SEO Feedback on website from affiliate noob

[mdm13]

why not target the danish market? im guessing that is your first language based off of your location and as a midstakes pro you should have some valuable information to offer those who don't speak english or french (two biggest languages for poker instruction IMO, maybe spanish if you count the shortstackers). Even if lots of Danes speak english (which I'm sure plenty do), I would imagine most people are most comfortable learning in their native language or would trust a fellow countryman more.

[Strider1973]

I guess Denmark has only 5M inhabitants, and English is a very common language in Scandinavian countries. But OP: you could translate the content to Danish and publish it on another site, this would not be much work if you copy everything.

[crazydog]

Hi mdm

There are certainly some very good perspectives in targetting the danish market even though it is highly competetive and small market - Denmark only has a population of 5 million citizens plus a few people in Greenland and Faroe Islands! And no doubt that even though almost 100% of the danes who play poker speaks english a huge majority would prefer to read about poker in danish - at least 90 %.
I have several ideas for getting my piece of the danish market.

But there are also some problems targetting the danish market both as a poker pro and as a poker affilliate on legal matters. As it is now it is not legal to advertise for gambling in Denmark - except for the state owned gambling site - Danske Spil ('danish games'). Secondly there is a law stating that making a living on hasard games is illegal - it is not illegal losing though. Both laws are at the moment getting revised and nobody takes them that seriously, Stars, FTP , Party and a couple of others advertise non stop at tv stations broadcasting in Denmark in danish but licensed in UK - one of these tv stations is actually partly owned by the state, and there are several pro poker players who already has gone public about their career - but it stills troubles me targetting Denmark and showing my face instead of being one of the anonymous poker pros before the new legislation have been created, so I have clearer idea what to deal with.

But yes I agree when the time is right - I got to target the danish poker players - even though they suck at poker ;-)

Best regards
CrazyDog

[mdm13]

Interesting about the legal situation, makes a lot of sense to avoid getting in trouble with the government. I'm in the same boat as an american, looking to promote poker to other countries until the legal situation becomes clearer. good luck!

[PokerCollege]

Hi CrazyDog,

A few suggestions:
- Change your URL structure from
poker-freeroller.com/poker-freeroller-poker-rooms/european-freeroll-pokerrooms/party-poker-freeroll-regional-national/
to
poker-freeroller.com/party-poker-freeroll/

Stuffing your URLs with "poker" and "freeroll" looks spammy.

- The sidebar text is useless imo. It would be nice if you'd place it at the top of your hompage or something similair. But now it's on every single page in the sidebar. I think Google can tell the difference between real content and sidebar text that is exactly the same on every single page.

- Change your layout. That would look much better and you lose the 4 OBL at the bottom of your page.

- Add clear CTAs (Call to Actions).

Just constructive feedback

[crazydog]

Hi PokerCollege

Always good with some constructive critique. I am at the moment working on URL's and have a lot of work to do there - a lot.

Regarding the layout: I am at the moment planning on getting a new 2 columns template where I will remove the sidebar texts, add an introducing or welcoming sticky post, remove the 4 125x125 adds and also remove the footer links as well and in general just make things look better and more professional.

CTAs - You are right - gotta get better at that :-) Actually think I was pretty good at that - but started to loosen up recently just making some central links on the Poker Sites in question instead of more clear CTAs like: 'Click here to go to poker site X' - nice to get a feedback on that one.

Thx for your comments
CrazyDog

[crazydog]

Hi PokerCollege

Always good with some constructive critique. I am at the moment working on URL's and have a lot of work to do there - a lot.

Regarding the layout: I am at the moment planning on getting a new 2 columns template where I will remove the sidebar texts, add an introducing or welcoming sticky post, remove the 4 125x125 adds and also remove the footer links as well and in general just make things look better and more professional.

CTAs - You are right - gotta get better at that :-) Actually think I was pretty good at that - but started to loosen up recently just making some central links on the Poker Sites in question instead of more clear CTAs like: 'Click here to go to poker site X' - nice to get a feedback on that one.

Thx for your comments
CrazyDog

[Randy Ray]

Regarding repeating your keyword phrases on the page--yes, you DO want to repeat your keyword phrase as many times as possible on the page. But more importantly, your content is supposed to be written for your visitors, NOT for the search engines. One of the first things every new webmaster should do is review the Google Webmaster Guidelines. In fact, most webmasters would benefit from reviewing their guidelines multiple times, too: Webmaster Guidelines - Webmaster Tools Help

Think about it. You could just write "poker freerolls" over and over again 150 times on a page without any other words. But you wouldn't expect that page to rank well would you? Just adding words to your 150 repetitions of the phrase won't be enough to make the page rank either. You have to write a page that's long, interesting, and makes sense. Then 150 repetitions of the phrase "poker freerolls" MIGHT be effective.

[taxman]

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[crazydog]

Hi there
Sorry I haven't responded earlier. Caught a pretty bad Flu - always overestimate the weather - or maybe rather underestimate :-)

@Randy
I really appreciate that link. Gotta read that a couple of times. And I certainly agree content has to be relevant to my users/visitors and not only to search engines.

@Taxman
You are not the first one commenting on that topic but probably the one that got me to act on it - basically I just thought I would wait till I got a new template created - but I took a look at the style sheet to test if it was something I could deal with myself - and I could :-) So now the font size has been changed and color as well. Font color on the top bar must wait a bit till I get some extra time.

Thx for your comments and ideas :-)

Best regards
CrazyDog