This week on the podcast, I’m doing something totally new: I’m auditing a dietitian’s website live on the podcast!

In this episode, I’m sharing what this dietitian is doing well right now and what they can improve on in order to get more traffic from Google searches.

And as a bonus, I’m recording the whole thing on video so you can see exactly what I’m talking about as I analyze this website. 

Register to access the free video recording and watch me do an in-depth audit while providing valuable advice and suggestions that may be applicable to your own site as well.

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Episode Transcript

This week on the podcast, I’m doing something totally new. I’m going to review a dietitian’s website, live on the podcast and do sort of a mini audit sharing what this dietitian is doing well right now and what they can improve in order to get more traffic from Google searches. And obviously, if you’re listening to this right now, it’s just audio, but I do have a video version available for free as well. 

On my website. If you head to theunconventionalrd.com/auditvault. You can register to access the video recording of this live audit as well. That way you can actually see exactly what I’m talking about as I analyze this website. And hopefully find some of the advice and suggestions helpful and applicable to your own site as well. 

And if this type of episode ends up being popular, I’ll continue to do these free mini audits periodically and upload all the recordings to that same spot on my site. That was theunconventionalrd.com/auditvault. So once you’re registered, you’ll be able to access all the recordings in the same area of my site. 

So again, just head to theunconventionalrd.com/auditvault to register to access this free video recording.

And special shout out to all of my SEO course students who threw their names in the ring to get a free audit. I posted in my students only Facebook group to see if anyone would be interested in having me review their site on video for people to publicly watch and over 60 people responded. And I just kind of clicked through the submissions randomly until I found a site that I thought my listeners could really benefit from seeing an audit done on. 

Basically a site that represented things that I see a lot of new bloggers struggle with. So I hope you get a lot of value out of this as a listener. 

And thank you to Angela Lago, whose website I ultimately ended up selecting for this audit for allowing us to review your site. I hope you get some valuable and actionable feedback as well that can really make some changes and improvements that will bring you more traffic. 

And if I end up doing more of these audits, I will always pull examples from people who are in my course at the moment. So if you want to be eligible for something like this and want to learn more about my SEO course, head to SEOwaitlist.com and add your name to the list. And once you’re on the list, you’ll eventually receive an email invitation to join the course. The next time enrollment opens. 

So, all right, let’s get into this audit. 

Okay. So today I’m going to do a free mini audit on Angela Lago’s website, which can be found at angelalagonutrition.com and Angela’s monetization goal is to get enough traffic to be eligible for ads on her website. And she’d also like to make some money via affiliate marketing. Right now she does not have any ads on her site, which is actually a good thing when you’re just starting out.

So that’s a good decision. She should focus instead on growing her traffic to higher levels before putting ads on. It’s not worth the hit in the user experience to put ads on too early, just to earn, a few. She has a self-hosted WordPress website, which is great. And I believe she’s using site ground as her host.

And I obviously don’t have access to Angela’s Google analytics data, but according to semrush, which is the SEO tool that I use, they estimate that Angela is currently getting less than 50 people to her website each month through Google search. Again, this is not real data. This is not an exact number.

This is just an estimate based on where Angela’s content is currently ranking in Google search and the average click through rate data based on like the position on the page. So usually they underestimate traffic from Google searches from what I’ve found anywhere from like two to five times, honestly.

So it’s safe to guess though that even with this underestimation, she’s probably getting less than a thousand people to her site from Google each month. And of course, if your goal as a blogger is to get to Mediavine, you need 50,000 monthly sessions in order to qualify. So she has a ways to go to get there.

And my goal with this audit is to give some practical feedback and actionable things to work on, to help her get there even faster. So to sum it up, really the issue is that even though she is consistently putting out blog content, she’s currently not ranking on page one for that many keywords. The website is about one and a half years old, and she’s been posting an average of one new blog, post a month. And I noticed when I looked back through the blog tab here, that she recently upped it to closer to two times a month and she has 23 posts on her blog. Total. The last time I looked. And again, please note, I don’t have access to the back end of Angela’s site.

So this is not the same thing as a full audit that I could do for a client. I can’t really give feedback on the technical SEO stuff or things like site speed and all that, or looking at her plugins and stuff. That’s all items that I would need access to her backend to really do due diligence with.

So this is just more of a holistic overview of the site as an outside user and some major areas of improvement that just jump out at me right away. so I’m gonna try to break it up into different areas. Kind of go through the site, like section by section almost, to help us stay organized and come away with clear action steps for improvement.

So like I said, first up, I’m just gonna open the site and give my initial impressions as a user. So first thing I’m like, okay, this is angelalagonutrition.com and her brand name is The Mental Wellness Dietitian. So right off the bat, there is a disconnect there. So I would potentially consider. Consolidating these. So I don’t know if you would rather go with your name, cuz gives you a little more flexibility or if you really like the mental wellness dietitian, and kind of wanna go all in on that.

 I would consider potentially rebranding to be consistent across your. Website’s name and your URL. That would be ideal. And then let’s see down here, your social media. So your social media is branded the mental wellness dietitian, but again, the username is just Angela Lago nutrition. So there’s a disconnect there again.

And I would really recommend probably picking the mental wellness dietitian, if possible. I believe the URL is still available. So. Not really any reason to not go all in. I don’t know if that handle is available on Instagram or not, but that’s a good way to hone your messaging a little bit better.

So people know exactly what to expect from your site, even just by reading your handle or your URL. So that’s one thing that jumped out at me right away. And then the next thing I’m looking at is like, okay, you know, right. When the page loads, before I even scroll anywhere, like, can I tell what you can help me with?

And to be honest, the answer at this moment in time is no. Because all I can see here, at least with the screen that I’m on, is a picture of Angela and a picture of, I think it’s like an oatmeal bowl or something with a bunch of nice toppings and that’s all I can see without scrolling.

So if I landed directly on this homepage, I don’t know what I’m getting into at first glance. And that’s not best practice from like a user experience situation or SEO either. And a lot of times, if you just have a picture kind of taking up the whole top of the page, that’s not really good for site speed.

It’s not great for screen readers. If someone is using a screen reader to consume your content, like all they’re getting is a picture. And what you would rather have someone see is like clear statement of how you can help them. So Dr. Ruscio is a good website that’s doing well with SEO.

