New site review - feedback appreciated

[Barclay]

Hi everyone,

I am posting my site up for review to hopefully get some feedback. I've been working on it with a colleague for a little under 6 months.. being our first venture into the internet/webmaster world it has taken a little longer than I'd like to get the ball rolling, but I'm learning as I go which for me is a lot of fun. In terms of SEO I'm not sure how strong/weak my site is, so critiques about that are very welcome - even if they are harsh I'd rather know now then discover later.. although I'm sure I'm missing a number of things, I hope I have the basics down.

My postings over the past couple of weeks has led me to post the site in current state and not wait until everything is perfect. We are making excellent progress recently and have really been stepping up the pace at which we add content (articles and graphics) to the site, although there are still a lot of unfinished aspects. I won't list everything that still needs to be done, but I have a big list already .

With that being said, my external SEO is something that is sorely lacking (read: non-existent) and I would like to exchange links with other new/aspiring sites, but let's deal with one thing at a time.

Thanks for reading!

www.gamblersden.com

[WinYourWayKyle]

Its a very simple site.
And a lot of times simple can be much better.
Very easy to navigate and very easy on the eyes.
I know this is a work in progress, and I am sure you know content is key, especially for SEO.

I will exchange links with you, drop me an e-mail at linkexchange@winyourway.ca and give me all your details and we can get started with that.

Good luck with your venture.

[Barclay]

Hi Kyle,

The site is indeed very simple which is how we had planned it. For us it was getting the basic design up and putting up content. I personally like the simple design as everything is easy to find without straining the eyes as a lot of flashy sites tend to be.

Thanks for your prompt feedback!

[jackten]

It looks great for your first site. Just don't forget to add affiliate promos so you actually get paid

[thepokerkeep]

I really like it. Great job!

As for on page SEO, I'd suggest making the bolded text (below) a home page link... http://www.gamblersden.com/

It will help with your ranking for those keywords.

At Gambler’s Den, our mission is to provide you with the best online casino guide that will teach you the basics of every casino game, and delve into advanced strategies designed to give you the best preparation possible for your online gaming experience.

Keep up the good work.

[Barclay]

Thanks both of you for your feedback. thepokerkeep - I've added the hyperlink as you suggested... I had thought about doing it awhile ago and for some reason it slipped my mind.

So far not as bad as I thought

[WinYourWayKyle]

Never underestimate the simple and easily laid out website.
You want visitors to actually read the information on your site, and most of the info you have there should be to inform your potential players and to give them value. As well, you need to include your sales pitch here and there to help entice a player to join your affiliate gaming sites as well.

Having flashy graphics and animations and so on, but little content of any value = No value for the person visiting your website...At the end of the day, they will click the back button on their browser and keep looking down the search results.

[HodgeyBoy]

Hi Barclay,

I'd say that you've done a great job considering this is your first attempt!

As an AM I spend the best part of each day looking at other people's website's and GamblersDen does not look like a first attempt that's only been up a few months.

I know that you'll be busy but when you get the chance why don't you think about creating a newsletter and offering it to readers who leave you their email details? - you could put something in a prominent position on the homepage to advertise this.

Soon you can start to develop an emailing list that gives you the chance to market at people again. Make sure that the Call to Action, when you ask for their emails, lets them know that you have something good and something of value to offer them in return - they're not going to want to give you their email just for nothing! I would suggest that you include things like New promotions and offers (of course) BlackJack hints and tips to compliment your strategy page, news of big jackpot payouts on anything from Casino to Lotto so that your readers are reminded that they always have a chance - things like this.

Good Luck and once again, Great Job!

[Lee-Ann]

Hi Barclay - great site, my comments will mirror those above - you should definately put up some links in the Coming Soon section for casinos' that focus on EU and AU offers. As these markets have huge potential to grow.

Less is more as they say and I think for a first attempt site it's a great start.

You may want to add something about various bonuses or new games that are launching to keep your content current as well.

Agree with the newsletter - giving away free tips or news or exclusive offers will help you montise the traffic over and over, and give you stickyness with your audience.

Best of luck and hope your site goes on to achieve great things!

[Barclay]

Thanks for the kind words and excellent feedback!

I have a to-do list that will last me for quite a while but I will add what you both suggested as well – it seems like when I finish one item on the list another two crop up . I’ll be starting to exchange some links starting in the next few days to that ball rolling – I’ve realized how important it is and I really can’t put it off any more.

Thanks again to everyone for your input!

[Barclay]

Rather then open a new thread, I thought I'd ask a few more questions in this one, as it's seemed to have died down..

I've been receiving a few visitors from GPWA and long tailed keywords and I notice that some of them show up in Google Analytics as having visited for 00:00 average time and 100% bounce rate... I'm guessing that this means that they clicked on the link but didn't wait for the site to load. Can someone confirm this?

