You should take a look at this.

[FirstTimePokerPlayer]

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You should take a look at my site here.

[Adam_1]

Before I click...Is going to make take me for a spin?

[FirstTimePokerPlayer]

Lol, no. Honestly (sorry, didn't think about it coming across that way...).

[Jeremy]

Hahaha, at first I thought this was a spam post. Looking at the site, I think the content is great. On first impression in respect to design I think there is a lot of gray. The inner part of the site with all the content should be a different color than the outer background. It kind of makes it all blend together.

In terms of SEO, you are right on track with all the inter-linking between pages on your site.

I think with some design work, it will be quite an impressive site. I imagine with a professional header, gradient or textured background, and lighter content area, it would look much better. As they say however, content is king, and so far, your content looks great.

[TonyG]

Your in depth comparison of rake, table sizes, and game offerings on this page is awesome. The FTP vs Stars page is dead on my friend. LOTS of players looking for this info.

The majority of the content on your site is written FOR poker players. A breathe of fresh air!

My only suggestion would be to have stronger call to actions. I would replace the banners in your right nav with a table listing your rooms (with icons) and their overall rankings on your site.

[chaumi]

Fantastic. Love it. If this were mine I'd be shouting from the rooftops with pride.

Your writing style pulled me in and made me want to read rather than scan.

Some observations:

Internal links in LH panel very small, though I think enlarging might take away some of the overall neatness of the site.

Personally I glaze over when confronted with tables containing lots of figures.
Think it might depend on your visitor types on whether these are effective - I tend to read from a beginner/low intermediate perpective, and maybe adding some bullet points under each table could help that type of reader.

Couldn't see an about page, and that's a shame because the entertaining style makes me want to read a little about you.

Other than that, congratulations on a good one.

[Hazo]

I was going to say what Tony said so I will just second that.

[GregW]

Your site is amazing, honestly. I really love it and you should be so proud of the work you've done so far and your approach to creating websites. Websites like yours are what the Internet was made for.

Now then, I'm going to pick out only the bits I think should be improved of course, so don't don't let this mask over how highly I think of your site.

1) You don't seem to have a folder structure for your site. At the moment you're creating pages like "poker-betting-strategy-guide.php" and putting them all in the root folder. This is perfectly fine for SEO (especially with your keyword rich urls) but I don't think it's good for organisation and building up your site.

When I first built my sites as you are doing now, not having folders would always put a cap on the number of pages I could create without having an almost unmanageable number of pages without any organisation whatsoever. I never felt the site would be scalable either because pages and files didn't fit in to pigeon holes and every page I created from then on out would just make the mess worse.

It might just be me being anal, but it feels much more liberating to have a folder structure in sections that can be filled out with no worries of clutter. It might be a bitch to redirect your current urls to a new folder structure (e.g from "poker-betting-strategy-guide.php" to "/strategy/betting-guide/") but the sooner the better, and if it allows you to comfortably build a 1,000+ page website rather than almost limiting yourself to a 500 page website then it's undoubtedly worth it.

I did it with a 200+ page website and I'm so happy I did it. It's up to you, but I'd recommend it for the scalability of your site.


2) Try adding a breadcrumb navigation. These are simple (although they do require a bit of leg work to implement) and they are amazing for usability. The breadcrumb navigation goes hand in hand with a good folder structure, so if you go ahead and structure your website it would be perfect for adding a breadcrumb navigation.

I also think that Google is liking breadcrumbs at the moment. Look at the search results for about 4 or 5 pages here: continuation bet - Google Search

Notice the clickable breadcrumb links in the search results? Can only be a good thing.


3) Add more images if you can. Article images in the top right or left corners can do wonders for grabbing a reader's attention, especially on the homepage. I don't know if they are really neccesary for inner pages because good players just want good content at the end of the day, but I like having them anyway just to give each page some character.

Don't just use stock images though. Try and create something related to the page, or even better an image that helps illustrate a point somehow. They don't even have to be super professional either. If they make sense then that's fine. Furthermore if you make them yourself the images will have their own unique touch and have a create a theme and personality throughout your site.


4) If you put your poker room links at the top of your navigation it should help to draw attention to more "money pages" improve conversions. I'm sure strategy readers won't care that the strategy links are a little further down.

Maybe an image like a small "hot" icon to accompany the link you want people to click. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud.


5) You've done really well to break up your content and make it scanable, but I think some of your paragraphs are a little too big. I'm not sure what's best but I think 5/6 lines is big enough for a paragraph, maybe 7 max. Any more and it starts to look like an unappetising wall of text. No Limit Texas Hold'em Poker Strategy - A complete overview of the most important fundamentals - "The power of initiative" section could be a digestible 3 paragraphs, or at least 2.


6) I really want to read an "About You" page. I think this is the most important page you should create next. You should really labour over it as well imo, probably even more than you would over a strategy article.


7) The text in the right sidebar is Times New Roman. It doesn't match your Verdana and Geneva? font in the left column.

[FirstTimePokerPlayer]

Thanks so much guys for answering my call to action . It's all noted so far and I'm sure this is going to keep me busy for at least the coming evenings and weekends.

About the images: although I have ideas for images myself, adobe photoshop is a nightmare to make anything 'half decent' with as this program is far from intuitive to me. Paint I can handle but... it's paint. I was thinking about hiring someone or doing somesort of design contest for this as soon as my site generates some revenue. Do you have experience with this? (What would it cost to do 15-30 images/ pleased with the results?).

[scrawnybob]

if you ever want to do writing on the side - give me a shout ;-)

nice content and I wanted to post pretty much what all the positive feedback has been above

content is head and shoulders above - get some calls to action and a bit more site / review promotion stuff and you will blow the rest of us away

put in some of the others great suggestions too

cheers scrawnybob

ps. really PM me with rates if you do fancy writing for other peoples sites