Please Help!

[JaqiC]

This is my first (and hopefully only) SOS message for my website. I started my site about a year and a half ago, and during that time I have been adding content slowly but surely. Since last February, I started a more active campaign which includes writing one to two articles per week, submitting to paid web directories, adding anchor texts, and adding links. I have been blogging regularly about promotions and tournaments, and have been really trying to get more information out onto the big web-highway in the sky. So far I have been getting a few more hits to my site, but almost no conversions. I finally reached page rank two in Google, and I am finding my website inching its way up in Google search, but still haven't reached page 1 yet.

My request is that if any of you can find the time to check out my site and give me some honest feedback, I really would appreciate it. I have been picking my son's brain like crazy (WagerX) and he has been extremely helpful and patient with me over the last few months. (Adrian, thanks for letting me cry on your shoulder!) I thought that maybe some of you could give some additional insight and some helpful hints on how to get this moving a little faster.

Thanks ahead of time for any and all help that you can give!!

[universal4]

You're related to Adrian??

Well right there is your problem....ooops...did I say that?

Don't tell him I said that it can be our little secret....LOL

Posting here is the right thing to do as a number of people will take a look see and possbily give some hints....

At first glance I think the chimp site is a pretty sharp site....

Taking only a few minutes I did run the home page through the validator and w3c sees 181 errors....not exactly an end all, but depending on the errors sometimes this will cause some problems in the engines....

Rick
Universal4

[thepokerkeep]

Hi Jaqi

I spent some time last night looking over your site. At first I didn't see any real reason for you not to be converting your traffic. Your site is gorgeous! Your pages are extremely informative, Meta tags are good, etc. In other words, it has all the ingredients required to be successful.

You're not doing anything wrong.

After sleeping on it, I've come to the conclusion that if you are not doing anything wrong, you must not be doing something right.

This is the first time (and maybe the only time) I am going to say this.... I think your problem is "too much content"! I didn't do a word count on your pages but I think you are pushing the average page to somewhere around a thousand words or more.

I preach all the time about content being king, and it is! But, in this case I think you are overwhelming your visitors and the search engines with the quantity of content on each of your page - information overload!

In your case, I would create a second set of review pages - let's call them "Summary Reviews".
Make them a maximum of 400-500 words and optimize them for the relevant keywords (max of 6 - .
Use more in-text calls to action.
Link to these pages from your home page both in the top menu and in the chart.
Use these pages to summarize the info you provide in your longer casino reviews.
Link to your longer review page from the summary review page.

Another thing I noticed is your calls to action, (or lack of). Once a visitor navigates beyond your home page, most of your CTA's are limited to banners/graphics. For example, looking at your Live Roulette page, there are no text links (no CTA). The only links within the body of the page are in the three graphics which don't indicate what casino or page the link goes to... Dublinbet and Lucky Live are not advertised on the graphic or under it.

Question:
Are you ranking for any pages other than your home page?
Using your Lucky Live review page as an example, is it ranking at all for the search terms you've optimized it for?

I'm not sure why your inner pages don't appear to be getting any internal link juice but I get the impression that there is something weird about your URL structure or file structure or something..... ??

I also noticed that your top nav link: "Payment Methods" is redirecting to http://www.casinochimp.com/index.php which is actually your home page. By having http://www.casinochimp.com/index.php and www.casinochimp.com/ both being cached and indexed, you are effectively dividing the PR between the pages.

Sorry for the long winded review.... hope it helps.

[universal4]

Good points Terry....

I think that many of us forget things like asking the visitors to visit the sites, or download the software etc....

Sometimes it really can be that simple....

Rick
Universal4

[JaqiC]

You're related to Adrian??

Well right there is your problem....ooops...did I say that?

Don't tell him I said that it can be our little secret....LOL

Posting here is the right thing to do as a number of people will take a look see and possbily give some hints....

At first glance I think the chimp site is a pretty sharp site....

Taking only a few minutes I did run the home page through the validator and w3c sees 181 errors....not exactly an end all, but depending on the errors sometimes this will cause some problems in the engines....