Is there any way for me to determine my site load time accurately? I've used several websites and google webmaster tools but the majority give me results from 4s - 8s.. Webmaster tools gives me 4.73s as of last week. I also found a cool site (http://www.webpagetest.org/) that examines how optimized my site is and re-sized most of the images on the site... I hope this will have a positive effect. Are there any tools someone can recommend that can help me figure out where my weak points are so my site can load faster?

I am currenly using GoDaddy's Deluxe hosting - is it related to that? If so, how much would good hosting cost me and how much would it increase load time?

Thanks for reading!

I'm attaching the report I got from the above listed site after I optimized the images - it seems that the initial load (start render) doesnt happen for at least 3 seconds - is that normal?

				Document Complete			Fully Loaded
	Load Time	First Byte	Start Render	Time	Requests	Bytes In	Time	Requests	Bytes In
First View	4.255s	1.386s	3.046s	4.255s	45	352 KB	4.226s	45	352 KB
Repeat View	4.393s	2.623s	3.638s	4.393s	37	78 KB	4.372s	37	78 KB

[jackten]

I'm on my laptop. I tried to load your websites both in Firefox and IE and it took several seconds.

Pro tip:
- Send their support a message and ask about it

It could be temporary or there might be a problem. They're the best people to help you. If they can't fix it then you can change web host.

[Barclay]

Ok I did some more optimizations and these site analysis reports are telling sometimes 4s, sometimes 12s, sometimes 2s... I don't know what to believe - I've e-mailed GoDaddy's support so we'll see what they have to say. The site does seem to be loading faster though

Another issue; when I type site:gamblersden.com in Google it shows me 1-34 results but when I click on page 2 it drops down to 1-15... it seems to show a few random pages when I have a little over 50 pages right now.. Is there any reason that google isn't detecting the rest of my pages with the site: tool? Its been like this for a few weeks already - only showing me the "34" pages.. I have SEOQuake's toolbar and they also only show 34 pages as being indexed.. Is there anything I can do to get the crawler to come back and pick up the rest of my site? Or is this one of the those things that are only updated quarterly or something?

Thanks.

[wagerjunction]

One of the great things about it is the age of the domain. That will give you nice credibility already with SE so your content should be indexed pretty quickly . Its a nicely constructed site with a good code to text ratio . You have all of your on site SEO buttons ticked - H1 in place etc etc . I dont have much to add that others have not pointed out APART FROM

Your Casino games section. My suggestion is to actually have free Casino games that people can play rather than just having text. It makes the site a little more interactive and we have seen a lot more conversion from partners using these Casino games. Text is King but a little bit of game play cant hurt . Nice site

[Gabriel_LCP]

I like the Quick Bars for every casino game! It is a nice extra to have!

[Barclay]

I was hoping that the age of the domain would help for something but most people I spoke said it would be nice, but nothing special - he said that content age is much more important than domain age. I hope you are right though, as my issue with google not indexing my pages has me pretty confused

The Casino Games section is indeed very dull - it's something on my to-do list but I've been putting it off for other more important issues. The fact that you brought it up though bumped it up a few notches .

As always - feedback is much appreciated! Thanks guys!

[bonusbetting]

Argh, automated forum spam is the bane of my life at the moment. Does anyone know any captchas they can't crack yet?

Barclay - well done on a quality site. I'm a big fan of keeping it clean and simple, and users appreciate it too.
Conversion rates are much better on sites that users can trust.
Is it built in Joomla?

I noticed that you have masked some affiliate links with bit.ly.
There is an ongoing debate in the members' section about the value of masking links, but apart from that, you may find using bit.ly causes tracking issues. Some affiliate programs require traffic to come from your domain due to the potential for abuse from people spamming redirected links.

I'm not a fan of Godaddy and those loading times don't sound good - there are plenty of good affordable hosts out there, it might be worth considering a change.

Re: google indexing - how deep the google bot will crawl into your site is determined by how much authority Google thinks your site has. As you say, your external SEO is lacking - a few decent links and Google will be more interested!

Welcome to the GPWA - hope to see you in the member's section soon, have you applied for a seal/private membership yet?

[Nodepositworld]

I very much like it. It's simple to find what you are looking for. I do suggest a little more space ( padding ) between your text and your images.

[jannes]

I like the website especially the frontpage with the article links. When you exchange links only use 3-way with a second website which doesn't link to your main page. For SEO it is also very importent to find some quality authority websites with some Pagerank and maybe pay a monly amount.

[annihilation]

Hi Barclay, it has been almost a year since you last updated.

I guess your website that we are seeing now is the finish product.

It look clean and professional. But the look and feel is only half of the story.

I hope that your site is doing well in terms of traffic and conversion.