I would appreciate a site review

[barney1958]

My name is Rob Barnett and I am new to this forum and was just accepted as a private member.
I am interested in getting the GPWA Seal of Approval, so I would like some opinions on my site.
My site Ultimate Guide to Gambling has been online for about a year now and I would like it to be reviewed.
I look forward to and would appreciate hearing your opinions.

[AE-Martyn]

Welcome Rob.



I had a quick scan through your site and the first things that really stood out for me were:

• The logo - It looks dated and the duplicated lighter shade of text behind the text makes it harder to read, especially with the smaller font. Maybe bring it closer to the larger font if you wish to use it.
• Take the 'Affiliates' link out of the top nav and move it to the bottom. If you're aiming your site at players and this is the second link then I think it could cause some confusion.
• Navigation - Rename link to give more information on what the user will see if they click it. For example, if I hover over Casino to view the dropdown I see 6 links to 'Casino' for me on first look these could be the same page so if I click one I wouldnt click another. Give each more descriptive name if you are using this kind of format. G to G Casino sounds like a brand, I clicked it thinking I would see a new casino. Again description is key.
• Promotions page - its a mix of promotions from all gambling types. Break this down to Casino, Poker, Lottery, Sports Bingo etc to make it easier for the user to find the best offers.
• I think it would be better to have a main topic page (Casino/Poker/Bingo etc) where you can give an introduction, tabulate the casinos/poker rooms etc on offer and fire a player off to a review about a specific casino. This review is basically the sales pitch, so to improve conversions make this good. Right now you have individual pages with a list of casinos on with banners and a short review, with the banner being the separator between reviews. Make it clearer and increase the number of pages and the content on your site by creating reviews by brand per page.
• http://www.guidetogamblingonline.com...-casino-titan/ for me this page provides too many generic links to your 'Casino' pages. If you're going to do this you need to make pages that give better content. 7 links on the word Casino going to the 7 casino links pages for isnt a great help.
• Provide a more obvious 'Call to Action' on the reviews so a player knows where to click to sign up or to at least check out the site of interest.
• Page loading speed - It's a little slow for me, adding all the media and lots of banners slows it down. I would look to optimise this.
• If you can, add in your Newsletter signup to your site, somewhere obvious. Gathering email addresses can help you yield long term profits from visitors to your site. If a new program launches or a new offers comes out, you can hit these people with an email to tell them about it and increase overall productivity. If i click the 'Join Us' link now, I get taken to an unbranded page with no link back to the main site if I decide not
• to sign up. Yes the back button is an option but you have to make it easy to navigate.

In summary, a bit of reorganisation and updating and I think you have the start of an informative site. I hope this is constructive and it helps you develop your site further.

I think thats all from me for now.


I'll let someone else go into the tags and SEO etc.


Oh and add our casinos on your pages... www.affiliateedge.com

[Lee-Ann]

Hi Rob - I've had a quick look and think you've made a great start there is a lot going on here and I think it would help to simplify the direction of the site a bit to help users get educated and then convert to the merchant offers you want them to take up. I know it's important to have advertising to monetize it - but you have a great URL - and it needs to "do what it says on the tin" for educating customers on where and how to play safely and securely online.
<O</O
Your home page - should draw someone in and make them feel comfortable that this site is a ultimate guide to everything they would need to know about gambling online, so they feel safe about making an educated choice to go on and play - based on your expert recommendations. The site navigation is not very clear - where do you want me to click next after I've read the main spiel on your home page? (I'm sure you are in process of still finalizing all of this) - for example “casinos" tab on the top - just says casinos, casinos, underneath it in the drop down menu - rather than listing some casino brands that you recommend (sometimes choosing 5-10 merchants you want to partner with and who you think would give users a good first time player experience, is a better approach than advertising everyone all at once) or this tab could maybe link to more detailed separate review pages of casino brands that you have advertising for on your site.
<O</O
The site should cover topics like: understanding the mechanics of slots, or other casino games, how you deposit and cash out, how the betting works for bingo, sports bet, casino etc. what merchants have reputable bonus offers (i.e. understanding terms and conditions - reading the fine print) ... maybe a glossary of gaming terms - for a newbie this industries “lingo” can be quite overwhelming. Maybe add a seperate payments section dedicated to educating customers on the world of eWallets, and alternative deposit and cashout options and the benefits of each (ie. fast, secure, safe etc.)
<O</O
I hope you find these few brief points helpful and best of luck with developing your site - you've made a great start and the fun part is now taking it forward to increase your conversion and revenues! <O</O

[Maria F]

Welcome to the forum Rob! I think your site looks great and if you follow the advice AE-Martyn and Lee-ann gave you, you will soon get your GPWA Seal of Approval.

