Alpert 1

Kasey Alpert
Into to Web Publishing
Jacquie Lamer
SEO Assignment
4/9/15
SEO Analysis and Recommendations

I.

Keyword Research 3 Recommended Keywords (Cr)

a. The 3 keywords/phrases I think will drive the most traffic:
i. Prescription sunglasses
ii. Polarized prescription sunglasses
iii. Ray ban prescription sunglasses
b. Current rankings of my 3 keywords
Ranking of Recommended Keywords on
SimplyEyeglasses.com
Keyword
Googl Bing Yahoo
e
Prescription sunglasses
no
no
no
Polarized prescription
12
no
no
sunglasses
Ray ban prescription
13
no
no
sunglasses
Ranking of Recommended Keywords on
FramesDirect.com
Keyword
Googl Bing Yahoo
e
Prescription sunglasses
2
2
no
Polarized prescription
2
1
no
sunglasses
Ray ban prescription
2
8
no
sunglasses
Ranking information from mikes-marketing-tools.com
No means not in top 10 of Google, top 50 of Yahoo or top
10 of Bing

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c. Explanation of my choices:
i. Prescription sunglasses: This is the keyword focus given to
me by the client. My research through Google Trends on this
keyword suggests that there is a consistently of it being a
popular search phrase is the warm months. During the colder
months, the popularity of this search phrase declines.

ii. Polarized prescription sunglasses: After studying

SimplyEyeglasses.com and Google trends, I decided to choose
this phrase because it showed an upward trend on the graph
of its popularity. There were also more spikes of an increase in
popularity than there were of a decrease in popularity.
SimplyEyeglasses.com carries polarized prescription glasses,
and using this long-tail keyword is slightly more specific than
prescription sunglasses so searching this keyword would
turn up better results. This keyword phrase will help drive

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traffic by directing people who are specifically looking for

polarized sunglasses to the SimplyEyeglasses.com site.

iii. Ray ban prescription sunglasses: I picked this keyword

phrase because not only did it have an upward trend in
popularity, but over the last couple of years it has had an
overall increase in popularity. Ray Ban is a popular brand of
eyeware, and it is a brand carried by SimplyEyeglasses.com. It
would be wise to direct ray ban searches to
SimplyEyeglasses.com to help drive traffic.

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Even though the prescription sunglasses keyword had far more

popularity than the other two keywords, they are both still good
choices and would help to drive traffic towards SimplyEyeglasses.com
if the site was optimized to those keyword phrases.

Prescription

Ray ban
prescription
sunglasses

Polarized
prescription
sunglasses

Alpert 5

II.

Current Traffic
SimplyEyeglasses.com Monthly Unique Visitors: According to
Compete.com, for the month of February 2015 SimplyEyeglasses.com had
26,797 unique visitors.
FramesDirect.com Monthly Unique Visitors: According to
Compete.com, for the month of February FramesDirect.com had 292,372
unique visitors.
Analysis: According to data from compete.com, SimplyEyeglasses.com
stays at about the same number of unique visitors during from Feb 2014
to Feb 2015 while FramesDirect.com has a greater increase in unique
visitors. SimplyEyeglasses.com gets between 20,000 and 30,000 unique
visitors each month while FramesDirect.com had a steady monthly visitor
number of approx. 180,000 until it reached a spike in Dec 2014 with
284,007 unique visitors.

III.

Content Analysis
a. Overall Quality (Cq, Vt, Va)
SimplyEyeglasses.com Score: 6
FramesDirect.com Score: 8
Analysis: All of the pages on the SimplyEyeglasses.com site are
well written and there are no typos that can be found. Each of the
product pages have their own text information, which gives quality
content and information about the product to the visitor. The
content seems to be well written because it mentions some specific
things about the glasses that are of importance to the visitor. These

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are things like who the frames are designed for, information about
the warranty on the glasses, who the designer is, and if the glasses
come with a case. There are no dates on the product pages, but the
content provided seems to be accurate and up to date. According to
Plagspotter.com, the product info for each product is unique, but a
set template is used for each information paragraph. For the most
part, there is a set order of how each product description is defined
and so when the template is used the product information is just
plugged in for each of the products. There are also pictures of each
product so the visitor can see what the product actually looks like,
however it is just one picture from a single angle. On the main
category page for prescription sunglasses, there is a list of brands
which the visitor can browse through before choosing the right one.
On the product page there are no ads, but there two on the page
prescription sunglass category page. Both of the ads are in-house
ads. One of them leads to information on the polarized lenses that
are offered on the site. The other leads to information on the
transition lenses that are offered on the site. When compared the
content of the same product on FramesDirect.com, it becomes clear
that the quality is not matched. FramesDirect.com lists more detail
about the product than SimplyEyeglasses.com does. There is more
information on what comes with glasses, but also information on the
brand. FramesDirect.com also only have one photo of each product,