Rick
Universal4

Rick,

Thanks so much for this feedback. I had no idea that there were that many errors in my site. I will definately look at that this week and correct any problems that I run across. There could be something in this that is creating some problems with the engines.

Adrian has been so incredibly patient with me over the last year and a half working with me. He has taken someone with zero knowlege (me) and helped me/ guided me/ pulled me through the quagmire of web design and seo tracking. It is amazing to me that the more I learn, the more I realize how little I really do know!

But one day I really will have to share some good stories about Adrian as he was growing up! lol

Thanks again for your help!

[universal4]

OK, you just blew it.....

He will now never help you until he gets you to sign a statement that you would never reveal his childhood antics.....lol

Don't sign it!!

We'll help you here ONLY if you tell us stories....lol

Rick
Universal4

[Topboss]

Terry
I think Jaqi may have forgotten to thank you for your informative post, but I am sure you helped her substantially as you did me - without even knowing it.
I have a designer in my company that has a terrible habit of forgetting to put in the call to action. She designs beautiful sites and has lovely graphics etc but often forgets to add that one important "Vist / Go to xyz casino"
Your post reminded me to go and double check on her sites and lo and behold - no call to action!!
Thanks Terry!!

[JaqiC]

Terry, Thank you so much for this input! I have heard so much about content that I have made content my main focus on the site, which I can see now could definately be information overload. I do like your idea about creating the "Review Summary" pages, making the information more condensed and easier to follow for my readers. The fact that they will be creating more links would be beneficial too.

The lack of "Call to Action" links is also something that I see now is an issue for me. This can be a pretty easy fix, and I think it will pay big dividends in the future.

As for the ranking on my pages, I have really only been seeing my main page in the top 5 pages of google or yahoo. I will look more into the file structure and see if there could be something there. Again, this could be an easy fix, if I can find out what the problem is.

Again, I have to tell you thank you! Taking the time that you did to go over my site and giving me this very helpful input means the world to me! I will have my work cut out for me for the next several days, but I have every confidence that these suggestions will help me reach that next level. Thank you so much!

[JaqiC]

OK, you just blew it.....

He will now never help you until he gets you to sign a statement that you would never reveal his childhood antics.....lol

Don't sign it!!

We'll help you here ONLY if you tell us stories....lol

Rick
Universal4

Rick, Don't worry, I have the stories and the pictures to prove them! lol

[clearlyportals]

Hi,

Nice sites by the way. They’ve great potential but seem to be having problems as you say. A couple of thoughts from myself

1) I agree on the call to actions. I would also make the front page ranking of casinos found on casino chimp stand out more. Your whole site is green, along with links and different shades of green backgrouns. This makes the front page casino rankings blend in a little too much. You could really make this stand out more in my opinion. I find this so with quite a few of your green links, they just seem to blend in.

2) Where you have ‘TOP LIVE CASINOS WITH LIVE DEALERS!’, make it less text, really emphasise the bonus and the PLAY NOW aspect, could work well for you. ALSO check the book out 'Letting Go of the Words' ( ISBN-10: 0123694868 ) really recommend it. Explains writing content for sites, but also peoples behaviour when reading sites.

3) What keywords are you targeting? For instance ‘casino games’ could get a lot of traffic from pretty much anyone, where as ‘sign up to a casino now’ (just an example), might deliver more serious visitors.

On a last note about getting yourself to page 1, could I suggest a couple of things? This is only to help you improve as much as possible, take it or leave it:

1) Do correct as many of your errors as possible (as mentioned by someone else) found from w3c validation

2) It has been acknowledged that Google prefers faster loading sites, and as such they have a neat little tool which not many know about call Google Page Speed. Use this in conjunction with the ‘Firebug’ pluging for firefox to optimise your site.

Your homepage is around 800kb, thats quite big. Try to optimise. Google Page Speed offers a couple of pointers (currently giving you a score of around 66/100):

--> enable gzip compression (saving you 84kb)
--> Leverage Browser Caching
--> Server static content from a cookieless domain
--> etc, etc.