All the best!

[Gabriel_LCP]

Hi Rob! I hope you are well!

You have some pretty good and lengthy reviews! I really didn't read them so I could have my own opinion about your site.

I noticed there is a couple of stuff that looks kind of fuzzy that I would work on to have some better quality for it, for example the title of the site. I also think the title looks a little bit awkward, I don't think it fits well with the theme and colors you have chosen for the rest of the site. But this is a minor thing anyways.

I also think there should be a little more structure on your homepage, for example, you start out with Bodog then right below it is Sports Betting and after that Online Casino Gambling Sites. I just think if you are going to talk about big categories like those then the first Bodog section shouldn't be there. I also think the homepage and other section are packed with too many banners, they load up slow and might overwhelm the player visiting your site.

On the top section bar, I noticed that International Casinos shows a little sub menu when I place my mouse over it, the problem is that the sub menu shows International Casino 3 times. The same goes for Bingo, Casinos, Poker and Sports Betting.

I also found a couple of links that sent me nowhere, for example on the Live Dealer Section. If you go down to "top notch free casino games" on the first section called Live Dealer Online Casinos:Feel the Real Action!. I would take care of that as well!

I hope this helps out a little bit and the best of luck to you on your GPWA approval!

[ElaineGardiner]

Hi Rob,

there is lots of stuff here to get you started, but i thought i'd put my 2 cents in.

On your home page, I'd suggest having the images click ble through to more information. For example just now "Titan Casino" If i click on the image it takes me to the image upload.

[xecutable]

Welcome to the forums, and allow me to be the 1st affiliate to comment on your website .

I believe there some major flaws in the design, starting with the big logo at the top. If you look at it you would see that it takes about 1/3 of the 'above the fold' visible area. This is usually the area you would want your strongest selling/converting materials to be and not be pushed down by such a big logo. If you get rid of it and put up something small above your navigation menu will give you a lot more horizontal advertising space.

The dice images on the right seem to serve no purpose yet, they stand out and steal attention and focus. Try reading a page, without your eyes glancing on that image once or twice.

I see infolinks ads on the pages, unless you are making good money off those get rid of them, as they seem annoying, and you are not here to make $ off people's clicks but off their gaming. If even one of these keywords sends away a player it's not worth it.

I see tons of information and text, which is great for SEO, but I also watched a webinar lately, and learned a thing or two, and one of those things was that People Dont Read on the Net. You would have to highlight important words in those articles so people can scan it quickly, get what they need and move on.

Your permalink structure should contain keywords in order to rank well for long tails, for example your bingo page has the link yoursite/bingo-1/bingo-2/, NONE call to action words telling me to sign up and way more banners than needed. Remember that banners used to be good, but today's surfers have something called banner blindness.

As they are everywhere most of us don't even see it, that's why a lot of affiliate will confirm that many of their sign ups come from text links with call to action words like Register in .... Now, Visit ..... Now, Get a ..... free bet in ..... now and etc you get the idea.

Is any of your content unique? I just ran 2-3 paragraphs on different pages and everything is duplicated content, something that the casinos/books give out to all affiliates and now you have content that 100 other sites have as well. Google has most likely picked it up already and you will not rank anywhere near the top sports with such content.

The more I keep on copying paragraphs the more I see that all of this information has been provided by the casinos/books and none of it was written by you. You will need to get rid of everything...... I know it sounds a lot , but whatever was provided by the casino/books will need to be re-written in your own words and become unique content.

Then you will need to setup a better sitemap with well structured permalinks. You will need to tone it down with the banners as they are just too much.

Have you spent any time on building links? You site is still PR0 even though you say it's been online for a year now?

Anyways none of my suggestions or any of the suggestions above will matter if you do not get rid of everything that has not been written by you, and has been provided by the brands. Once you have unique content you can redo your links to match whatever is inside. If it's Bodog's Review, then call it Bodog Casino Review or whatever and make sure the permalink is something similar like /bodog-review/ and not just /casino-1/.

Then you can focus on design and everything else. GPWA will not approve you for a Seal if you don't have unique content as well. If you take care of the problems I have pointed out, you should be good to go. Wont wish luck, as I don't believe luck has anything to do with it. It's all hard & persistent work. Take care, hope you find the time to fix your content.

[universal4]

I tried a few random navigation links (at the top of the site) and every single link caused my browser to crash.

That was IE8, but it didn't crash on FF on the same machine.

Rick
Universal4