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but they have a try-on feature in which a personal photo could be

uploaded so the visitor can virtually try-on the glasses.
Recommendations for improvements: My first recommendation
would be for SimplyEyeglasses.com to hire a copywriter to help
spruce up the product information. The product information should
be of quality and be something that makes the visitor want to
purchase the product. SimplyEyeglasses.com should also offer a
virtual try-on. They could either do something similar to what
FramesDirect.com does, and have somewhere where a personal
photo of the visitor could be uploaded. They could also have a live
try-on, where the webcam could be accessed and the visitor could
virtually choose products to try on. Either way, there needs to be a
way for visitors to try on products. If a visitor cant see what the
product looks like on, they will go somewhere else that offers it.
b. Engaging Content (Ce):
SimplyEyeglasses.com Score: 4
FramesDirect Score: 9

Site

SimplyEyeglasse
s.com
Framesdirect.co
m

Page
View
s/Visi
tor

Dail
y
Tim
e on
Site

Produ
ctlevel
share
tools

Produ
ctlevel
rating
s

Product
-level
Reviews

60.80%

2.40

2:18

no

no

no

35.60%

5.06

4:47

yes

yes

yes

Bounce
Rate

Analysis: According to Alexa.com, the bounce rate for

SimplyEyeglasses.com is about 61%. After researching the average

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bounce rate for e-commerce sites on Conversionvoodoo.com, it can

be determined that SimplyEyeglasses.com has a high bounce rate.
SimplyEyeglasses.com have a somewhat engaging site since the
visitors are spending about 2 minutes on the site. But, if
comparing their time on site to FramesDirect.com, it is clear that
FramesDirect.com has a more engaging site because the visitors are
viewing more pages and staying on the site longer.
SimplyEyeglasses.com does not have much content for visitors to
be engaged with. There are no product-level share tools, no
individual rating, and no reviews. There are reviews but they are for
the entire site not just for one product specifically, even though
they appear on each product page. The only social media icons on
product-level pages is a Facebook like button. Frames Direct does
have a Twitter and Google Plus icons on their product pages, along
with the Facebook like button. Unlike SimplyEyeglasses.com,
FramesDirect.com does have reviews and ratings for each of the
products that they sell on their site. This helps visitors be more
engaged because they can see what others said about the product
and how high or low the product is rated.
Recommendation for improvements: SimplyEyeglasses.com
should add more social media share tools on the product-level.
Many people want the opinions of friends and family when buying
products such as eyeglasses. So, if there was a way to share an

Alpert 9

image of a product, the visitor could get instant feedback on the

product they are considering buying. If SimplyEyeglasses.com
added the virtual try-on to their site, they could add social media
share tools so that the image the visitor uploaded and then tried out
a product with, could be shared on social media. There should also
be product specific reviews and ratings. Having reviews for each
product will help visitors decide which product(s) to get. Knowing
how a product fit on someone, and if they had any comments on
how it looks in real-life as opposed to on the internet could have an
effect on if a visitor bought said product. Also, seeing the ratings
helps with finding the most popular product. The most popular
products tend to be bought the most, because visitors know that the
product worked well and that the buyer was satisfied with it.
IV.

Social Analysis
a. Social Signals: Reputation (Sr):
SimplyEyeglasses.com Score: 5
FramesDirect.com Score: 9
Analysis: According to Sitescore.co, SimplyEyeglasses.com has a
low social media score (3/10). This means that
SimplyEyeglasses.com is not mentioned very much on social media
by visitors. To back up this information, Socialmention.com also
states that SimplyEyeglasses.com does not have much of a
presence on social media. On Socialmention.com there are only 3
social media mentions, and they range from being posted 6-20
months ago. Two of those posts are from Reddit and the other is