It’s a chiropractor’s website, I believe. I think it’s relevant for other people who are, wellness practitioners.

So. If you’re watching the recording, you’ll be able to see I’ll, I’ll describe it orally right now. But, when I go to drruscio.com, you can see a picture of Dr. Ruscio himself. So great. I mean, Angela did that as well, but then instead of having the smoothie bowl picture next to you, it would be ideal.

If you could have a picture of you and then a statement of like how you can help. So on Dr. Ruscio, it says finally, a better way to a healthy gut, practical science based advice to improve your gut health because a healthy gut means a healthy you, and that’s very clear, like someone knows, okay, great. I’m going to this website.

I’m gonna learn how to have a healthy gut. And that’s great, cuz that will improve my overall wellness. And so that’s pretty clear. It’s simple. And to the point. So I would attempt to maybe revamp the top of your website to be more clear about what the user can get out of being on your site.

What, what can they expect? So if I scroll down the homepage below that picture, there is a little blurb here. I will say that the layouts, like the formatting of the page isn’t great. It’s really wide. And the sentences go really long. And then because of that, the spacing between the lines and the paragraphs is just a little bit like visually not pleasing.

So that could be worked on. Maybe use some headings here, use a page builder plugin, perhaps like Elementor to make the design better. And if that’s not your forte, just go into Elementoe and use one of their templates. That’s what I do. So I just use a template and fill it in. So. On one of my newer sites, you can see I’m going to my newer site.

nutritionistanswers.com and this is my homepage. There’s a picture of a girl with some food. And then it says research based info on all your favorite foods, explore the world of food, learn from nutrition experts, and then there’s a paragraph underneath it. And this is all before you scroll. It says our team of registered dietitian nutritionists create the most helpful and up to date content on all things, food from nutrition, tidbits to fun foodie questions.

We’re here to dive into the research and answer it all. And then there’s some of our latest posts. So that’s what I did. This is a template. So I just replaced the picture, changed the colors changed, obviously what it says. But this was using an Elementor template, so I would highly recommend doing something like that for your homepage, just to like.

Freshen it up and make it look a little bit more professional. But I’ll just read what it says right now. It says, hello friend, I’m Angela, the mental wellness dietitian. This is a very, very common thing that people do you wanna introduce yourself?

Because you’re like, this is my site. But. We wanna resist the urge to do that. And the better thing to do for the user experience is to go right into how the user can benefit and what they can expect, from your site. So the example I showed before the Dr. Ruscio one, he never says anything about himself.

There’s a picture of him, but the text says finally, a better way, to a healthy gut, practical science based advice to improve your gut health because a healthy gut means a healthy you. And there’s nothing about him until later down on the page. And of course you have a whole About page to talk about yourself a little bit more as well.

So I would flip this whole text on its head. And instead of talking about yourself, talk about the user and how they can benefit.

Okay. So after she introduces herself, she says, my hope for you is one of learning and healing. I’m confident that the content shared on this website will provide you with knowledge answers, and a passion for living your life to the fullest. And I’m gonna be a little critical here, cause this is an audit.

You need to be like a hundred times more specific. That’s a lot of words, but like not a lot of. Meaning, so knowledge answers and a passion for living your life to the fullest. Doesn’t really. Tell me what is happening on the site. So you could probably delete that whole section and there would be no downside.

Then it says my number one goal is to share nutrition and health information in a way that’s easy to understand and implement in your daily life. Again, like good start, but nutrition and health information is. So broad, like what nutrition and health information, who am I that you’re trying to help. Um, next it says gut health and mental wellness are strongly connected to the way you feel your path to health and healing may be more simple than you think.

Okay. So now I’m like, okay, I guess we’re talking about gut health and mental wellness, but like what does mental wellness even mean? Like where are you going with. What type of mental wellness stuff, like, could you help me with, and then the last part says, come along with me on this journey. Let me show you how small changes in your diet and lifestyle can drastically affect the way you feel and function on a daily basis.

Okay. But can we be more specific? Like how can it drastically affect me? Like in what way? Like, when I was freelance writing for Healthline, that was one of the things that they would always come back to you on. If you wrote something in a way that could be interpreted multiple ways. So like drastically affect, does that mean positively or negatively?

Like you don’t really know. So make sure you’re specific in what you’re trying to imply with what you’re saying, like, drastically effect could mean anything. So yeah, some feedback there, it feels a little bit like a rough draft of how you could help. Like maybe, when you wrote this, you weren’t a hundred percent even sure on what you wanted your niche to be or how you could specifically help people or who you’re trying to

speak to, and that’s fine. Everyone starts from square zero. Everyone’s a little bit vague, I think in the beginning when you’re trying to figure out your niche and really nail it down. But there’s a lot of ways to improve the copy on this homepage, for sure. And then I just wanted to point out, and I’m a hundred percent guilty of this myself.

A lot of times I always have to like go back and be like, how many exclamation points did I use? Because, literally every single sentence here ends in an exclamation point. So. Definitely going overboard on the exclamation points. So, I mean, obviously you’re probably gonna redo this. 

But while you’re doing that, definitely go back and double check. How many exclamation marks were thrown in there, cuz that’s a quick fix. this part’s fine. I think the idea here is like, okay, like what do you want people to do when they visit your site? So she has three, things people can do.

They can learn about gut health and mental wellness on the blog. Join them on Instagram. Or shop in the store. So the learn, one’s fine. You say, learn about gut health and mental wellness in the blog. So that’s giving us a little more clarity, like, okay. Guess like the topics I should expect to see are gut health and mental wellness.

So we’ll double check and see if that’s being reflected in a bit. I would question whether joining on Instagram is really the best thing you’d want someone to do, cuz you’re asking them to leave your website and go somewhere. And that’s always a little bit of a risky venture. I think you’d be better served by putting an opt in here and asking them to opt into your email list so that you can keep their relationship going.

That’s better than a follow on Instagram, cuz even if they follow you because of the algorithms, they might not actually see your content and then shopping. It would be a little bit more helpful if you said what I could buy in the shop. It just says access my favorite products in the store. And I don’t know what your favorite products are or what category we’re talking about.

