wont plant new grass seed in the fall or winter.

 Calandra 4

Home Depots traffic tends to stay pretty consistent year round, however, due to the

high variety of products they sell and, of course, being a house hold name brand. They

also have very high counts of followers on their social media pages which undoubtedly

boosts their traffic numbers by quite a bit. Natures Finest Seed in contrast, has almost

no notable social media footprint.

III. CONTENT ANALYSIS (Cq, Cw, Vt)

NaturesFinestSeed.com Score 6 / 10

HomeDepot.com Score 10 / 10

Analysis

Natures Finest Seeds content is quite a bit more in-depth in terms of information when

compared to Home Depot. Natures Finest Seed does more than just sell their product to

customers, it also goes into quite a bit of detail about each type of blend / seed that they

sell. It gives the website more of an information / product based website feel over just a

product based website like Home Depot. If theres one thing thats unique about

Natures Finest Seed, it would be the amount of depth they go into for each of their

products.

In addition to providing basic information about each of their products, some of their

product pages also include some interesting information about specific seeds and how

they were introduced to the United States. Not all of their product pages has this type of

information, which is disappointing as it really makes Natures Finest Seed sound more

like an authoritative figure on the subject when compared to a generic product website

like Home Depot.

 Calandra 5

Natures Finest Seeds unique product description

Home Depots pages include basic information about the grass seeds they are selling,

but its not as in-depth and provides only the information one would need to know to

purchase the seed along with some extra information like germination times, how much

sunlight the grass should receive etc. This information is all laid out in an easy to read

format via bullet points near the bottom of the product page, also identifiable by

subheaders (very good for SEO) that categorize the content on the page.

Natures Finest Seed outlines much of the same information, in what should be an even

easier to read format, but unfortunately they do not provide a key for what all the

information means. The sunlight/shade icons for example dont tell me enough

information to make it clear exactly how much sunlight/shade that the grass needs and

the same could be said about the water icon on their chart. Home Depots product

pages tells me specifically how much sunlight the grass seed needs in their product

overview section of the page, but doesnt specify how much water is needed either.

Overall both websites present good information about each of their products, though

Home Depot definitely has the edge in providing more detailed information through the

use of specification charts, frequently asked questions and even user reviews all of

which Natures Finest Seed is missing. The frequently asked questions and user
 Calandra 6

reviews sections allows Home Depot to inadvertently keep their product pages up to

date as new reviews come in about their products and new questions are answered.

Natures Finest Seed does, in my opinion, do a better job of giving you a visualization of

the product youre getting. Instead of just providing generic pictures of the seed bags

like Home Depot does, you get to see actual pictures of what the grass looks like when

it has been planted and grown. However, Home Depot counteracts this with the use of

customer images showing what the product looks like on any regular persons yard and

not some generic photoshopped image.

 Calandra 7

Natures Finest Seed is, for the most part, error free. I did notice a little typo on the very

first page I visited (screenshot below), however, but went through probably 5-10 more

pages without noticing any errors. When I initially visited the site in class, I also spotted

another typo on the site, but was unable to remember which page I had originally visited

where I spotted the error. I used the SEOChats spell checker tools on 100 pages of the

website and hardly found any errors.

 Calandra 8

Product specifications on Natures Finest Seed

Product specifications on Home Depot

Recommendation for Improvements

For Natures Finest Seed to even have a chance of competing with Home Depot content

wise, they need to add quite a bit more information to their product-level pages. While
 Calandra 9

they do include extra information that other product based websites may or may not

include, they are lacking on a lot of information people buying grass seed might be

looking for, along with providing an easy to read format to digest that information.

The use of images for vital information like how much sunlight and water is required for

the grass to grow correctly is nice in theory, but isnt applied well here and should be

broken down on the page via subheaders and easy to read bullet points like Home

Depot has done on their own product pages. This will also help increase Natures Finest

Seeds search engine optimization via the use of H2 tags (subheaders).

User Reviews and Frequently Asked Questions sections would greatly benefit Natures

Finest Seeds product pages by providing users with extra information about their

product as well as being able to see what other people experienced with the product. In

todays day and age, having user reviews available for product based websites is pretty

essential. This will also help the websites SEO as having reviews on a product can

show up in Google via their 5 star rating system.