Alpert 10

from Youtube. The official Facebook page for SimplyEyeglasses.com

only has 1,121 likes. In the past, they posted several times a month,
but there are no new posts since January 15th. The Twitter page for
SimplyEyeglasses.com is completely out of date. There are no new
tweets since August of 2012. Their Twitter handle has 143 followers
and is following 276 users. FramesDirect.com has a high social
media score on Site Score, which means that they have more
visitors talking about their site. They also have 64 mentions on
Social Mention, with the latest post from just several days previous.
There are 10,000 visitors that have liked the Facebook page for
Frames Direct, which is about 10 times more likes than
SimplyEyeglasses.com has. Their Twitter page is also up-to-date,
with their latest tweet from several hours earlier in the day. They
have 3,862 followers and they follow 1,084 users, and they also
have 3,891 tweets since they joined in 2007.
Recommendations for improvements: At the present,
SimplyEyeglasses.com is not making great use of their social media
accounts. They arent posting enough content for their followers to
stay engaged. I recommend that they start using their Facebook on
a more regular basis, and post a minimum of once per day. I also
recommend that they back onto their Twitter account and post an
average of 5 or 6 tweets per day. It would also be wise to start using
other social media accounts such as: Instagram, Pinterest, and

Alpert 11

Youtube. The more social media accounts that

SimplyEyeglasses.com has and uses, the more engaged their
visitors will have with their site.
b. Social Signals: Sharing (Ss):
SimplyEyeglasses.com Score: 5
FramesDirect.com Score: 8
Analysis: SimplyEyeglasses.com only has Facebook and Twitter
links on their site, both as links in the bottom navigation and as
buttons on the bottom left, underneath the sidebar.
FramesDirect.com has all of their social media icons on the bottom
left, above their bottom navigation. Along with the standard
Facebook and Twitter, they also have Google Plus, Pinterest,
Instagram, Youtube, and a link to their blog. There does not seem to
be much of a focus on sharing products to social media.
Recommendations for improvements: Instead of using links to
social media, SimplyEyeglasses.com should use icons like
FramesDirect.com does. Because of the consistency of the use of
social media icons throughout the internet, it would be beneficial to
switch to those icons since visitors are expecting to see them.
Another option could be for SimplyEyeglasses.com to use a site
called Sharethis.com that allow for customizable social media
buttons and icons.

How the links look on

SimplyEyeglasses.com

Alpert 12

Recommendation for how the

links should look like

Another option for the

social media icons from
shareit.com

V.

HTML: Current Keyword Location Analysis (Ht, Hd, Hh)

a. Title Tags
SimplyEyeglasses.com Product Category Page:
<title>Designer Brands | Designer Frames, Designer Eyewear,
Prescription Eyeglasses</title>
FramesDirect.com Product Category Page: <title>Prescription
Sunglasses Online: Designer RX Shades for Men, Women</title>
Explanation: I choose both of these pages to analyze because they
are both product-level pages. These are both pages where
prescription sunglasses can be bought, which is the keyword focus.
The title tag for SimplyEyeglasses.com lists the word Designer 3
times in the title. It also doesnt mention that the page is just
strictly prescription sunglasses. In fact, it doesnt even mention the
word Sunglasses at all in the title tag, which is something that
they should do. They also use other words to describe glasses:
frames, eyeware, and eyeglasses. The very first words in the title
are Designer Brands. This would be more accurate for the home
page maybe, but not for a product-level page. There is also a
vertical line that is used as a spacer in the title. The title tag for

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FramesDirect.com is more specific and accurately describes what is

on the product page, which is prescription sunglasses. The word
prescription is used twice, once it is fully spelled out and the other it
is just the letters RX. The title also mentions that the sunglasses
are for men and women, which is something that
SimplyEyeglasses.com does not mention at all. The title tag is very
important because this is what will show up on SERPs and also
appears in the browser window.
Title

Title

Recommendations for improvements: The title tags are much

like that of a headline, and should be treated as one. I would
recommend that SimplyEyeglasses.com rewrite their title page so
that it reflects the content that is actually on the page. Prescription
sunglasses should at least be in the title along with some of the
other words that are in their original title. Their new title should be
something like this: Prescription Sunglasses: Designer Sunglasses
brands for men and women.