Am I looking at food stuff. Am I looking at supplements like books? Like what are you gonna be selling me? So you could definitely hone that a little bit more as well. so the next section, if you scroll down, it says as featured in, and then there’s like 12 different logos of things that she’s been featured in both media and industry related things like speaking at FNCE or Aspen or.

Being in the Academy’s journal. So I would say this is a, a great step in the right direction, but 12 is definitely overkill. I would cut that in half at least. Maybe do like 50, 50, your best media mentions and Your best industry related things. So even though you spoke at FNCE multiple times, like you probably don’t need to put that on there twice, cuz it’s really the same thing.

Like you spoke at FNCE that’s it can stand alone as its own thing. You don’t have to put every single year that you spoke, and stuff like that. So I would cut this in half, whatever you think the most impactful media mentions and the most impactful things that someone in your, space would be really impressed by include those.

So maybe six max. And then at the very bottom, there is some social media icons just for Instagram and LinkedIn, a copyright. And then down here, it almost looks like buttons that say privacy policy and terms of service. So one of the biggest takeaways down here on the bottom, the footer area could be improved.

So I would recommend actually designing like a full on footer through whatever theme you’re using. Or you can do it with through Elementor as well. Um, but right now, these buttons here on the bottom are kind of like separate from the copyright disclaimer, it says all rights reserved, and then there’s like a big space.

And then there’s two larger buttons that say privacy policy and terms of service. And then this is a really big issue, actually that should be resolved. As soon as possible, these privacy policy and terms of service buttons are actually opening up PDFs . So PDFs that have been uploaded to the website like a document with text, basically saying what the privacy policy is and the terms of service and they open in the same window.

That’s definitely not best practice Google can’t read that. And so they, they can’t see your privacy policy and your terms of service. So those need to be pages on your site, just regular pages hyperlinked in your footer. So I’m not a hundred percent sure how you designed this or set it up, but definitely do not link to PDFs, make a page on your site with the privacy policy and the terms of service.

And I did notice I would recommend reading through those again, cuz there was some, uh, mention. Another dietitian’s website. So I don’t know if those were like copy pasted and then tweaked slightly, and not to call anyone out, but they are almost exact copies of my own privacy policy and terms of service.

So I don’t know where the grapevine went on this, but, I would definitely recommend cleaning them up and making them pages. And if someone did. Almost copy my own. I don’t recommend doing that. I would recommend actually purchasing a template you can use like the Bobby Klinck.

I I’m not, not sure if that’s how you say his name. Let me see. Bobby Klinck is that. Oh, see it’s Bobby. And then. K L I N C K uh, are really affordable legal templates. That could be a good place to, to start. That’s what we’re using on some of my newer sites that I’ve been starting, but I think mine,

I just like wrote them myself. so I don’t recommend using that as a base, I would recommend getting something from a lawyer, I’ve. Moved beyond trying to DIY everything. I highly recommend. If there’s something legal, get a template from a lawyer for. . . If you’re watching the video, I just opened up his website and you can see he has legal templates. I think you can get like a whole pack for website stuff for like 50 bucks. I’m not an affiliate. I just know that they’re really affordable and they are written by a lawyer. So those are some things that I would improve for sure.

So that’s, that’s my basic feedback on the homepage. Oh, I already had the page open when I started this recording, but I did notice that the first time I visited. Like the second that your website opened, there was a popup that covered the whole page, basically, and asked me to join your email list.

And I think the text on the popup was something like get notified each time a new blog is posted and then asked for my name and email. But the problem with that is it popped up. Right. When I got to the site and I haven’t even read the post that I was attempting to read yet. So like, why would I put my name in email?

And if I don’t even know if I like your content yet, like, I haven’t even been able to see it. There’s like this thing in my way, essentially. So most people are gonna exit out of that and be like, Ugh, like, let me get to the post. This is not what I want right now. Why would I give you my email? I don’t even know you or what you’re writing.

So the more effective approach is if you can have. An exit intent pop up. So you should be able to configure all this stuff through whatever. Tool you’re using to set up your popups. But it it’s much better to have it pop up as the person is starting to scroll over to the upper, right

or left hand corner, to leave the site than it is to have it pop up right away. Or at least have it delayed. You can say like, oh, pop up after 30 seconds or something. To give the person time to consume the content. And then I’d also recommend actually taking the time to come up with something really valuable that people would like to receive in exchange for their email.

Um, as you could see, when I opened Dr. Ruscio’s, he did have a popup as I started to, scroll my mouse up to the top that must be an exit intent pop up, and it was offering like 15% off something that he was selling. So that’s one example, but. Anything that you think your ideal reader would really want?

And it would be like a no brainer. Like I have to have this, make that your offer instead of just get notified when there’s a new post. Cause most people don’t want more notifications in their inbox. They’re already getting way too many. They want to get something really valuable if they’re gonna give you their email.

So that, that would be something I would change as well. And then just like on a holistic level, I see that in the copy, it says, you know, we’re gonna be talking about gut health and mental wellness here. And I would just. Question potentially like, do you have the appropriate E a T to be talking about mental wellness, um, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness?

Obviously as a dietitian, you do have the expertise to talk about how diet impacts X, Y, Z things. But it wasn’t like super, super clear in the copy that we’re gonna be talking about diet here. So if you’re going to say that you’re going to help people with their mental wellness, probably a lot of people’s initial reaction would be like, oh, like, are you a therapist?

Are you a psychologist? You know, what’s your credential to help me with my mental health. And if that’s not. Where you have your expertise, maybe tweak that branding or the wording a little bit. Obviously you do have the word dietitian, but not everyone, like really knows what that means. So if your intention is to really talk about like how diet can impact your mood or something like that, maybe just be a little more explicit and clear.

So people know like, oh, okay, cool. This is where I go to figure out, how, what I’m eating is potentially impacting how I’m feeling mentally or something like. I think it could be a little, a little more clarity showing that you’re not overstepping your training and you’re not going into like what a psychologist would be an expert in or something like that.

And you’re really staying tightly focused on the diet piece. That’s something that Google is being a little more like. Stringent about, is if there’s any chance that the information that someone’s searching for could impact their health. They want to only show really highly authoritative sources.

