First poker site... some pointers please

[Deck]

I've been browsing these forums a lot and loving all the info. If you could please review my site/thought process and point out any flaws.

My site is pokersolved.com.

I figured I don't not know enough about websites/seo to compete with the established sites for specific keywords yet so I went with this to target long tail keywords. I understand that my visitors will not convert as well as someone targeting "poker deposit bonus" but do you think I will still get enough converting traffic? Should I be writing a blog and articles or are the Q&As enough content? I played poker for a living for 3 years prior to black friday so I could write some quality articles if needed. Any advice on what I have done and where to proceed would be very much appreciated.

[wendybluff]

Yes it is a pretty good idea. I think if you have hundreds of questions answered, you will get some traffic, including converting one. But you really need lots of questions to reach any significant level of traffic.

[parttimepoker]

Making websites is hard. Go back to playing poker for a living

I really like the domain, good choice. The Q/A concept is a little tired at this point and you're going to be bumping up against a lot of sites that already provide all of this content.

I will tell you from experience that this type of traffic converts terribly. I would rather have a poker bonus site with 10 visitors a month than a Q/A site with 1000 a month.

To get to scale, you're going to need a community to provide some, if not the large majority, of your content. To that end, you might want to focus on making the signup process as frictionless as possible (facebook connect and other proxy sign in services would be good) and think about some kind of way to incentivize content creation - maybe a points system that can reward writers with cash prizes or something along those lines.

I'm not sure what purpose the content / blogs would serve, altho you could possibly use your experience to create an ebook or some sort of coaching material that could be used to reward members who create content.

[Josh]

I would add a 1-3 paragraph intro on the home page and the category pages. I would also try to create more specific categories so you that you can more effectively build related links to the category pages which will help the question pages rank better. Here is an example:

Add a Pokerstars category and build some Pokerstars related links to that page. When someone asks a question about Pokerstars the links you built will give these pages more weight.

The traffic you are targeting isn't going to require a lot of SEO work obviously but this will make it easier to do and it will be more effective imo. With a site like this I would focus more (SEO-wise) on the category pages than the home page.

[Newjabber]

Your first site you say! I say top job then. Very nice clean design and nice logo.

Get started on the next one while doing seo and adding more content to this one

One thing it i would like to see it a big fat "ask questions here" box in the smack middle, and not a tiny search box on the right.
I want to search when i get to the site myself, not browse categories.

[GFPC]

love the name :-)

[michael1981]

I really like your site I love the idea behind it, and I think it looks great too. A lot of people have questions about poker and playing strategies, should get lots of traffic from the search engines. I'd be very interested in a website like this because I love playing poker cash games. Great poker resource with a cool domain name too, nice work

[Laurence]

Did you build this site yourself? Reminds me of the guys at Premium WordPress Themes | Elegant Themes . I don't think this is anything of a niche, I think in poker the majority of questions should provoke a discussion since there are usually multiple answers. A forum tailors to that need, a Q&A not so much. Either way, good luck!

[Deck]

wow, some great help here.

Yes it is a pretty good idea. I think if you have hundreds of questions answered, you will get some traffic, including converting one. But you really need lots of questions to reach any significant level of traffic.

thanks for the input

Making websites is hard. Go back to playing poker for a living

I really like the domain, good choice. The Q/A concept is a little tired at this point and you're going to be bumping up against a lot of sites that already provide all of this content.

I will tell you from experience that this type of traffic converts terribly. I would rather have a poker bonus site with 10 visitors a month than a Q/A site with 1000 a month.

To get to scale, you're going to need a community to provide some, if not the large majority, of your content. To that end, you might want to focus on making the signup process as frictionless as possible (facebook connect and other proxy sign in services would be good) and think about some kind of way to incentivize content creation - maybe a points system that can reward writers with cash prizes or something along those lines.

I'm not sure what purpose the content / blogs would serve, altho you could possibly use your experience to create an ebook or some sort of coaching material that could be used to reward members who create content.

Any recommendations for wordpress plugins that allow for a smoother login process? I just downloaded the facebook connect plugin will get it up and running soon. I think I will just save the content/blog stuff for a future site. Thanks for taking the time to write all this.

I would add a 1-3 paragraph intro on the home page and the category pages. I would also try to create more specific categories so you that you can more effectively build related links to the category pages which will help the question pages rank better. Here is an example:

Add a Pokerstars category and build some Pokerstars related links to that page. When someone asks a question about Pokerstars the links you built will give these pages more weight.

The traffic you are targeting isn't going to require a lot of SEO work obviously but this will make it easier to do and it will be more effective imo. With a site like this I would focus more (SEO-wise) on the category pages than the home page.

Never thought about using categories like that, sounds good.

Your first site you say! I say top job then. Very nice clean design and nice logo.

Get started on the next one while doing seo and adding more content to this one

One thing it i would like to see it a big fat "ask questions here" box in the smack middle, and not a tiny search box on the right.
I want to search when i get to the site myself, not browse categories.

I can't take credit for the design because I bought it... but I did make the logo . I'll work on adding a nice search box, thanks.

love the name :-)

thank you

I really like your site I love the idea behind it, and I think it looks great too. A lot of people have questions about poker and playing strategies, should get lots of traffic from the search engines. I'd be very interested in a website like this because I love playing poker cash games. Great poker resource with a cool domain name too, nice work

thanks

Did you build this site yourself? Reminds me of the guys at elegantthemes.com Premium WordPress Themes | Elegant Themes Premium WordPress Themes | Elegant Themes . I don't think this is anything of a niche, I think in poker the majority of questions should provoke a discussion since there are usually multiple answers. A forum tailors to that need, a Q&A not so much. Either way, good luck!

Yep, I bought the theme from them. Best $40 I ever spent, I don't know enough about coding to build something like this myself. I agree with you about forum discussions being better than Q&A. I would use 2+2/cardrunners/etc for questions I have not a site like this. However, I was hoping with this site to target new or causual players... the type of players that don't know about 2+2 or cardrunners... solid idea or no?


I think my plan from here is keeping building up this site while looking for my next site. Appreciate all the help everyone.