Please Help - Im Frustrated?

[TravG]

Guys and Gals I need some help!

I've been trying to break into this industry for probably 3 years now, and when I look back on what my site use to look like verses where I am now I laugh... but still not getting the conversions I think I should.

I play online poker a lot! And think I give pretty good reviews and info as it relates but still have less than 1000 unique vistors per month.

What am I doing wrong?

I've switched to a developer package with web expresion, try to write good code but still have less than 20 new conversions per month. Actually this month I may not hit 10?!

I update my material and prob spend well over 50 hrs per week on the site so I dont think I'm slacking.

Any suggestions I would love.

[ck8795]

Well tbh I didnt really see anything that grabbed my attention and I've flipped through about 7 pages now. Its a bit drab really


I would check out clicktale or crazyegg to see what it is your visitors are doing on your site. You'll get a good idea as to whether they are clicking certain areas or hitting the back button

Also watch this video because its awesome. The whole stompernet series is great but I really like this one which explains how the human eye works (yes I know its 30 minutes but how many minutes are you guys gonna spend reading this forum tonight )

Click Fu: How to Double Your Conversion

edit - where are your BONUS CODES? This may not even be the site in question but that right there should give you an idea or two

http://www.ultimatepokerbonus.com/poker-bonuses/

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Great advice kaus!

[gamingaffsguide]

Your site looks great to begin with.

Send me a pm and I'll see if I can help if you want a site critique/report. It is free

[TravG]

Thanks - yes www.ultimatepokerbonus.com is the site I am asking about. I will definitly check the sites out you recommended klaus and I appreciate the honest feedback.

I guess I was trying to keep the site as clean as possible but I guess clean turned into boring. I do have bonus codes for many of the sites I have listed, I just haven't used then in awhile.

Any suggestions on how to drive more traffic to the site?

Thanks again!

[ck8795]

I guess I was trying to keep the site as clean as possible but I guess clean turned into boring.

Im sorry if I offended but I would rather answer honestly - only way anyone can improve.

I do have bonus codes for many of the sites I have listed, I just haven't used then in awhile.

Why not? I'll reply after you've answered this one



Well to start I think your linking way to much to the same pages from one page - for example and I could be missing a few I've counted 6 links on your homepage going to your review for UB (not counting bonus page), 5 to poker4ever (2 of which are in the same paragraph) along with others. You don't need to link that much and I dont think every page on your site (or the maj of pages need to be linked to). I would restructure your linking and pick your important pages.

Does PokerHost and Poker4Ever convert well? If not stop linking to your review so much. Dont push the rooms that don't convert well

Your sidebar menu - Do you need to link to all of your reviews? Couldn't you take the low converting, and easy serp pages and link them from your poker review pages, your us poker sites page, poker bonuses, etc

Do you need to have those footer links and the second nav right above the footer. Most of those pages are already covered by interlinking within the content and using the tip menu that its not necessary to have 40 links down there.

Basically what Im trying to say is funnell and focus your pages better.

As a visitor your links overwhelm me. I don't know what page I should be looking at or where it is you want me to go. I know you want to increase traffic, but I think the visitor should come first whether you have 10 a day or 100. I am lost on your homepage.

Anyway hopefully others will comment and Im not trying to insult or anything, just things I would do differently.

A few other things I would change

btw you have a typo that looks off to visitors - BoDog should be Bodog

Change the pink sign-up and download buttons - they look cheap like one of those free button maker sites. Get someone to do a set that matches your site or use text links - which work well btw.

I wouldn't be linking out to car dealerships, and I would be careful where your buying links (sitewide footer screams paid for especially when its next to plumbing, insurance, etc). Most of unique links you do have only point to the homepage.

I'd redo the cake screens - the clarity is really poor

[Justin-SA]

In terms of content I read somewhere that readers don't actually read but scan. After writing content it was recommended to:

• cut what you wrote in half
• remove "marketing" words (aka use clear and simple langauge
• use bullet points where you can
• organize

Just scanning your homepage (and I didn't look at it more), I can't understand much by scanning it. Way to much info jumbled together for the quick reader.

The only thing that stood out to me was the table in the center: USA Friendly Poker Sites - USA Players Accepted. And every site has that, so it isn't that interesting...

I think simplifying would help. As Kaus said:

Basically what Im trying to say is funnell and focus your pages better.

[Badlands]

I checked out http://www.clicktale.com/ and found some good advice here:

http://blog.clicktale.com/2009/06/04...t-conversions/

[Renee]

Without looking at your site, the first thing I would suggest is that you should look at if you're getting that many uniques per month but not many conversions is, what keywords are you targeting and is this what people are seeing when they get to your site.

For example, if you're targeting poker freerolls and the first thing someone sees on your home page is a matching bonus for a poker room, they arent going to stay because thats not what they were looking for.

You have about 3 seconds to show the visitor what they were looking for before they leave. That's not a lot of time.

Also, as Hilary kinda touched on, what makes your site stand out over the others that are promoting the same thing?

A site can be clean or messy, but whichever shows the visitor what they are looking for is the one most likely to get more conversions. I don't think the appearance of the site is as much of an issue as most people think it is, unless it's totally unreadable and hard to find info.

Now looking at your site, I don't actually think there is anything wrong with how it looks - The navigation is very easy, the information is easy to read.

I would probably separate the content on the homepage..
Put about 5 poker rooms in that table and cut the text under it as much as you can - most people are never going to see it anyway since it's "below the fold"... so in this case, if you were to take my advice and keep only 5 poker rooms in that table, i would try to make the table smaller in height so that the visitor can see there is some text under it.

The UB.com banner in the top right is a waste of space.. That is prime real estate there and it's not doing anything. You have a ub.com banner there right in the middle. My advice would be to change the one in the top right for something else. I see that it clicks through to a review on UB... maybe put something on that which tells the visitor what they will see when they click it.. because to me, i thought thats where i would be taken - to the ub.com website, and so if I wasnt interested in going to the site but wanted to read a review first, i wouldn't click on it.

I think a lot of your content is repetitive. The bonuses are basically just repeated over every page. I think you could probably make that better by perhaps taking the tables out of most of those and having content about the topic of the page.. perhaps you could put a few text links inside your content.. but the bonuses should probably be on the bonus pages...

Just a few things, but they were the initial things I saw...

Good luck!

[TravG]

Klaus and Renee - Thank You Both!

That was exactly what I was looking for. Its funny because last night I was hashing over whether to lose some link to the sites that didnt convert well for me but couldnt pull the trigger. Now I can and already have for a few and will continue to do so over the next day or two.

Klaus - to answer your one question about bonus codes - really I thought I was losing by putting them on there. I use to have a great conversion rates with PlayersOnly and SportsBook and as soon as I put bonus codes on they went away. I think now the reason why is because it was hard for the user to enter them on those particular sites, but I will give it a shot again.

Again, thanks to you both. I will lose some links and try to condense some content - I think that is the underlying theme here. And please dont think yoou affended me - Ill take all the tough love I can get if it makes me better!

[TravG]

Oh - one last thing. The linking to car dealerships.... I only did it because it is a friend of mines dealership. its in google now and the link will dissapear. But I have never bought a link? Just always thought that was a bad practice. Im curious why you say that.

[ck8795]

I sent you a PM instead of posting it here.