So. If, I don’t know if you did this, but if you were talking about something mental health related and it was just you and you didn’t have a psychologist or something like that, reviewing the content with you, it might not have enough expertise, formal expertise to really be considered trustworthy. 

So yeah, what I would like to see on the homepage is like, how can you help me? And in what way, so how can you help me? Meaning. Is this just a website with content? What type of content? Like, are you posting recipes? Like why is there a smoothie bowl here? Are you posting articles? Are you doing coaching?

Do you have courses? Do you have some sort of paid products I can purchase? So how can you help me in like format wise and then also like subject matter wise? Like what problem are you solving for me as, as a person? And then another, low hanging fruit area that you could improve. Oftentimes, if you get cited in the media, like, like being quoted in a website, like eat this, not that or something, whatever it may be that you get quoted in a lot of times they link back to your homepage.

They’re not linking back to, actual articles. And maybe if you ask, they might, but a lot of times they just link to your homepage. So. Really a missed opportunity if you’re not linking to some of your top posts on your homepage, because what’s gonna happen is a lot of the back links are gonna go straight to your homepage.

And then if you don’t have links, passing on people to other pieces of content on your site, all that link juice that’s going to your home page is just kind of like stuck. It’s not being passed on to other pages in your site. So what what’s better is if you put some of. Top performing content there. So even I need to improve this right now.

I just have my latest posts here showing on my homepage on nutritionist answers. But the better strategy I can show you on my old food blog is to show content from categories that you would really like to rank or, some content that’s already performing really well that you wanna keep performing well, or that’s maybe at the top of page two that you wanna bump up.

So at the top of your homepage, you can put links to some of your best performing recipes or pieces of content. So here’s an example from my old food blog. I put links to eight of my top performing posts in Google to keep any link equity that’s going to my homepage passing onto those posts to keep them ranking well.

So I would recommend doing the same look at your Google analytics and figure out, what are your top performing posts over the last six months to a year maybe, and put links to those on the homepage. So that next time you get links to your homepage, some of that link juice will pass on to those other pages on your site.

For the first section, do like your most important pieces of content that you want people to find. You can also do it in your sidebar. So you don’t have a sidebar right now, on your homepage at least. So that’s another area that could be improved add a sidebar. They don’t show up on mobile, but they can still have some benefit.

You can put a little bio blurb about yourself. You can again put links to your popular content, so that on every page, there’s a link back. via the sidebar to some of your top performing posts. You can show categories of content, et cetera, et cetera. So those are some low hanging fruit ideas, things you could improve as you redo the homepage.

Oh, and then the last thing I wanted to talk about on the homepage was when you Google your site. So let me just type in like Angela Lago nutrition.

And you see what comes up. There’s something called the title tag on your homepage, which you can adjust inside the settings of your Yoast plugin for that page. And you can actually give suggestions to Google of what you would like it to display on your homepage. Right now. It just says the mental wellness, dietitian, colon home for your homepage, I’m assuming.

And that doesn’t really, give us much, whereas let’s see what happened with Dr. Ruscio when I looked him. Go back to the search results and see what his title tag is.

It says Dr. Michael Russo, and then it says like DNM, DC, those are his credentials and then dash digestion thyroid, and, and it’s cut off. So it’s not amazing either. Let me look up another good example, but the point is. At least on that one, even though it’s too long and it’s cut off, it’s at least explaining what the site is about in the title tag right now.

What you have is mental wellness, dietitian, colon home. So it’s a missed opportunity there to put like dash, healthier gut healthier mind, or I don’t know something that you do like, Healthy gut recipes or whatever, you know, I, I’m not very good at coming up with things off the fly, but it should be something that like tells people more about what you do.

Let me see Amy Porterfield, I think is good. Yeah. So Amy Porterfield, she’s like an online marketing person, she’s a podcast and stuff. And so her homepage title tag is Amy Porterfield. And then there’s a solid line separating it. And it says online marketing expert. So at least you know who she is and what she does.

Who else can we look at? That’s another like nutrition example. Mmm, little bit, little bit yummy, I think is one that I really like the SEO. It’s like a FOD map. Blog. Yeah. So there’s a blog called a little bit yummy and their title tag is a little bit yummy, which it’s good that they have an explanation cuz just from the name, you don’t really know what it’s about.

And then it says colon low FODMAP diet recipes, and meal plans. So, you know, right away just in the title tag, what they offer. Um, so I’d recommend doing something like that for your homepage title tag, as. Okay. So then the next thing, if I was a user, maybe I’d go over to the blog section. and initially right off the bat, I’m, I’m kind of hoping to see like some categories in your blog when I like hover over it, you know, it’s nice.

Sometimes if there’s like a dropdown and you can see like, oh, like these are the areas that they talk about on this blog, but instead it’s just one blog feed without any organization. So that’s an area right away that could be improved. Adjusting the menu here to show the categories that your content falls into, I’ll just click on this first blog post here. When you click on a blog post, it does have a sidebar, but it’s kind of just like the default sidebar that I think WordPress gives you. It shows recent posts and then categories. And so this is how I figured out how many categories you actually have on the back end.

And right now there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. I. I think there’s like 14 or something, categories and a good number of them only have one or two blog posts in the category. And this is a very, very, very common mistake. When people are starting out, this is confusing to Google and it’s also confusing to the reader.

Because I’ll just read out some of the categories. There’s a category adaptogen. Diet gut health, hormones, inflammation, leaky, gut mood, motivation, probiotics, recipes, sleep, stress supplements, thyroid and weight management. So you’re like, whoa, like that is a lot, like, what are you really an expert in?

Can we narrow this down by like a hundred fold? Each one of these categories could be its own blog topic, without even touching on anything else. So I strongly, strongly, strongly suggest. Reworking the organization on your site and, and selecting maybe three categories to start with. It looks like this post that I just clicked on is a recipe for gut healing, smoothies, it looks like it’s a Roundup post.

But if you wanna do recipes on your blog that could be a strategy that you use. If you wanna get to media, vine recipes can bring a lot of traffic. So that could be a category. And then in terms of like articles, we need to go way more narrow. So it sounds like gut health is one that you’re really leaning into.

