Audit Standards Plexel Help     Site written by John Middlemas

Homepage Back Site Contents Map Main Pages Audit Standards Procedure Clickboard Sections Steps Various Emails Toolbar Etc Downloads Reference Download Plexel Page Index A to Z Contact us Plexel Help - Plexel is a free javascript website HTML editor and applications platform. Make global changes with a few clicks. Automatic categories, images, index, and map. Freeware web publishing software. Audit Standards. A list of things to check before approving a new site. The actual list of audit standards is at the bottom of this page. The idea of the audit is mainly to check for basic things that would attract criticism to the site or make us lose hits or get a poor reputation. When the site meets all the standards it can be signed off. The initial audit to be undertaken on the home page + 2 other random pages. If further audits are needed then check the three pages of the first audit plus two more different random pages. A third audit is possible checking the previous 5 pages and two more random pages. If more than three audits are necessary please contact a supervisor. As for the audit itself we use a template spreadsheet (say audit_template.xls) and for each domain a sequence of files, for example if voles.com takes two audits we would have:- audit_voles1.xls audit_voles2.xls After audit_voles1.xls is done you save the file as audit_voles2.xls and use that file for the second audit. Similarly audit_voles3.xls if a third audit is needed. xls files can be viewed using this free reader http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/xlviewer.aspx Copying and pasting spreadsheets into emails: One way is to install a Windows Generic/Text only printer and print the xls sheet to a text file. This text file then can contain the sheet fairly nicely arranged (after a bit of tinkering) for copying and pasting into an email. It maintains the table positions (more or less). http://support.mfm.com/support/std_procedures/xpgenericprinter.html With the Generic/Text printer you need to set it as default printer in the "Printers and Faxes" Microsoft window before printing the spreadsheet. Also the spreadsheet and page size needs arranging properly I use Landscape with paper size A3 and all margins etc set to 1cm, which seems to work well for spreadsheets and allows more columns. SEE BOX AT BOTTOM OF PAGE audit_template.xls - (Spreadsheet) Page Title Extra Words

Quality audit points and standards ---------------------------------- The following list of items should be included in the quality audit: 1. Check for spelling STANDARD = This is clear. You could use an automatic spellchecker. 2. Does the content make sense and cover the page title. STANDARD = This one is not possible to tie down but for example, has the author misinterpreted the page title and written something wrong. 3. External links STANDARD = Check they open in a new window and that the blue clickable link titles are not more than 4 words long each one. Check that they are about the page title unless not possible. A product based page title should have one or more links to somewhere to buy the product online unless there is no reasonable source. Each buy link description should indicate that you can buy online, and to which main countries/zones they deliver e.g UK, USA, Australia, Europe, etc, or just International if they deliver international. Don't write a huge list of countries. Ebay would be a good source if the product was available there. Confirm in the audit that such descriptions are true. An external link relating directly to a piece of text in the page, or a picture should also appear nearby under it, as well as being under the "Links" heading in col3. Such integral links should be the same format as the col3 link but without any description, unless necessary. Follow up text/images from the bottom of col2 should be at the top of col3 above the internal and external links. External links should be below the internal ones. 4. Images - check images are not squashed/elongated, of good quality, and not overly blocky. Check images dimensions do not exceed maximum widths. Col1=170, col2=255, col3=172. If there is text wrapping then max widths are less i.e. Col1=74, col2=127, col3=86. The dimension check should be conducted with an 800 x 600 screen size to make sure the images don't push the google ads off the screen. STANDARD = Most of this is a matter of spotting if the pictures look funny. It is hard to tie down. 5. Images - check images are properly compressed. STANDARD = First note the page image filename by right clicking the image, do 'View Image' if necessary. Do Edit + JPEGoptimiser. Make sure '85' is showing where it says 'Large file' in the menubar. Open the image and if the compressed image on top shows less than 90% then it has failed the test and the whole site needs batch compressing see:- http://www.plexel.com/JPEGOptimiser.htm Repeat for all, or at most 3, non thumbnail images in the audit page. 6. Wild claims STANDARD - This check is a matter of opinion but an example would be 'This is the best site you will find about ....' 7. Clickboard width should be 160 or 170. This no longer applies with Google ads now being in Col2. Clickboard size is at the discretion of the blueprint/framework creator. STANDARD = this is the standard. 8. Links - check that the links on links page & clickboard are relevant STANDARD = Slight matter of opinion but otherwise it's pretty clear - this has yet to be set! 9. Ask Jeeves terms done and correct. STANDARD = To do this you will have to go into wordtracker and put the page title in the popularity search and check the top three terms (title excluded) that come up appear in the ask jeeves boxes. 10. Page title extra words are relevant and different per page. See also col3 link "Page Title Extra Words". STANDARD = The extra words should not be the same throughout the site nor be filler phrases like 'Here you will find...'. Some of the page's top related and relevant terms should be utilised. The extra words appear prominently in Google results so should be written to describe the page and attract clicks. If possible it should read like a concise sentence. If there aren't enough page related terms then the author can extract relevant parts from the homepage top related terms. 