A couple of questions....

[pokerutility]

Hi Guys
I have a few questions any insight PAL members can give me will be appreciated.
-Bounce rates- what is a good bounce rate, obviously the lower the better but what is a realistic rate?
-Submitting sitemap to Google- how frequently should you do it? And will Google ever index all my pages?
-I have a forum thats not really getting any visitors, should I just get rid of it or wait it out? What are some good ways to get visitors to use a forum?
-Page rank, there are so many page rank checkers out there are there one's that are more accurate then others? How long do you keep your page rank for?
-Should I buy the .net & .org for my domain?
-Should I link exchange with my competitors? Will it help me or only them?

Cheers
Shannon

[TheShortStack]

Hey Shannon - welcome to PAL. Here's my $0.02 on a few of your questions:

-Submitting sitemap to Google- how frequently should you do it? And will Google ever index all my pages?

You should only really submit your sitemap to Google once. From there, Google will keep checking back on it and index any new pages which have been added to it since its last visit.

For that to happen, your sitemap needs to update dynamically. If you're running a Wordpress site, check out the XML sitemaps plugin, if you're running a plain HTML site, then have a look at Create your Google Sitemap Online - XML Sitemaps Generator

I have a forum thats not really getting any visitors, should I just get rid of it or wait it out? What are some good ways to get visitors to use a forum?

A forum can be an awful lot of work, and you need a lot of regular traffic to make it work effectively. If your site is new, I'd focus on getting the traffic to your site before you worry about a forum.

Page rank, there are so many page rank checkers out there are there one's that are more accurate then others? How long do you keep your page rank for?

I'd worry more about your rankings than PR value - so with that in mind, any PR checker should be fine given that they'll all give you roughly the same sort of answer. For what it's worth, I use Page Rank for Firefox

Should I buy the .net & .org for my domain?

If you've found a good niche that you think will make you a good amount of cash, then most definitely!

Cheers
Shannon

[pokerutility]

Thanks ShortStack, anyone else want to add their .02c?

[scrawnybob]

-Bounce rates- what is a good bounce rate, obviously the lower the better but what is a realistic rate?

afaiks a good bounce rate from a converting page like a review page would be 100% ... they're clicking the aff link and signinup for example

a good bounce rate for a gateway / strategy / news page or less or "non converting" page would be 0% ... your keeping them on your site with more chance to win them over going to other more convertable pages

so an average average isnt going to help you too much - if you could get an idea of peoples averages from the 2+ types of pages that might help

-I have a forum thats not really getting any visitors, should I just get rid of it or wait it out? What are some good ways to get visitors to use a forum?

imho ditch the forum now or pay it zero attention - they are far far far more trouble and hastle than they are worth unless you have cardschat or 2+2 (which are great examples of useful forums) ... if you forum gets big enough (medium size) to maybe yield some value then it will have become a royal pain in the a** along the way and continue to become more so (yes I have a moderately small / medium forum and it takes up too much time - so its from bitter experience) ... if your forum doesnt get to reasonable size then its total waste of time and all the early effort was a total waste of time ...

either way I think certainly now adays there are 100's of good / average forums - no point flogging yourself to MAYBE create another one

make life easy for yourself - spend the time adding interesting and useful content - I know all the social media people wont agree but IMHO its much more efficient to set your stall out and write opinion / information in a one way traffic / take it or leave it way
than engage with poker forum people - 99% of them are already signed up at sites and are already active or not active on a bunch of other forums.

even best case senario you create the nicest, best most interesting forum ever the vlaue of those players has already been capitalised

having got an established forum - it is very very very hard to leave it to die off / settle out and be minimal maintainance because there will always be a bunch of needed moaners who want you to keep feeding them with freebies etc that ultimately dont add anthing like enough to you bottom line

you could use it purely for feedback on your reviews or articles - like blog comments only separate - that might be useful confidence builder for signups

anyway the few good people you will have on your forum will be great and sometimes will make it "feel worth it" but ultimately they dont out weight the problems and time sink that is a forum

just delete your forum now and save yourself the heart ache ;-)

-Should I link exchange with my competitors? Will it help me or only them?

yes - just dont do it with duff sites and try to make as fair a deal as you can - also really doesnt do any harm linking to other sites useful pages - just avoid junk sites

cheers scrawnybob

[pokerutility]

Thanks bob, very helpful