There’s 14 articles in that category. So maybe you leave that one and then your next highest one, it’s a tie between mood and diet. So, you know, maybe, maybe you could do four, maybe you could do diet, gut health, mood, and recipes, and everything else needs to go . And like, if it doesn’t fall into one of those categories, then don’t write about it right now.

And yeah, I’m not saying delete all that content, but, reorganize it. So if there’s anything in some of those categories that could be put into one of the broader categories, I would do that. and then. , if you’re able to move the content into other categories, then you can delete those other categories so that your site structure is a lot more clean, but don’t delete the category until you’ve reorganize the post and recategorize them into a different category.

So yeah, that’s my suggestion there. So clean up your categories. Really hone what you wanna be an expert in for your site, and then have those categories show up as dropdown items in your menu up here so that people can go to your blog and then enter whatever category they’re interested in rather than having just one long page of everything together.

 That’s a better strategy. If you wanna have one long feed, you can leave that. Like if they just clicked on blog, it could take them to. The mixed together blog feed, but definitely have the categories as well. I think this is probably if I had to give you like one piece of advice just by looking at your site, it’s I feel a sense of like, Lack of clarity when I come to your site, like, I don’t fully understand like what your area of expertise is or the type of content that I can come to expect.

It feels like it’s covering too many topics. And I would suspect that Google is feeling the same sense of confusion. And in fact, I kind of later on in this audit, I’ll show you how I know that that’s the case. Even in your copy. So like the tagline on your site is mental wellness dietitian on the homepage.

It says you’re going to share nutrition and health information. Learn about gut health and mental wellness. Then if I click over, I’m gonna skip ahead for a second. If I click over to your about page, it starts to almost open up other topics. Like you start talking about chronic stress, Hashimotos anxiety, depression, insomnia, and it’s like, whoa, like where are we going?

Like, we’re talking about sleep, hormone regulation, weight gain now. Oh, autoimmune disease. It’s just a lot. And it’s not to say that there’s not some validity in that all these things are tied together, but. Most likely there’s gonna be somebody who has one specific problem and they’re looking for help and they just would have a higher sense of confidence if they’re going to someone, they perceive to be the expert in that subject.

Just like when you’re going to see a doctor, um, you know, your, your PCP can only help so much. But usually if you’re going to take care of a very specific thing, like something with your skin or something like that, like you’re gonna go to the dermatologist. You’re gonna get a referral. Same thing with us as dietitians.

And also from a Google search perspective, it’s much easier to rank and for Google to understand like what to show you for in the search results, if you have a clear area of expertise and the way that the site is currently described and laid out, doesn’t send those signals.

Don’t feel bad about this. So many people do this. I did this, I’m still doing this on some, some of my content. It’s really hard to hone it in. But I would try to keep it focused on diet as much as you can. No matter what you’re talking about since that is the area that you have formal expertise in.

I did notice, let’s see, where was. You said in your about page? It says I have thankfully ended my reliance on prescription drugs over the last several years. And that’s sort of like a little bit of a red flag to me. Again, not from my personal beliefs or anything, but just from knowing what Google is looking for, that they are very wary of.

Showing content that could potentially hurt someone. So I would be a little concerned that someone could read that. And I know this is not your intention that you’re talking about your own personal experience, but somebody might read that sentence and think like, oh wow. She is no longer taking prescription drugs.

Like I can. stop taking my prescription drugs or whatever. And that could be a slippery slope in terms of impacting someone’s health. So I would maybe take out things like that that could potentially give, um, Google reviewers, like a sense of like, oh, this like might potentially negatively impact someone’s health if they read this, , and keep it very, above board and as evidence based as possible, cite everything that you talk about, don’t rely on your personal stories and your personal experience.

If you’re talking about health, cuz that’s not enough in today’s day and age with Google. And I don’t know if your content goes this way, but they are also a little bit hesitant to show content that I would say has like an alternative viewpoint right now. They wanna display content that follows the quote unquote established medical consensus.

So I would be hyper aware of that as well. Anytime you’re talking about medical conditions, supplements, et cetera, if it’s not something that’s sort of like generally accepted, chances of ranking for a high search volume term for like a generic thing about X, Y, Z condition or supplement are gonna be really, really low.

So take that for what you will I won’t say that I necessarily agree with that, but that’s just what’s happening right now. And so as the content creator, you should use that knowledge while you’re planning your content calendar so that, the content you’re creating at least has a shot at ranking so that you’re getting a return on your time, and getting people to your.

Next I’m gonna go back to your blog feed and just kind of holistically look at it. Like I remember on your homepage, you really said we’re gonna talk about gut health and mental wellness or something like that. So I’m like, okay, is that really what’s reflected here when I’m looking at the content.

So some of it, yeah, there’s a lot of mention of gut health, although I would also make sure that you’re targeting realistic keywords as well. So I’ll talk about that later, but there’s some stuff here that kind of is like, is this related, uh, like seven top herbal supplements for hormone balance.

I’m like hormones. Like I thought we were talking about gut health and mental wellness and like, yes, perhaps you understand how it’s all linked together, but, it’s a little bit off topic for what it sounds like the site is supposed to be an authority in, and you have to be really, really, really careful to stay tightly on topic, in order to help Google understand, what the heck your site is about.

So that kind of throws some stuff off. Then we start talking about hypothyroidism, adaptogens for sleep, anti-inflammatory salads, anxiety, and bloating. Go on to the second page. Increasing dopamine naturally, eh, like, I don’t know if that’s really something.

Google would think that as a dietitian, we have enough authority in to be talking about, Diet for Hashimotos treat natural treatment for hypothyroidism. Then there’s a little bit about whether alcohol is a depression or a stimulant. So my best guess is maybe when you were first starting blogging, you got like excited about certain keywords, which is very normal.

Maybe you saw something, that was high volume and relatively low difficulty. And you just went for it without maybe necessarily thinking about how it fits into the overall content plan and your niche. And again, that’s a really common mistake but yeah, I think you’d be very well served by stepping back, thinking about what you want your categories to be.