IV. TRUST
1. Authority (Ta)

NaturesFinestSeed.com Score: 4 / 10

HomeDepot.com Score: 9 / 10

Analysis

Natures Finest Seed has a pretty low authority rating on both its category page for

Grass Seed and its domain in general. The category page rating makes sense due to

the lack of content on the page as its essentially a link hub to more specific categories
 Calandra 10

of grass seed and provides no actual content to give it a higher authority ranking. The

domain itself also has a pretty low authority ranking and does not have very many

backlinks to the site, according to Seoreviewtools.com

It also doesnt help that none of their content includes any source links to the

information they have on their product pages. This could indicate they are experts on

the subject, but its always better to at least have an idea of where the information came

from. An author link to an accredited expert who provided the information for the product

pages would go a long way to prove Natures Finest Seeds authority on their subject.

The websites about page does help their score quite a bit though by providing

information about the company, how it was founded and even some testimonials at the

bottom of the page. There is also a page thats strictly dedicated to testimonials from

customers on the top navigation bar of the site. The link is a bit hard to spot and should

be placed somewhere more prominently on the site as its a big indicator for authority

and trust worthiness. They also include some logos from news channels and other

websites of authority that they have been featured-on on their About page.

These same testimonials and logos can also be on the Home page of Natures Finest

Seed, but you have to scroll down pretty far to see them and could easily be ignored

when youre probably just looking for a product.

2. Engaging Content (Te)

NaturesFinestSeed.com Score: 5 / 10

HomeDepot.com Score: 10 / 10
 Calandra 11

Site Bounce Page Daily Product- Product- Product-

Rate Views / Time level level level
Visitor on share ratings Reviews
Site tools
NaturesFinestSeed.co 34.20 4.30 5:28 No No No
m
HomeDepot.com 30.90 4.93 5:50 Yes Yes Yes
Data via Alexa.com

Home Depot product-level share tools

Home Depot product-level ratings and reviews

WHO IS INFORMATION FOR NATURES FINEST SEED
Domain Name: NATURESFINESTSEED.COM
Registrar: DELUXE SMALL BUSINESS SALES, INC. D/B/A APLUS.NET
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 52
Whois Server: whois.names4ever.com
Referral URL: http://www.aplus.net
Name Server: NS0.LIGHTCREST.COM
Name Server: NS1.LIGHTCREST.COM
Status: ok http://www.icann.org/epp#OK
Updated Date: 30-sep-2014
Creation Date: 29-jan-2011
Expiration Date: 29-jan-2017
 Calandra 12

Analysis

Natures Finest Seed is severely lacking in engagement tools that are essential to a

websites success in todays internet environment. None of their pages offer share tools,

product ratings or user reviews which is pretty significant and definitely hurts the

websites search engine optimization. The only social tools available on Natures Finest

Seed are links to their own social pages such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and

Youtube.

Theres very little for users to do on the site other than to browse through product pages

which reflects the websites low bounce rate and time spent on site statistics. Both of

these statistics are good, but are expected for a product based website where users

spend more time researching things they might potentially spend money on.

However, I do think Natures Finest Seeds pages per visitor count is probably a bit

skewed due to the amount of pages you have to go through to find the product youre

looking for. At the very least, if you dont go through a Google search directly to the

product youre looking for, youll have to go through the Home Page > Product Category

Page > Product, which is a total of 3 pages.

Recommendation for Improvements to Trust

I think Natures Finest Seed has the ground work to be an authoritative site on grass

seed, but their lack of any source links to creditable authors or people with experience

on the subject of grass seed hurts their trust score.

 Calandra 13

Its good that the site has testimonials and a page dedicated to showing those off

alongside their About page, but the testimonials, and even some of the names of news

outlets or other websites they have been featured on should be shown off more

prominently on the site.

Natures Finest Seed needs to implement many of the features that are available on

most modern retail sites to improve their trust factor. Home Depot absolutely destroys

Natures Finest Seed in this department and it shows via their Google search rankings,

regardless of their traffic numbers and overall authority.

Natures Finest Seed, at the very least, need to allow users to rate and review their

products to lend credibility to their promise about delivering quality products. This

promise is featured on all of their product-level pages, so having user verification on this

would be extremely helpful. Not to mention having review scores on product pages is

especially helpful for SEO as Google can place review scores on your search results.

They need to also implement share tools for their product pages which will not only help

their sales in the long run, but will also generate more backlinks to their website as

people share their products through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.

