Website review required please

[52imac]

Hello,

This is my first website. I must say I am currently changing the site all the time as I keep having new ideas to try improve at the moment.

I would be very grateful for any feedback and comments.

Thanks guys.

[rknuppel]

Link please?

[52imac]

Sorry, URL is www.comparethefreebets.com

Thanks, rknuppel

[Maria F]

Hi Imac52,

The website looks nice.

I am not too keen on the black background and white letters, because I find it difficult to read.

I would suggest that if you add a forum to the site, you could create sports competitions amongst your forum members and therefore bring traffic to your site and depositors.

I can see that you offer slots and bingo, my affiliate programs offers slots and other brands. If you don’t mind I will send you a PM.

All the best with the site!

[-J-]

Hi Imac52,

Some thoughts from a newbie and sorry for my bad english..

Structure.. I like it. 2-3 colums look nice.

Colours.. Those are pretty "strong". As Maria put it above, it's pretty difficult to read white text on black background.

Navigation bar.. I don't know if there is any SEO value, but what you think if you had all those navigation menus as own folders and the pages, on the drop down lists, under those..

I mean, by clicking the "free bets" one would directed to "domain.com/freebets/" index page and the sub-pages on the drop down list to e.g. "domain.com/freebets/matched-free-bets.htm". As said, don't know if it would be worth for it..

[52imac]

Hi -J-,

Thanks very much for taking the time to take a look and give your feedback. I will look into the folder option, I don't know if it will help with SEO but if it will then it would obviously be beneficial.

[freebetking]

nice site matey....i'd definitely drop the black. As oppose to pointing pages back to your domain /index.htm as your homepage , i'd try using absolute links back to just your domain, and include a canonical url in the header.

[52imac]

Thanks very much monsterbet, appreciated. To be honest I'm very new to this, I have only recently started building the site, I'm trying to learn as much as I can as I go. I don't know how to change to absolute links, but I'll do a bit of research and try this.

Thanks

[nico84]

Hi, question: Are you using a CMS?

Regards!

[52imac]

Hi Nico84,

Not that I'm aware of. I'm really sorry but as I said I'm new to this and don't know the technical side. I use a program called Xara Premium if that gives you an idea ?

[F.C.Dosh]

Hmmm....Somehow I expected a meerkat on there

[xecutable]

I agree with the above posts that the overall product seems good enough in terms of content. Here are some problems you might want to look into. Notice how big your top logo is. Don't know about you or anyone else, but it sure steals my focus from your content every time I look at the page as a whole.

Reducing it, or creating another smaller one will help your readers focus on your content rather on an image.

Your reviews page can use an image or two, so it's not just a whole page of text. Perhaps separate the different parts of the reviews with some sort of headings like General Info: Depositing Methods etc.. Readers that have come for a specific thing would most likely want to find it fast and not read the whole thing.

Your casino/poker/slots/bingo/free bets pages look quite good. Perhaps the path to those should read something like welcome bonuses, sign up bonuses or whatever you like, just something more specific than Casino/Poker.

I'd also put a sign up text link on all of those, just in case the user can't see the images for some reason (some of the banners r flash, and might not display for mobile users).

The rest looks fine. Be cautious about your live streaming pages. NetResult is one of the many companies in charge of streaming rights for various Premier League teams for example. There were two websites I was working at, that got closed because of those.

As someone mentioned above, integrating a cms like wordpress or joomla, will make your life much easier, and your urls nice and in general should have a better impact on the SEO will all of those plugins out there as well.

[grem]

Where can I find free bets on your site? Get my point? Otherwise great first try.

[thebookiesoffers]

Where can I find free bets on your site? Get my point? Otherwise great first try.

That was my first thought. The name suggests you'll be comparing the free bets but they aren't seen. I think people will click back to where they cam from rather than hunt for the free bet section.
Another massive trick you have missed is the big free bet of the month section where you have written about redbet. That is a good idea, BUT, you have got people there and there is nowhere for them to sign up - throw a couple of affiliate text links in there saying 'Click here to get your free bet' or whatever, one right next to the Redbet title at the top of the article.
don't be disheartened though as it's your first go and you'll learn loads with time

good luck

[52imac]

Xecutable, thanks very much for the review, some great points, I will certainly look into several of those. Sorry about the late reply btw.

Grem, also thanks for taking the time to comment, the free bets section should be quite easy to find as it appears on the main navigation bar.

Thebookiesoffers, again some good points there which I will certainly look at, as for the free bets, do you honestly think most people would struggle to find the free bets section with it appearing in the main navigation bar ? If so, I am slightly worried about that because I have changed the site from top to bottom over the last few months to get away from appearing as a banner farm.

Thanks again guys.

[thebookiesoffers]

the thing is mate people want results straight in front of them and if they can't see the results they want straight away they'll just back click.

if you are worried about being a banner farm (which you won't as long as you involve relevant text) why not put your best say top 5 free bets on the front page then guide people to the rest of them from that area

[52imac]

thanks again for the reply mate, much appreciated. i have 5 of the best offers at the right hand side, but you would recommend adding text to that so there is some kind of comparison on the front page ?

[thebookiesoffers]

yep, move the betfair challenge thing to under the bookmaker of the month thing, after all that won't get you any sales. create another page for feedback and just stick a link to that page in the footer, the only feedback you will get is tonnes and tonnes of spam, the the stuff you have in the feedback box just move that onto its on page. same with the live streaming box, create another page for live streaming and put that info on that, it is wasting 'money space on the home page. The betfair updates delete that box and just add the info to the bottom of the betfair challenge box. Now with all that space you have create 5 new boxes, 1 for each free bet, stick a banner in it the do a brief description of the free bet, the value and how to claim it

[52imac]

thanks again mate, everything you have said makes a great deal of sense, i think you get a bit blinded when it's your own site and your continuously working the same things over and over. i'll mess about with they ideas over the next few days and see what i come up with. thanks again.

[MassiveM]

You need to re-write your URL's because at the minute they are being automatically populated with a PHP logic.