Creating sort of like these content clusters. So I could talk about that in a second. And then again, just making sure that you’re not going over your bounds as a dietitian and you’re staying in line with like things that dietitians are perceived to be experts in, which would be like food and diet and not getting into like mental health necessarily, or medical things like natural treatments for hypothyroidism is possibly iffy.

I didn’t click on it to see what you talked about. Just from the title, it seems a little bit leaning medically, and I, don’t think you have any, doctors on a medical review board or something like that that you might need to kind of like give your site the authority. It needs to be talking about that.

I did notice on your about page, you talk about your editorial process. So I’ll click back over there, which is good. Something I definitely recommend doing. So that’s great that you have. It says editorial process. And there’s a blurb about like, who creates the content and why you have the authority to be doing this.

And, your internal processes. It says all content includes references to peer reviewed research articles, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s about science, not click bait trends, et cetera, et cetera. But. I will go back and look through your content and give my thoughts on how that could be improved even as well, not a hundred percent sure if that’s like being played out in the content itself, even though it’s nice that it says that on the about page.

But I think some of the content could use even more referencing, than it has at the moment. So let’s see if I click on this one seven top herbal supplements for hormone balance.

So this is a blog post and. Right off the bat, just like scrolling through here. I would say you’d be definitely well served by breaking up the text a little bit more. This intro paragraph, at least on the size of my screen right now on a desktop is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 lines long, which. People reading on screens they’re skimming.

So I would break that up into like three paragraphs potentially. So that’s the first fix. And then just the way it’s laid out, same thing, like, below the table of contents, there is a infographic next to a paragraph, which makes the paragraph really tall and skinny. And because of that, that paragraph is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 lines long.

And no one is reading that. It’s just like really hard for the brain to like process. Especially on the phone, although on the phone, they might not load side by side. The image is probably below that, but regardless the formatting could be improved. These paragraphs are the longest I would go like four lines probably on a desktop.

So if you could shorten it even more, that would probably help you. and then we get to the section where it’s talking about the herbal supplements and there’s no references mentioned. So although the about page has the editorial process. And it said that there, that, resources are used in the actual blog post itself, where the statements are being made.

There’s no references linked, to cite each statement. And that’s really, really important. So since those are missing, that’s probably really hurting you. There is also a mention of some products for sale, which you have to be really, really careful, when you’re mixing health advice and selling something, whether or not Google will wanna promote that they don’t say that they would, hurt you if you’re selling something, but it’s just something to be aware of.

You might be better served if you take that out of the article and you just let the article speak for itself. And then perhaps you can promote some of the stuff via email or something like that. And not in the articles, especially because. I don’t know it, the someone looking for supplements for hormone balance might just be looking for information and might not be shopping anyway, so it could be hurting you without much of a payoff.

So then at the bottom, there is a references section and different articles are cited. Again, there’s no links, which is hurting you. They wanna see you linking out to actual reputable sources. So putting in the pub med links would be beneficial. And I would take the out this entire references section, cuz for, online content, it’s not best practice to put like an actual references section.

You wanna hyperlink in the content where you’re mentioning something. So I’ll show you an example. Here is an article, that Amy wrote on one of our sites. That says is acai low FODMAP. And anytime she’s mentioning, something that would need a citation. There is a number in parenthesis within that same sentence where she made the statement and it hyperlinks to the article on PubMed where she found that information, every single thing.

So if you’re gonna go and write about like health related stuff or anything with a stat, like here’s a stat fresh acai has a water content of 84% on average, meaning it contains 84 grams of water for every a hundred grams of pulp. Then there’s a citation, like where she found that, what article, that’s an example of something that needs a citation.

Otherwise people are like, how do I know? That’s right. Where did you find that piece of information? So in your blog post where it says something like, um, Probiotics help maintain weight, stability, promote energy, balance control, fat deposition, decrease inflammation, and provide protective effect against autoimmune diseases.

Like, whoa, that’s a big claim and a lot of claims. So you would need lots of citations just for that one sentence. And there’s none there. Even if you did find an article and included in the references there, the references aren’t linked up to anything within the content. So I don’t even know what references down there.

You might have gotten this information from, so that’s a huge, huge area of improvement. Hopefully that’s helps people, uh, watching as well. Cuz that’s definitely something that I would change if you want this content to be able to rank it all. So overall I would say the main takeaway, hone your messaging, make it simple and concise. Again, this is really hard for people when they’re starting out. But I will say you have the benefit of having some time on your side so we can actually use the tools.

Like sem rush is an SEO tool that I use. So let’s open that up and let’s see, obviously you have your own Google search console data. I don’t have access to that cause I don’t have access to the back end of your site right now, but let’s just open up some and like see what your site is currently ranking for.

I already have notes. So rather than wait for my slow internet, I’m in the back room right now. I already looked it up and the stuff that you are currently ranking for includes gut healing, smoothie, keywords, um, those are at the bottom of page one or the top of page two, the anti-inflammatory salad post that you wrote is ranking some stuff for hypothyroidism and intermittent fasting is ranking.

What is the, the common thread there diet. So gut healing, smoothies, so recipes, something related to gut and food. Anti-inflammatory salad. So again, they’re talking about maybe a health condition, but also like food. Then you’re talking about hypothyroidism and intermittent fasting. So again, like something food diet related.

So those are the things that your site are currently getting some traction on and this other stuff like supplements for hormone balance. It’s kind of like, whoa, like, no, like we see you as an expert in food related things, cuz you’re a dietitian. So like lean into that. As I said, recipes could be a good fit if you’re going for ad revenue, some more stuff about diet and, and mood and maybe gut health or something could be your main categories.

But yeah, basically your to do is to come up with topics you wanna be known for. I would recommend picking one of those categories and then really fleshing it out hardcore to build authority in a tight space. So I don’t know, perhaps you wanna go hard on gut health first. You could do that. So what you would want to do is maybe create like a pillar piece of content.

Maybe an ultimate, blog post on gut health and something to tie it in to your expertise and diet. Or the ultimate authority on, on diet and mood, or, I don’t know, I need to brainstorm like how you would break down these categories and what would make sense.

But whatever you were trying to write about, write like a pillar post on that content. So maybe you wanna write about, uh, the link between diet and. and mood even that’s a little too broad, maybe diet and anxiety. I don’t know. Um, as, as I’m talking about this, I’m realizing still how broad quote unquote mental wellness is.