V. Architecture (As, Au, Am)

1. Speed (As)

NaturesfinestSeed.com Score: 4.6s - https://www.naturesfinestseed.com/grass-

seed

HomeDepot.com Score: 7.145s - http://www.homedepot.com/b/Outdoors-Garden-

Center-Lawn-Care-Grass-Seed/N-5yc1vZbx62
 Calandra 14

Info via webpagetest.org

Explanation

Natures Finest Seed loads relatively quickly at around 4 seconds, but it could be faster.

The site is running a lot of Javascript, which seems to be slowing the site down quite a

bit. Even looking into the source code doesnt reveal a lot of Javascript code, so Im not

entirely sure where its coming from. It could be the backend of the website if theyre

using a content management system thats loading up a lot of Javascript and causing
 Calandra 15

the increase in load times. If they have a lot of plugins installed on the site, this could

also be a factor for the increase, but that would be more in the realm of PHP loaded

files.

Surprisingly, Natures Finest Seeds images arent the main source of the websites

slower load times, but theyre not helping to make the site faster either. Looking at the

chart above, Natures Finest Seed is not optimizing their images by compressing them.

Compressing an image makes the images overall file size smaller while keeping the

quality of the photo. Having to load smaller images will reduce the load times of the site

significant.

The website is also not using a caching system for their content, which would also help

decrease load times quite a bit. Caching serves users with a static HTML file instead of

loading the actual file itself which heavily reduces load times.

Home Depot also doesnt use caching according to the charts above, so Natures Finest

Seed could see a significant boost in their search rankings by optimizing their websites

speed. With the small amount of content on Natures Finest Seeds product category

pages, their speeds should be much faster than they already are.

Recommendation for Improvements

Much like most product based websites, Natures Finest Seed is inundated with a lot of

images. The fact that they are not compressing these images is significantly hurting

their load times and could easily be fixed via the use of a backend plugin. This should

be a top priority issue for the website to fix as they do have a lot of images on their

website.
 Calandra 16

Some images on the site could also be removed entirely or left only on certain pages.

Their Instagram feed, while nice, is relatively unnecessary and doesnt need to be on

every page of the website. They have already linked it in their top nav section and on

the bottom of their website in the footer where they have their other social links. Its

redundant and increases the load time unnecessarily.

This could also be said about the large background image found on every single page

related to grass seed below the main nav bar. Again, this image is redundant, and its a

fairly large image that undoubtedly increases the load time on the site. If they had it on

the main product-category page, that would be acceptable, but it does not need to be on

every single page related to grass. They do the same thing on all their other categories

as well.

Natures Finest Seed should also find out why their site is loading a lot of Javascript and

see if they can reduce the amount being loaded each time a page is viewed. Again, a

backend caching system could help this out quite a bit and reduce the sites load times.

To provide feedback on how to set a caching system up, Id need to know what type of

backend service Natures Finest Seed is using, if any.

2. URLs (Au)

NaturesFinestSeed.com Score: 9 / 10
 Calandra 17

HomeDepot.com Score: 6 / 10

Current URLS

Natures Seed URL for Category Page: https://www.naturesfinestseed.com/grass-

seed

Natures Seed URL for Product-Level Page of Perennial Ryegrass:

https://www.naturesfinestseed.com/perennial-ryegrass

Home Depot URL for Category Page: http://www.homedepot.com/b/Outdoors-

Garden-Center-Lawn-Care-Grass-Seed/N-5yc1vZbx62

Home Depot URL for Product-Level Page of Pennington Annual Ryegrass Seed:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Pennington-50-lb-Annual-Ryegrass-Grass-Seed-

100333280/100333280

Recommend New URLS

Natures Seed URL for Category Page: https://www.naturesfinestseed.com/lawn-

grass-seed

Natures Seed URL for Product-Level Page of Perennial Ryegrass:

https://www.naturesfinestseed.com/perennial-ryegrass

Explanation

Natures Finest Seeds URL structure is spot on for the most part. Their URLs follow

Googles guidelines very well, only including relevant words in their page URLs. If you

visit the Grass Seed category page, the URL only includes the domain name, the top

level domain (.com) and the page directory which has the url slug, grass-seed. The only
 Calandra 18

change I would make to that page is to include lawn in the URL to increase search

results for the keyword phrase, lawn grass, that I identified at the start of this report.