While these are second to conversion optimisation, its all worth considering. The way i look at it, if google has two sites, both with pretty much the same content but one is half the size and error-less, which one would it pick?

Despite my long post, great sites! keep up the good work

Cheers

[JaqiC]

Clearlyportal,

Thank you so much for your great feedback! I do appreciate the fact that you did such a great in-depth review of my site and provided me with some very worthwhile feedback. I will look into optimizing my home page and making the changes that you have recommended. Great stuff, and I know that I have my work cut out for me now!

The book that you suggest sounds really good. I know that I tend to write like I was taught in school and get too "wordy" at times. This might look good on a term paper but doesn't always work on a website. Great suggestion here.

I have been trying to refine my keywords by targeting my "niche" on each page and then using the best keywords that will reach serious searchers. Mostly I have been using keywords that are more specific in nature and less vague. I guess that my purpose has been to find people to come to my site who will then stay there because I am offering the information that they are looking for. Maybe I have been making my keywords too specific. I will look at these and see if I can make some changes or expand my search somehow.

Thanks again for such great feedback! With all of the great suggestions that I have been given by you, Rick, and Terry, I am sure to have some fine tuned websites running very soon. I hope to share these with you all in the very near future! Thanks so much!

[slotplayer]

I like your site alot - needs a pass or two though. all good point by everyone. so off hand this is what I see, however I don't know too much about promoting table games.

I'd make the nav menu links consistent across all pages, on the home page they're centered and on the other pages aligned left, which looks better.

perhaps link your logo to the home page across all pages.

same for the header links (where it says live casino reviews) they wrap on some inner pages but not on the home page and the pull down menus don't work on some. Should that be deposit methods or payment methods?

you seem to push lucky live casino, I see at least 5 links to it on the home page so why not have it as featured casino and consolidate the content?

if lucky live is rated #1 (5 stars) and the bonus is 100%/100 why would I play #6 (4 stars) or #7 (3 stars) with similar bonus offers. What is unique about each casino that would make me want to play there?

Recent News/Current Promotions: Generally, links that wrap might confuse the visitor, so when space is tight they're usually truncated with ...

like this:

Blackjack Tournaments at Global Live ...

It also makes the visitor curious and they tend to want to find out more.

Your casino/blackjack/roulette content reviews are excellent, did you write those, if so, you have some good writing skills.

Maybe list some deposit methods, accepts NETeller, Moneybookers, ECOcard

just as an fyi, I like to put my best converting links, banners, info for converting programs above the page fold. I find that footer banners don't convert nearly as well as headers banners or casinos below the page fold.

Same for the nav menu, how important is "Technology and Software" surely not as important as "Bonuses", maybe move it under "Live Casino News".

Just say "Home" consistently across all nav menus - CasinoChimp Home is too long, stands out too much thus taking away from the shorter links like "Bonuses" for example.

perhaps like this:
Home
Bonuses
Top Live Casinos

[Pokerworx]

I think both your sites are solid, we think this is easy n its not! I would say branch out you seem to like online casinos so branch out to the games they have, bingo, slots whatever, just like your roulette site except leave out the - uk in the domain name your targeting the uk when you could be targeting everywhere except the usa (for non us sites), and even better if your not targeting a country.

Fix the payment methods page in the top nav!, you have a ton of content on your sites you should be getting a few players.. I have the name casinoonlinecasinos you can have it its just gona expire maybe think of a name change.

Really think though that you should branch out if this is not working find something that will, you got bingo, slots, video poker all that stuff and leave countries out of it there are 400+million people in America with lots of money - 50-70 in the UK. Best of luck though it can get you down but when you get someting you really know n like its not like work.

[JaqiC]

I like your site alot - needs a pass or two though. all good point by everyone. so off hand this is what I see, however I don't know too much about promoting table games.

