When I first had the brainstorm to create GeekySpeaky, I envisioned a simple blog about technology and the internet from a girl geek point of view. It’s funny that what started out as a simple little blog about the internet and technology has grown into a website with forums, a links directory, and monthly contests. I like what I’ve done with the place, but I’d also like to know what mistakes I’m making. I’m all for changing things up in order to attract more visitors and increase my ranking in the search engines. I’m just at a loss as to what to do next, so when I heard about DotCommentary, I was intrigued, and immediately wanted to get my own DotCommentary for this website. So what IS a DotCommentary, anyway?

A DotCommentary is a personalized website consultation designed to help you strengthen your online presence by looking at your website from all angles.

Oh sure, I could ask my friends to take a look and tell me what they think, but I’d probably end up with biased opinions, or maybe they’d be afraid of telling me about the negative aspects of the site. So why trust the man behind DotCommentary, Ben Steed?

For starters, Ben is unbiased. He’s spent the last ten years working on websites, and he’s obviously not going to be afraid to tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly about my site. Ben actually gave me a free DotCommentary in return for MY unbiased opinion about his service, which ranks websites on 35 checkpoints, showing you how you compare to your competition, and what you can do to fix the mistakes that you’ve made.

Let’s get started on what I thought of the DotCommentary, shall we?

Before I even received the results of the DotCommentary, I got an email from the company asking me to click on a link to verify my response time. Neat! This verifies that you actually reply to emails, customer complaints, questions, and the like. I’m happy to report my response time was instant. It’s definitely not something I would think of testing, but it’s a great idea!

Once the report was completed, I received a link to log in and view my results. It was laid out well, from the domain name to contact information and load time. Errors and potential problems are notated with an exclamation point or a red x, so if you’re pressed for time, you can only view the negative issues. Each of those negative things was clearly explained as well, for instance, my site can be accessed with or without the “www”, and the report pointed out I should have a 301 redirect to force people to one, or the other, but not allow hits to both versions. I never even thought of that.

I found out my CSS doesn’t validate, and I don’t have a favicon. Probably easy enough to fix on both counts, but I wasn’t aware I had problems with those items before now. I received kudos for having a search function prominently displayed, as well as making my font adjustable, and being compatible in different browsers. The report checked for broken links and only found 5.

What I liked best about all of this is that if you’re not sure about an item, you can easily access more information, tips, and resources on how to correct the problem. The whole thing is very user friendly and easy to follow and digest, and each segment is explained clearly. I’m very impressed.