Alpert 14

b. Description meta tag

SimplyEyeglasses.com Product Category Page: <meta
name="description" content="Source for designer brands for all
types of eyewear. Buy new eyeglasses, prescription eyeglasses,
glasses and eyewear online from retailer Simply Eyeglasses. Find
designer eyeglasses and eyeglass lenses at discount prices.">
FramesDirect.com Product Category Page: <meta
name="description" content="Prescription Sunglasses Online |
Purchase RX Sunglasses from popular brands like Oakley, Ray Ban,
Maui Jim and Bolle at the best sunglass prices.">
Explanation: The description meta tag for the
SimplyEyeglasses.com prescription sunglasses page lists eyeglasses
6 times, which is sign of keyword stuffing. The word prescription
could probably be mentioned again, since this is the description
page for the prescription sunglasses. The description meta tag for
FramesDirect.com is more specific than SimplyEyeglasses.com.
They list as with their title tag, the word prescription twiceonce
with the entire word and once with the letters RX. They also list a
few popular brands in their description, which is good because when
the FramesDirect.com prescription sunglasses page comes up on
SERPs the brands will be listed in the snippet under the title.

Alpert 15

Descripti
on meta
tag

Descripti
on meta Recommendations for improvements: I recommend that
tag

SimplyEyeglasses.com make their description meta tag similar to

what FramesDirect.com has for theirs. The description for the
prescription sunglasses page needs to be more specific and should
include some designer brand names like Ray Ban for example. Since
this description is displayed as a snippet on SERPs and serves as a
summary to visitors, it should be more descriptive about what the
page is actually about.
c. IMG names and ALT text
Explanation: Since there are no images on the prescription
sunglasses page, I will looking at the images of one of the Ray Ban
prescription sunglass products. All of the images, whether they are
the large images or the thumbnails, are generated through a script
and not an image tag. Through the JavaScript all of the urls of the
images are stored in an array (which is basically a list). As the script
runs, it displayed the image when it is clicked on. The logo is
another important image, but the actual img tag couldnt be found.

Alpert 16

The logo image on the site is actually just a link, and not an image
tag.
<img alt="" width="150" height="75" title="602017 Matte Blue Crystal Green Mirror Blue (+$16.50)"
src="http://www.simplyeyeglasses.com//special_code/image.php/i
mages/p/6048/0RB4105__602017.jpg?
This is the image
that appears as a big image when the product is
width=150&amp;height=75&amp;image=/images/p/6048/0RB410
5__602017.jpg" border="0" onclick="selectFrameColor(0);">

clicked and it appears above the fold on the site. This product is a
Ray-Ban RB4105 Folding Wayfarer and the name of the image uses
the number that the product type is. The name of the product can
be seen in the image name, but overall the name of the image is
not done very well. It is mostly just a bunch of numbers. There is
also no ALT text on this image, it is just an empty tag. This is not
advised because if an image reader is being used, it will skip right
over this image since it has no alt text.

Here is what the product page above the fold looks like:

Alpert 17

Recommendations for improvements: I would first recommend

that SimplyEyeglasses.com name their images so that the actual
product name could be found. The structure of where the mage is
actually stored should be changed. An example of this would be:
/images/sunglasses/prescription/ray-ban/wayfarer4105.jpg

Imag
es

Glasses
Sunglasse
Prescriptio

Alpert 18

The category page, which currently contains no images, should be

updated. An example of how this could look would be the following
photo, which is of FramesDirect.com. If there were images, then the
visitors would have a better idea of what each product looked like
without having to click and open up each of the products first.

VI.

Architecture (as, Au, Am)

a. Speed (As)
SimplyEyeglasses.com Score: 21.742s and .978s
FramesDirect.com Score: 3.138s and 2.089s
Explanation: The first set of numbers are how long the page took
to load on first view, according to webpagetest.com. The second set
of numbers are how long the page took to load on a repeat view.

Alpert 19

Both of the sites have a lot of images, which cause the page to take
longer to load. The following images show the percentage of
requests a site gets for loading:

SimplyEyeglasses.com

FramesDirect.c

Recommendations for improvements: When looking at the

waterfall diagram for the first time load provided by
Webpagetest.com, it shows that there is a .flv video file that takes a
long time to load. This video file slows down the total loading time
of the site.