I'd make the nav menu links consistent across all pages, on the home page they're centered and on the other pages aligned left, which looks better.

perhaps link your logo to the home page across all pages.

same for the header links (where it says live casino reviews) they wrap on some inner pages but not on the home page and the pull down menus don't work on some. Should that be deposit methods or payment methods?

you seem to push lucky live casino, I see at least 5 links to it on the home page so why not have it as featured casino and consolidate the content?

if lucky live is rated #1 (5 stars) and the bonus is 100%/100 why would I play #6 (4 stars) or #7 (3 stars) with similar bonus offers. What is unique about each casino that would make me want to play there?

Recent News/Current Promotions: Generally, links that wrap might confuse the visitor, so when space is tight they're usually truncated with ...

like this:

Blackjack Tournaments at Global Live ...

It also makes the visitor curious and they tend to want to find out more.

Your casino/blackjack/roulette content reviews are excellent, did you write those, if so, you have some good writing skills.

Maybe list some deposit methods, accepts NETeller, Moneybookers, ECOcard

just as an fyi, I like to put my best converting links, banners, info for converting programs above the page fold. I find that footer banners don't convert nearly as well as headers banners or casinos below the page fold.

Same for the nav menu, how important is "Technology and Software" surely not as important as "Bonuses", maybe move it under "Live Casino News".

Just say "Home" consistently across all nav menus - CasinoChimp Home is too long, stands out too much thus taking away from the shorter links like "Bonuses" for example.

perhaps like this:
Home
Bonuses
Top Live Casinos

Slotplayer,

Thank you so much for this great feedback. Having a new perspective about how my site is viewed by visitors is wonderful to have. I agree with what you say about having consistency and about how important the layout of the information is. These could be fairly easy fixes, but effective in encouraging visitors to delve further into the website.

The feedback on my "Star Review" is really good. I never really looked at it like that before, but now I can see that if I want for my visitors to check out some of the different casinos then I need to tell them "why" to do so. Thanks!

I really like your thoughts and plan on incorporating them into my website. Thanks again!

[JaqiC]

I think both your sites are solid, we think this is easy n its not! I would say branch out you seem to like online casinos so branch out to the games they have, bingo, slots whatever, just like your roulette site except leave out the - uk in the domain name your targeting the uk when you could be targeting everywhere except the usa (for non us sites), and even better if your not targeting a country.

Fix the payment methods page in the top nav!, you have a ton of content on your sites you should be getting a few players.. I have the name casinoonlinecasinos you can have it its just gona expire maybe think of a name change.

Really think though that you should branch out if this is not working find something that will, you got bingo, slots, video poker all that stuff and leave countries out of it there are 400+million people in America with lots of money - 50-70 in the UK. Best of luck though it can get you down but when you get someting you really know n like its not like work.

Pokerworx,

I totally agree with you that I need to branch out more. I have been working on a couple of other sites, which include blackjack and poker. I am seeing that Bingo and Slots are rapidly gaining in popularity, so it would be a good idea for me to spread my wings a little bit farther to include these as well. As for the Payment Methods nav bar, you are right! That one more or less slipped through the cracks.

Thanks you so much for all of your insight. Although it may take a bit of work, I believe that expanding my scope could only be beneficial. Thanks!

[JaqiC]

I just wanted to let everyone know that I really do appreciate all of the help that you have given me. This week I have been working on cleaning up all of the errors, and let me say that I sometimes feel like I am running around in circles! With that said, though, it has been good for me to go through each page and check all of the coding, line by line. It is amazing to find some really obvious errors that I never saw before! Hopefully next week I can concentrate more on adding more call to action links, along with the rest of the changes.

Thanks again for all of your suggestions. I will let you guys know when I get done with all of this, and hopefully hear some more great ideas!

[Nandakishore]

I had a look at the Casinochimp site. It is a very good one with very useful contents, possibly a bit too much, as Terry pointed out. But before changing anything, you should, in my opinion, first check where is the performance poor: in number of clicks, downloads, registration (fun player, real player), deposits etc. Only then you can really know what requires optimization.