In comparison to Home Depots URLs for their pages and product pages, Natures

Finest Seed blows them out of the water. Home Depot includes a lot of extra figures in

their URLs that make them unnecessarily long. Unfortunately for Natures Finest Seed,

URL structure doesnt really help to increase their search engine optimization all that

much, but based on their other areas its good that they at least have their URLs

correct.

3. Mobile (Am)

NaturesFinestSeed.com Score: 8 / 10

HomeDepot.com Score: 10 / 10

Explanation

Both Natures Finest Seed and Home Depot are mobile compatible sites. Only Natures

Finest Seed is a responsive site though in terms of design. The biggest difference

between the two websites on mobile is that Home Depot significantly reduces the

amount of content on the page, while Natures Finest Seed simply lays all the content

out in a vertical format.

All of the content youd see on the desktop version of Natures Finest Seed is present,

including the same annoying header image below the main navigation bar, and the

unnecessary Instagram widget at the bottom of every page. The mobile version of the
 Calandra 19

site works just fine, but it could take a few ideas from Home Depot, specifically reducing

all the unnecessary fluff.

Home Depots product pages are simplified to provide users with small pages that

include all of the same content as the desktop version of the site, but to see each

section you can click on a tabbed section of the page to expand it and see things like

the User Reviews and Frequently Asked Questions sections. I actually prefer the mobile

version of Home Depots website to its desktop version specifically for this reason.

The URLs on both sites stay relatively the same, with Home Depots switching to a

m.homedepot.com URL instead of the regular www.homedepot.com. Though,

everything after the .com remains the same as what was listed above in the URL

section.

Recommendation for Improvements

Natures Finest Seed should get rid of all the

unnecessary content from the desktop version of

their site on the mobile version of their site. Since

the site uses a responsive web design this would

prove to be a challenge without removing things

from the entire site altogether.

Again, looking back at past recommendations, Natures Finest Seed should remove the

Instagram section from all of their pages outside of maybe the Home page and a few

other select pages where it might be deemed necessary.

 Calandra 20

If possible, Natures Finest Seed should also find a way to make the content on their

product pages more mobile friendly instead of just laying everything out vertically.

Finding a way to make the information tabbed on their product pages like Home Depot

has done on theirs would be very beneficial for load times and overall usability on the

site.

VI. HTML: Current Keyword Location Analysis (Ht, Hd)

1. Title Tags

Current Tags

Natures Seed Product-Category Page: <title>Grass Seeds | Best Grass &amp; Lawn

Seed | Nature's Seed</title>

Natures Seed Product-Level Page for Perennial Ryegrass Seed Blend:

<title>Perennial Ryegrass Seed Blend | Nature's Seed</title>

HomeDepot.com Product-Category Page: <title>Grass Seed - Lawn Care - Garden

Center - &nbsp;The Home Depot</title>

HomeDepot.com Product-Level Page for Pennington Annual Ryegrass Seed:

<title>Pennington 50 lb. Annual Ryegrass Grass Seed-100333280 - The Home

Depot</title>

Recommended New Title Tags

Natures Seed Product-Category Page: <title> Lawn Grass Seed | Natures Seed

</title>

Natures Seed Product-Level Page for Perennial Ryegrass Seed Blend: <title>

Perennial Ryegrass Seed Blend | Natures Seed </title>

 Calandra 21

Explanation

Natures Finest Seeds title tags for both their product-category page and product-level

pages were pretty good and needed some basic restructuring to look a little cleaner for

search results. The title tags for pages are what show up in Google when you do a

search. The image below shows what the Lawn Grass Seed page currently looks like in

Google.

To update this to better reflect the websites focus on the keyword Lawn Grass Seed, I

removed the unnecessary fluff from the title tag and simplified it to just Lawn Grass

Seed. Putting Lawn Grass Seed at the front of the title should yield higher search

results.

Having Best Grass and Lawn Seed in the title wont do much to increase search

results and added unnecessary words to their title tag when the product category page

is completely focused on Lawn Grass Seed.