To make the site load faster I would recommend one of two things.
Either get rid of the video, if it isnt adding any value to site. Or
condensing it to a smaller size or quality so that it wont take as
long to load. The same file takes even longer to load on the repeat
view waterfall diagram:

Alpert 20

Again, I would recommend the same as stated above about the

video file. There is also a goDaddy file that takes slightly longer to
load. This is possibility a hosting file, so the only fix would be to
change sites where SimplyEyeglasses.com is hosted. This would be
a major project, so the pros and cons need to be weighed to see if
by switched hosts the site would load faster.
b. URLs (Au)
SimplyEyeglasses.com Score: 5
FramesDirect.com Score: 9
Explanation: On the prescription sunglass category page for
SimplyEyeglasses.com the url is as follows:
http://www.simplyeyeglasses.com/eyeglasses-sunglasses/framesbrands.php?product=Sunglasses&rx=1. There is all of this extra
stuff in the url that doesnt need to be there. The url for the
comparable page on FramesDirect.com is:
http://www.framesdirect.com/prescription-sunglasses/. This is a
clean and precise url. By looking at it, it is clear that the page is
currently on the prescription sunglasses category page. This is not
the case with the SimplyEyeglasses.com page. It is unclear, by
looking at the url, what page the browser is currently on.
Recommendations for improvements: The first thing I would
suggest is that SimplyEyeglasses.com make separate folders for

Alpert 21

eyeglasses, sunglasses, and prescription glasses. That way it will be

clear what category of glasses is currently being displayed. The
entire file structure should be redone so that the urls are descriptive
and not filled with text that is confusing. An example of a good url
for the prescription sunglasses page for SimplyEyeglasses.com
could be: SimplyEyeglasses.com/prescription/sunglasses/brands.
Real words should be used in the url so visitors have a clear
understanding of the page they are on or going to visit.
c. Mobile (Am)
SimplyEyeglasses.com Score: 4
FramesDirect.com Score: 10
Explanation: SimplyEyeglasses.com doesnt have a responsive
website. They do have a complete mobile site, but there is no
responsive design integrated into it. On their mobile site the page
lists the most popular glasses with images, but on some of the
products where the images should be, it instead says image not
available. FramesDirect.com on the other hand has a fully
responsive website that includes sizes from mobile to the larger
tablet size.
Recommendations for improvements: Responsive design is
something that most people look for on a mobile website. I would
recommend that SimplyEyeglasses.com code their site so that it
does have some responsive elements to it. This is a relatively
simple thing to change in the coding, and the outcome is

Alpert 22

completely worth it. If SimplyEyeglasses.com had a responsive site,

their visitors would be more impressed with how the site looks than
how it does now.
VII.

Links (Ln, Lq)

a. Link Number (Ln)
SimplyEyeglasses.com No. of Referring Domains: 383
FramesDirect.com No. of Referring Domains: 3,245
b. Link Quality (lq)
SimplyEyeglasses.com No. of Referring Domains:
FramesDirect.com No. of Referring Domains: 6
Explanation: There was not a direct number for the amount
restricted urls that SimplyEyeglasses.com had, but looking through
the list of backlinks there were none that could be found.
FramesDirect.com has 31 educational backlinks and 12
governmental backlinks, according to MagesticSEO.com. These are
fairly good numbers for restricted urls.

VIII.

Conclusions and Priority Recommendations

The first thing that I would recommend that SimplyEyeglasses.com start
with would be to fix the content quality of the products needs to be
improved. This means that the descriptions need to be written better and
have more substantial content to them. There should be more information
on each of the products so that the visitor knows everything about the
product they are thinking about getting. The html on the site needs a big
overhaul, so this would be the next recommendation. The title tags need
to be changed that that they are actually descriptive of the content that is

Alpert 23

on the page. The description meta tags also need to reflect the content on
the page. The more descriptive they are, the quicker a visitor can find the
page they are looking for when searching keywords. For the keywords that
SimplyEyeglasses.com is trying to optimize for, I would suggest that they
add those keywords in to the description meta tag, but only on the pages
where the keywords are actually relevant and accurately summarize the
products displayed on the site. The next recommendation I have would be
for SimplyEyeglasses.com to have more activity on their social media
accounts. This will help drive traffic to the site; the more people that see
and read information about the site the more will visit it. I would also
suggest that SimplyEyeglasses.com follow their competitors lead, and
supply their visitors with a virtual try-on of the products that are available.
This will help turn the visitors into actual customers because they can see
the product and how it looks on them. The entire SimplyEyeglasses.com
site needs to be comply scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up. The site
looks dated, which could potentially turn visitors away because they may
think that the site is not actually still a running business. The site should
also be made so that it is a responsive design website. Mobile is not that
important to SEO right now, but it will be on April 21st 2015. If
SimplyEyeglasses.com wants to be on par with their competitors, they
should have a responsive site before April 21st.