And you would honestly even be better served if you could dig it in a little bit deeper and talk about one aspect of mental wellness. Like, are you talking about anxiety? Are you talking about depression? Like pick one of those and go hard on that? Just like really, we need to hone like hard. It’s hard to do 

into the site. That’s not my own, but let’s pretend you wanted to go really deep with, diet and anxiety. So then you could, perhaps have a section on diet and anxiety or something. And you write a pillar post with like everything you think someone would wanna know when they’re just starting to learn about that topic.

Like a really long comprehensive post, that probably won’t rank, like, if you look up the keyword diet and anxiety, it’s probably like super hard and you have no chance of ranking for it, but it’s just like to like anchor your site and give, a hub for your content to kind of circle around. And then you would create these longer tail posts.

Like I don’t even know if you have anything on your ite right now about, a longer tail keyword, that would relate to diet and anxiety. I’d have to do some keyword research to figure out what those things might be, but perhaps there’s something out there about, yogurt and anxiety.

like maybe people wanna know, like, can yogurt reduce anxiety or something like if that was a keyword that was searched. A good amount of times. And it was within your difficulty range. You could write a longer tail post about that specific niche topic. And then within there, link back to your pillar post about, diet and anxiety.

And then just repeat that process a zillion times, for as many keywords in that sort of wheelhouse that you can find and then move on to the next sort of content cluster. I don’t know what that might be in terms of this brand. It’s still a little muddy for me, in terms. What you really wanna be an expert in, but keep your attention focused and build out clusters.

Instead of going super broad with 15 different categories, go tight and deep. So pick like maybe three, maybe five max different categories and build out a lot of content within each, vertical, instead of going too broad. And then I would double check your keyword selection. Because there is a little bit of an issue with like multiple pieces of content, trying to target the same keywords.

Like you have this nine gut healing, smoothies, and bowls, and then over here you have best gut healing, smoothie ideas, and those are sort of ranking for the same keywords and competing with each other. So, I don’t know that creating this second post about gut healing smoothies is really serving you cuz Google’s like, wait, you already have a post on that.

So now what am I supposed to do? Like which one is the one that I’m supposed to be ranking? So be cognizant of that moving forward. So you don’t accidentally, make that mistake. Like maybe when you were initially looking up this keyword, you didn’t know like, oh, should I write about gut healing, smoothie ideas?

Or should I do a Roundup? Of recipes, like what, which one’s better. So maybe then you did both. But the way to figure that out is to Google the keyword. So maybe it was gut healing, smoothies, or something like that. Or maybe you thought you were, this one was gonna target gut healing smoothie, and this one was gonna target gut healing, smoothies.

And that’s a fair point, but some, it depends on whether Google sees that as two separate keywords or not. So you can Google both of those phrases and then look at the search results and see. What are they showing for gut healing smoothie? What are they showing for gut healing, smoothies? What type of content is a Roundup post?

What people are looking for, is an article, what people are looking for and then make your decisions so that you are giving Google the type of content that it thinks that searchers want. So that’s a big point there. Thinking about search intent and then I would also make sure you’re not targeting keywords that are too difficult.

So, in semrush when I looked at your site, it seemed like a lot of the keywords that you were targeting at this moment in time maybe has changed, cuz obviously you’ve been doing this for a year and a half. a lot of them. Were keywords with high volume, but also relatively difficult. So the difficulty score was perhaps in the mid fifties, in semrush, and for a site with the authority that yours currently has.

I have the moz bar plugin, turned on. It says that your domain authority is 14. Which is pretty low, and that’s influenced by back links. So getting other authoritative sites to link back to your site, this is a signal that you do not have a lot of super, authoritative sites linking back to you at the moment.

So there’s almost no chance that your content will rank for something with the difficulty in the mid fifties right now. I would go for something. Definitely no higher than 40 on the difficulty and the lower, the better. And then there’s a little bit, as I talked about a little bit of an issue with targeting keywords that I think, can be perceived as outside of your niche.

So my recommendation will be to target easier keywords, establish your niche and stay in it, and then make sure that you evaluate the search intent before you write. Again, working on improving internal and external links. So creating those categories, creating those pillar posts, linking back from the smaller, supporting posts back to the pillar post in each category, and then linking between supporting posts, anytime that they’re relevant.

That’s all a good suggestion. Putting those links to your highest quality content on the homepage using external links to your references, and using descriptive anchor text as well. So I noticed, sometimes when you’re linking to something you say like this article, and that’s the link.

If you click the text, this article, it takes them somewhere. And that text that is hyperlinked is called the anchor text. And ideally you want that to be descriptive. So, you said Escobar also discusses how to increase progesterone naturally in this article. And then you hyperlink the words to this article, but instead you could say something.

Escobar also writes about how to increase progesterone naturally period, and then hyperlink, how to increase progesterone naturally. And people on the internet know that if that’s a link that if they click that, oh, it’s gonna take me to an article about how to increase progesterone naturally.

And that helps Google understand. The topics of content that you’re linking to as well. And you could do that for internal links and external links. It looks like you’re doing a lot of linking with like this article, this post, I would change that as well as you go back through, that would make a difference as well.

I talked about the, about page, the shop page, I think probably isn’t really getting great results right now would be my guess. It looks a little untrustworthy in terms of the design and the layout. I would definitely consider redesigning this. And it’s not a shop page really on your site.

It links to another. where people can buy through your shop page or something. So that’s a little bit potentially untrustworthy as well. So I would even consider just like scrapping this entirely. Maybe if you wanna sell stuff, maybe do it through email marketing or a different avenue. I would guess that this page is not ranking for anything and probably not getting a lot of clicks.

So removing it probably wouldn’t hurt you. You could mention products perhaps in your content, but I wouldn’t do it in the way that. You have been where it’s like this big call out box. It just looks a little bit like, oh, this was the point of the article. Like there’s like little bit of content, not a lot of references, but really they just wanna sell me this supplement.

That’s like the impression that it gives off, obviously I’m sure that’s not your intention, but that’s just the impression, with how it was currently laid out where at the big picture and call to action to like buy this thing and then everything else seems almost like secondary. So a more subtle approach might be better.