2. Description Meta Tags

Current Meta Tags

NaturesFinestSeed.com Product Category Page: <meta name="description"

content="America's favorite seed company has grown to become one of the leading

suppliers of agricultural, reclamation, grass seed, &amp;amp; lawn seed in North

 Calandra 22

America. In addition to our own production fields, we use an extensive network of

trusted wildland seed collectors and growers. Learn More!"/>

NaturesFinestSeed.com Product-Level Page for Perennial Ryegrass Seed Blend:

<meta name="description" content="Nature's Finest Seed provides quality perennial

ryegrass seed blends for a quickly-established and lush rye grass lawn."/>

HomeDepot.om Product Category Page: <meta name="description" content="Shop

our selection of Grass Seed in the Outdoors Department at The Home Depot."/>

HomeDepot.com Product-Level Page for Pennington Annual Ryegrass Seed:

<meta name="description" content="Pennington Seed Annual Ryegrass Grass Seed is

designed for temporary or seasonal lawns. Convenient to maintain and long lasting

usage." />

Recommended New Meta Tags

NaturesFinestSeed.com Product Category Page: <meta name=description

content=Natures Finest Seed offers a wide variety of different affordable lawn grass

seed blends.>

NaturesFinestSeed.com Product-Level Page for Perennial Ryegrass Seed Blend:

<meta name=description content = Grow a beautiful lawn in only a fraction of the time

with Perennial Ryegrass seed blend.

Explanation

Description meta tags are used to summarize the content of the page in Googles

search rankings and as of right now, they arent being used very well by Natures Finest
 Calandra 23

Seed. Currently the websites summaries are pretty generic, long-winded and dont

make use of relevant keywords.

Just like the title tags for the website, the description should tell the user what theyre

going to find the page in the quickest way possible. Right now, their descriptions are

way too wordy and dont describe whats on the page, but more general information

about the company that a person searching for a certain type of lawn grass seed dont

need to see.

Ive updated the tags to be shorter and less wordy so that all they do is describe whats

on the page and use relevant keywords to increase optimization on search engines.

3. IMG Names and ALT Text

Current Image Tag Details:

Image File Name = Untitled-4.jpg

Alt text = None

Recommendations for Improvements to This Image

Image File Name = types_of_grass_seed.jpg

 Calandra 24

Alt text = Category page for different types of grass

seed

Current Image Tag Details

Image File Name = ornamenetal_grass_2.jpg

Alt text=None

Recommendations for Improvements to This Image

Image File Name = ornamental_grass.jpg

Alt text= Category Page for Ornamental Grasses

Current Image Tag Details

Image File Name = byregion_1_1.jpg

Alt text=None
 Calandra 25

Recommendations for Improvements to This Image

Image File Name = grass_by_region.jpg

Alt text= Category Page for Grasses by Region

Explanation

For the images and alternate text section the Lawn Grass Seed category was used as

thats the category link Ive stuck with for the majority of this paper. On that page, theres

only four total images that each lead to another sub-category, so I chose the three that I

thought most people would click on most.

Interestingly some of Natures Finest Seeds images have file names, and others dont.

The images that did have file names often included numbers, which is unnecessary.

However, none of the images used alternative text, which obviously doesnt do much to

help their SEO rankings.

When you place a picture on your website, you want the file name to be associated with

the picture so when people do a Google Search for something like grass seed, your

images show up in the search for grass seed which will bring you more traffic. Google
 Calandra 26

will see the file name and the keywords you put in the file name so instead of Untitled-

4.jpg, itd be better to use grass-seed.jpg.

The alternative text for the image is what appears on the site if your images arent able

to load, so it should describe the image using a couple of relevant keywords or, if youre

linking to another page and the image is all that you would normally see for the link, you

could provide text to tell the user where theyre going if they click on that image/text link.

It is not recommended to use images for links to other pages of a website, according to

Googles SEO guide.

My improvements to the images removed all the unnecessary characters from their file

names and added relevant alternative text to the images. Removing the numbers from

the file names and only using keywords should help with SEO and general organization

of the site by making it easier for Google to read. Since none of the images even had alt

text, adding that in will of course help with optimization and provide a fix for when

images dont show up on the website.

VII. Links (Ln, Lq)

a. Link Number (Ln)

NaturesFinestSeed.com No. of Referring Domains: 841

HomeDepot.com No. of Referring Domains: 80,701

 Calandra 27

Natures Finest Seed

Home Depot

b. Link Quality (Lq)

NaturesFinestSeed.com Link Quality: 2 / 10

HomeDepot.com Link Quality: 9 / 10

Explanation

Natures Finest Seed link quality is very low. Theres no comparison between them and

Home Depot has a very high number of Government and Educational backlinks (chart

below) compared to Natures Finest Seeds one recorded back link from a .edu backlink.

