Mike’s Reviews

It’s been quite a time since I posted the first and only blog review on this site so I reckon that I should write one now. Today, I’ll be making a short review of Macalua.com owned by Marc Macalua.

Before that, who’s Marc? He’s the founder of SEO Philippines and is called by many (myself included) an SEO guru. But will his site macalua.com pass my taste? Let’s see. First, here’s a screenshot of his site taken just moments ago.

The first I noticed is the size of the header. It’s pretty large and definitely will eat up most of the space in today’s UMPCs. The header part contains “Macalua.com | E-commerce Strategy, SEO, PPC, E-Mail Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and Web Analytics” on top then some links and a search bar then a blue section that contains a short blurb and a very large SEO on the right. I think it’d be better if the blue section will be minimized a bit to make more space for the content below.

The site is laid out for screens that are at least 1024 pixels wide and I think that’s fine since most of the monitors today have at least a resolution of 1024×768 pixels. The site has two sidebars placed side-by-side which I think is the reason for the choice of layout width. The placement of the sidebars effectively accentuates the content on the left. The only problem I see with the sidebar is the contrast between the gray background and the gray text.

As for the content, I noticed that almost all of the posts on the homepage have comments which I think is a result of regular traffic. After all, Marc is a popular guy and getting traffic from fellow bloggers will be expected. I also noticed that there are no ads on the site which added to the simplicity of the design makes it look very professional. The site as a whole caters to a wide variety of topics which is what I’d expect in a “personal” blog such as this one. You can find anything from SEO to Photography on his site.

All in all, I think a little bit of tweaking on the design will make it more user-friendly but aside from that, it’s a good one. I’ll give it a 4 out of 5.

Hi folks.  After some time thinking of what I should write I decided to write reviews of people’s blogs.  This would effectively be my first non-paid website review so expect it to be as honest as possible.

Today’s blog – Benj’s Busy Blog by Benj Arriola

Site design: This blog uses WordPress and it’s template is reminiscent of WordPress default theme which is based on the famous Kubrick theme.  One thing that I like about Benj’s custom theme is the changing header graphic image.  Try refreshing the page and you get a different header graphic image – all of which are shot by Benj himself.

Blog content: Since this is primarily a personal blog, I expect it to be well, about Benj’s personal experiences.  The content is more or less consistent with his blog’s theme and while it is not updated often (typical of a personal blog), it does contain interesting stuff.

One more thing I like about how he writes is that he makes it a point to include photos in his blog posts as much as possible to get rid of what he calls the “great wall of text” blog posts wherein all you see are paragraphs and more paragraphs.  The photos he includes in his blog posts kinds of breaks the wall.

Ad placement: Ad placements on Benj’s Busy Blog are quite well.  He puts a banner above the posts and a skyscraper on the sidebar – 2 skyscrapers in the homepage and 1 in internal (actual blog post) pages.  When you click a blog post, you will also see another 468×60 ad at the end of the post which I think is good.  However I think it would be better if he placed a medium rectangle adsense ad their instead of the 468×60.  That way, the ads will look more like “other links” and thus possibly increase clickthrough rates.

All in all, the blog looks great and is worth reading and I give it a score of 4 out of 5.