Or even just a request like, oh, if you wanna learn more about, a supplement that could help you like sign up for my email list to learn more or something, that could potentially be more effective and then when, when they’re on your email, you can kind of like do whatever you want. And you don’t have to worry so much about diluting the intent.

Of the content on your blog post. Cuz basically if you start getting off topic from what Google thinks the user wants, then they’re like, oh maybe there’s another piece of content on someone else’s site that more concisely meets this person’s needs that we can show on page one.

I just wanted to make sure that I drove home the point that I would recommend consciously working on boosting your domain authority. it’s at 14 right now, which means you probably have a handful of links maybe from HARO or something like that, that you’ve gotten.

But not a lot, cuz domain authority of fourteen’s pretty low for reference. You probably would like to get it into at least the 30. To start having a shot ranking for a little bit more competitive keywords. So I would work it into your schedule to start intentionally trying to build back links every week.

So definitely go back and watch, the back links section in my course for some ideas as a whole topic in and of itself. But right now you don’t really have enough back links for, even for Google to understand. What your site is about. So you wanna get back links from your niche as well. That can be very helpful.

And where I’m getting this information from is when I look in Sam rush, I can do like a backlink analysis of who’s linking to your site. And then based on who’s linking to your site. The tool SIM rush can try to categorize your site and guess sort of what you’re an expert in, and it doesn’t have you categorized at all.

And so if these external tools like SIM rush are having trouble categorizing your site, I would guess that search engines like Google are having the same trouble as well. So ideally if you get enough back links from types of content within a certain niche, then Google understands that this is what you’re in authority.

And in addition, they will also have a section in Sam rush where they include similar competitors to you based on your backlink profile. So, oh, all these websites that are linking to this person also link to this set of websites. And ideally you want those to be. Other websites that are in your niche.

That’s a sign that Google gets your site and they’re understanding what you’re trying to be an expert in, but you only have at this moment, one competitor listed based on your backlink profile and it’s for another RD in the menopause space, which I don’t believe is really what you’re going for. So by getting more high authority, niche, relevant back links, all that should improve and back links are important for ranking.

So I would definitely focus on that. It’s a common thing that people don’t put a lot of time and effort into, but that can really improve your results. I would recommend putting an opt-in on your homepage. I think I mentioned that and within your blog posts, that’s definitely helpful for keeping people engaged.

I was having some issues as well in terms of like the user experience when I clicked on like your media page, none of these videos are loading, and none of the pictures for the publications are loading. So that doesn’t give me like a lot of confidence in what’s being presented here.

I’m sure that’s an easy fix. My best guess. Is that , is an issue with maybe one of your caching plugins or your optimization plug. Same thing here, your resources page, isn’t loading properly. None of the pictures are loading, which is obviously not great. I would. Double check, whether this is an alignment with your brand.

For example, one of the resources is free mental wellness assessment, and I’m like, whoa, wait, aren’t you a dietitian? Like, do you have the authority to give me a score on my mental wellness? I don’t know. I would say probably no. Then there’s another thing for three steps for better sleep. And I’m like, whoa, when did we start talking about sleep?

Probiotics 1 0 1 choosing the right Probio. And then there’s 50 healthy snack ideas, which is like, I guess, related to diet, but. How was that related to mental wellness and all that, or whatever topics you wanna be an expert in.

So it feels kind of like, oh, I just need four things to throw up on this page. This is what I have. I’m just gonna put it here and then like, maybe I’ll change it later. So I would recommend possibly just taking this entire page down. I would also guess it doesn’t get a lot of traffic. It’s probably not doing that much for your brand right now.

You could just delete it, and then include opt-ins in your blog post to get people on your email list. And I would also say another reason to delete this. If you click on these things, I would assume it would be an opt-in, but it’s just taking me to PDFs on your site. Which is a missed opportunity, cuz you could put all those PDFs behind an opt-in wall like through your, email marketing platform and collect people’s email addresses in exchange for this, free information.

So that’s easy, low hanging fruit, easy things to change. However, they seem a little bit off niche, so I potentially would just take them down all together. And one other good thing that you are doing right now. I did notice that you had an author box at the end of your post. So I’ll load that up so people can see what I’m talking about.

As an example, can you give people the opportunity to do social shares? That’s great. I noticed you have your affiliate disclosure in there. That’s great. Uh, for any post where you have affiliate links. And then here’s the author box. There’s a picture of you, your bio, your social profile. So that’s good for establishing authority. So great job on that. Keep doing that. And then if you ever have other people contribute to your site, you can create author boxes for them as well. And then just in stem rush as well.

I was able to look at, you know, how I was saying, you can look at who they think your main competitors are based on your back links. You can also look to see who they think your main competitors are based on your current keywords that you’re ranking for. And they are currently thinking that your.

Biggest competitors are thyroid specialty sites. So you can see it’s all over the board. Like you’re thinking, oh, I wanna be an expert in gut health and mood, but then based on what you’re ranking for, even though you’re not ranking on page one, you are ranking further back in the search results for a bunch of like thyroid related things.

So then Google’s like, oh, okay. Like maybe these other thyroid sites are, are competitors here. And. Confusing. So again, if they’re confused with these tools, these automated tools, Google’s algorithm is probably confused as well. So. The biggest takeaway here is honing your niche, honing your messaging, honing your content organization strategy and creating content clusters on your site based on the areas of expertise that you wanna become an authority in.

So that is my quick, overview of how you could improve your site. I know a lot of these suggestions are not small. They’re big suggestions that are a lot of work, but if you want to get to the point where you can get 50,000 sessions to your site, they’re really necessary. And I think that is when you’ll start really picking up traction in Google and hopefully, getting some better results. So I hope that was helpful. And as I mentioned, if these are popular, I will do more of these audits in the.

So definitely gimme some feedback. Maybe in the Facebook group, the unconventional RD community on Facebook, we can chat if this was popular and you wanna see more of these website audits.

Erica Julson is a registered dietitian turned digital marketing pro. She has over 12 years of experience blogging and building online businesses and has taught over 900 wellness professionals inside her signature program, SEO Made Simple.