Due to their low traffic numbers and complete lack of social share capabilitites, its not

surprising to see that not very many sites have linked back to Natures Finest Seed.
 Calandra 28

Noted in the authority section, Natures Finest Seed doesnt have very many, if any,

outbound or source links on their site which makes it hard to call them a credible

source. Having very little to back the website as a credible source doesnt help with

acquiring notable backlinks from other reputable sources.

In Natures Finest Seeds list of recent backlinks, the highest rated, Gardening

Launchpad, had a TrustFlow rating of 37 which is quite low, alongside a very, very high

Alexa rank of over 8 million which means the site gets very little traffic. So if thats the

benchmark for sites linking back to Natures Finest Seed then the bar obviously isnt

very high. At least the site that linked back wasnt a spam site and had a similar subject

focus.

HOME DEPOT

Educational Ref. Backlinks 1,479

Governmental Ref. Backlinks 1,145
Educational Ref. Domains 367
Governmental Ref. Domains 123
Info via MagesticSEO

NATURES FINEST SEED

Educational Ref. Backlinks 1

Educational Ref. Domains 1
Info via MagesticSEO

VIII. Social Analysis

Social Signals: Sharing (Ss):

NatureSFinestSeed.com Score: 2 / 10

HomeDepot.com Score: 7 / 10
 Calandra 29

Current Share Tools

Natures Finest Seeds Top Navigation

Natures Finest Seeds Footer

Recommended Improved Share Tools

Natures Finest Seed product-level page

Explanation

Current Tools on Natures Finest Seed only allows users to go to the social pages

associated with the website. There are currently no share tools on the website to share

Natures Finest Seeds content on popular social media outlets like Facebook and
 Calandra 30

Twitter. This is detrimential to the site as it already doesnt receive a whole lot of traffic,

and by not utilizing social media they are losing out on a big source of referral traffic.

Natures Finest Seed also doesnt utilize their social pages very well either. Their

Facebook page currently only has 248 likes which is very low. Their Twitter page, which

utilizes the same posts as the Facebook page has a much higher follower count at

5,195. Adding the recommended social sharing buttons (seen above) would benefit

Natures Finest Seed by hopefully increasing backlinks to their site and increasing their

social media viewership.

Though, the website will have to do more than just add social share buttons to increase

their social media presence. They should be looking into recent trends, like the rise of

tutorial videos, to increase their social media footprint. Not that its really part of this

paper, but If Natures Finest Seed were to do something creative on their social media

pages, per say, time lapse videos of different types of their grass seed growing, theres

a chance those videos could go viral and highly increase their social media counts,

sales and visitors to their website.

Home Depot has social tools available on their website and as you can probably

imagine, being a household name has garnered them a large following on their social

media pages. Their Twitter account currently has 342K followers, with the Facebook

page boasting a whopping 2.6 million follwers.

The main issue I see with Home Depots social media share tools on their website is

their placement and color. Theyre placed in a spot thats not super easy to spot and are
 Calandra 31

greyed out making them even harder to spot if youre really not paying that close

attention.

IX. Priority Recommendations

Social (Ps + 2) I tink Natures Finest Seed, being the small website that they are,

absolutley have to focus on their social media footprint. Being a product-based website,

they wont be posting new content on a daily basis. If youre not a household name like

Home Depot or Lowes, you need to be creative with how you drive traffic to your

website and as of right now, Natures Finest Seed is not utilizing social media to their

benefit.

This wil linvolve more than just posting on their social media channels though. They

need to come up with a creative social media plan to get their website and content out

into the world, along with adding social share tools to their product pages so when

people see a product they like, or have bought a product and want to share it with their

friends / family, they can easily do that.

 Calandra 32

Engage (Te +2) Natures Finest Seed is pretty outdated when it comes to modern day

product-based websites. They currently offer very little for their customers to engage

with by not offering the ability for customers to review the products theyve bought, or

ask questions about them for other users to see.

This is something that I believe also hurts a websites authority when they arent able to

show that they can answer a customers direct question about a product. When

answering a question one or many customers might have, sometimes a simple link back

to an answer provided to someone can provide the website with very valuable

backlinks.

Speed (As + 1) While not a huge issue with Natures Finest Seed, theres some minor

fixes they could make on their website that would help speed up their website and in

turn, their SEO. Finding the source of the heavy loading Javascript files and making

sure to compress their images will decrease load times. Installing a back-end caching

system for the website would also help decrease load times.