[scrawnybob]

hi

I would say among the million other things I've learnt from listening to people here, reading between the lines, taking straight advice etc etc

is to analyse your progress and really get a feel for what is coming to your site and what people do -

as has been said before traffic isnt just traffic - if you get someone landing on your site from search for "xyz site review" then this one search (or 10 or 1000) is worth infinately more than x10 or x100 as much traffic landing from a search for "how to play AA in late position on a tuesday"

at the end of the day if we're honest were all after the same things -

top3 on google for xyz poker and as much "tell me where to put my money now" traffic as possible

thats why so many sites focus on reviews / bonus codes etc because theyre the ones we earn from - all the rest of it is second tier strategy / information / news which whilst it will be read by more people / is more interesting - it doesnt instantly earn money

but a 5 page site that is just bonus codes is

a) unlikely to rank as easily as a good all round site

b) is unlikely to sell the signup offers as it offers little else - authority etc

Use analytics - for traffic and for rank on google and work from there

IMHO I spent alot of time feeling I should do news (knowing I'd never compete with pokernews but thinking its something I should have)

after looking at what people actually clicked when they were offered it I realised that

a) I could never even try to compete with pokernews for general poker news

b) Even if I did get this traffic I wasnt going to be the one able to convert it
(pokernews can and does)

I looked at the clicks through I got from news pieces and realised that visitors landing on my homepage - hadnt got there looking for news

which was personally great that it was already more focussed (ready to signup) but it was a while before I realised the importance of this

I'd rather have a high percentage of 9,000 uniques per month that are either generally or specifically looking to signup somewhere than 20,000 uniques a month trawling for strategy and tips

on the design front - someone else said your shouldnt worry about design (too much) I think this is true too - but the design must be inherently visitor friendly

I like the more white sites now but you could do with maybe either light grey on the side bars to focus them down the middle - or drop one bar and simplify

cheers scrawnybob