11. Page summary written well, hasn't got irrelevant text and if possible the page title/part title and other top page titles/part titles have been blended in. The idea being to build in popular search terms to the summary. STANDARDS = This can include things like badly written summary with irrelevant text often repeated throughout many pages. For example in 'This page is about fish and chips, mushy peas and onion rings.' 'This page is about' is not necessary and should be removed. Blending example: Instead of "Hammocks Rope Chairs. Rope hammock chairs like the Island Bay Rope Hammock Chair combine the comfort of a hammock with the practicality of a chair. Includes links to places where the featured hammocks rope chairs can be bought." use "Hammocks rope chairs like the Island Bay rope hammock chair combine the comfort of a hammock with the practicality of a chair. Includes links to places where the featured hammocks rope chairs can be bought." 12. Anything else that seems wrong - this is a catch all to cover unforeseen things. 13. The content is in line with main goal, i.e. the content and external links are what people want. Pages that cover legal public products should list actual products, and general info, in proportion to what the public are looking for, but with 4 sentences minimum general info. This would mean pictures with the one off price (if possible) and any bulk price with quantity stated, full model number if any, where to buy online, in what country, an external link below the picture, and the date of the price. Listed products should be the best we can find for the price. It may be appropriate to include an expensive one and a cheap one. STANDARD = Matter of opinion again here, common sense needed, Please do a bit of google searching just to make sure they have got it approximately right and their content covers the topic and links to the top/best sources for the topic. 14. That images have a visible title unless there is a good reason not to, and that the title is accurate and searchable (or includes searchable term(s)) if possible. First check wordtracker looking for the most related popular phrase for the image topic. If that fails try and use a google-search for which google results come up relevant to the image topic. Unquoted google-searches are best but quoted are acceptable. The accuracy requirement means that product pictures should describe the product as well as the topic of the product but if the reasonable product description appears in wordtracker then that is sufficient alone. STANDARD = That image descriptions are accurate and searchable if reasonably possible. Searchable means that which people might type into google when searching for the topic. 15. Link to original content source. STANDARD = That featured content has a clearly labelled external link to the original copyrighted source if it can be established and if it makes sense to do so. For example some images need to have links to the original source of the image if possible. One problem is that the source of the image may not be original in which case don't put a link to that source but look for the original and official one. Original sources may have a copyright message although this is not a legal requirement. Put links to the official websites of famous people featured in images. The same goes for significant written content that refers to another site. 16. Check Utility + List: Problems gives no problems. 17. Check the page is balanced in that it has content in columns 1, 2 and 3 terminating at roughly the same level at the bottom of the page unless there is a reason not to do this. If the main content is a sequence it should start in column 2 and continue to column 3. Column 1 can be used for other points about the topic if reasonable to do so. 18. Page content should likely be allowed by the average google Adsense policy enforcer. 19. Related sites are in a clickboard section and the Links.htm page with description. Also that all the related sites also have similar links back to this site. 20. Check that site has a link to the new site. 21. Check that the new site say abc.com appears in google,yahoo and MSN indexes with the correct description, i.e. a search for site:abc.com returns at least one result and that result has a description that comes from the new site not the old parked site. 22. Check that the shipping details on the page and on the companies website match. 23. Use of External Content It is always better to write your own interpretation. Use at least two separate site sources for the text of any one of our pages. Only use info from other sites in line with "fair use policy" if the material is copyrighted. 24. LINKTO's on HOMEPAGE The highest scoring ones (sub pages only of course) should also appear on the homepage as LINKTO's as long as they don't exceed the max internal page link rule. (Generally a max of 12 internal links) 25. No info overlap with subsections. Use notice instead. Example:- You have a page called "Romantic ECards" and it has a sub page called "Free Romantic ECards" - The Romantic ECards page should cover only paid ones with a prominent note in col2 to go to our 'Free Romantic ECards' page for free ones. The Romantic Ecards summary should start with "Paid for romantic ecards." or similar, so the public know it is mainly for paid ones. These rules apply in general where one page is a subtopic of another and there is overlap. We don't want to cover the same ground twice, better we use links instead. Another example could be that you've got a page called "Arizona Moving Companies" and that has a sub page called "Phoenix Moving Companies" which is of course a city in Arizona. And so, you would not include any Phoenix moving companies in the "Arizona Moving Companies" page as the "Phoenix Moving Companies" page will cover it. In this case, you wouldn't say "Non Phoenix Arizona moving companies." at the start of the summary since it just doesn't sound or look right. Site written by John Middlemas