Poker-SEO.com - New Seo Site

[PFO]

I am pretty sure the sites can be redesigned easily without hurting SEO. If he is making that much money, he could easily afford a graphics designer. It doesn have to be pretty, just simple and user friendly, and not look outdated.

When a new user first looks at the outdated design they probably think the site is old, has old content, and never gets updated (before they read anything). --->back button click.

Why limit your audience and distract new users...I do not understand.

[J S]

very well done from the biggest poker SEO guru I know. def keeping a watch on this site.

[e888]

nice site

[Jeremy]

I dont think anyone is going to make the argument that PlayWinningPoker or Poker-SEO are the prettiest sites on the net, however if you're talking about content there is no question it is among the best.

The difference with these sites versus the majority out there is that these sites don't go out of their way to sell you on clicking a banner, following a link, or using a bonus code. They are true "information sites", and this has always been Badger's goal, to share information. Not to have a pretty flash header and sexy graphics. In fact they remind me of a blog in a sense.

While if it were me, I may look at doing something to spice it up. Yet if I ranked that high in the SERPS I would also feel like I was walking on eggshells changing any structure in the pages.

In regards to Poker-SEO, I could really care less about the presentation, I am more concerned with the content. If you look at the other information sites such as pagat.com, pokersitescout, and the older one that used to track # of players at all rooms......none are that pretty.

[scrawnybob]

hi jeremy

you've touched on something here - which as I understand it is partly why Steve leaves his design well alone

I have been thinking about a bit of a redesign on my layout - thinking I could improve page layouts for improved SEO - but I guess this cold be a two way street and leave me worse off ?

play winning has the old style narrow left and right columns and unique content down the middle (as does my main site) - I was planning to move exact same content (for a while) in the left and right columns into a single righthand column

my reasoning was partly for visitor ease and navigation and partly so the the unique content on each page would appear further up the code.

Given that you and Steve know your stuff - could this do more harm than good ?

also if steve is still posting on PAW - maybe he could add some valued input.

cheers scrawnybob

[Jeremy]

I am by no means an SEO expert. I will say I have learned a lot over the years from mentors such as Randy and Steve as well as people like Kyle and Nick.

Maybe they would be better to chime in here......

[Randy]

Originally Posted by scrawnybob

I have been thinking about a bit of a redesign on my layout - thinking I could improve page layouts for improved SEO - but I guess this cold be a two way street and leave me worse off ?

play winning has the old style narrow left and right columns and unique content down the middle (as does my main site) - I was planning to move exact same content (for a while) in the left and right columns into a single righthand column

my reasoning was partly for visitor ease and navigation and partly so the the unique content on each page would appear further up the code.

I've always been a fan of a right hand navbar because it does put the content higher in the code, but I've got sites with a left hand navigation too, and it doesn't seem to hurt their rankings at all. I think if it's good for your users, you might go ahead and give it a try. I don't think it would hurt anything. On the other hand, I don't think moving that left navbar content to the right is going to help you rank much better either.

(I do hear stories from time to time from people who made a major change to their layout and they disappeared from Google temporarily. I've never experienced that when I've done a layout change though.)

Hope that helps.

[MrMcGee]

CSS-based designs ftw!

I would love to hear from the horses mouth why Steve has chosen to not do some sort of makeover to his site(s). My feeling is that it would just be too big of an undertaking, because done right...there would be no SE penalties. That doesn't really explain why he'd continue building new sites in the same form & fashion though. So maybe it's just the idea that, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

It's obviously working pretty damn well for him.

It would be interesting to see the transformation his sites have seen over time, but...

[Beanie]

I may have an interesting observation. I just bought a scooter and as I handed over payment in 20 dollar bills I felt a need to explain that I was a poker player by trade. That brought me to the subject of my site. The guy typed it in about as slow as you can. I immediately thought of Steve's sites.

They are tailored made for these types of people and they represent some of the future players. I once read that when you give a gift to someone be careful not to give a gift certificate to Ruth's Chris when someone has never been there.

I highly doubt its the only reason but I am sure its one.

[Kyle]

I think that is dead on Beanie. It's all about the target niche and people who don't have 3 seconds of patience to read what the site is about before closing the window definitely are not in playwinningpoker's niche market. I imagine the niche he is after is serious poker players, a lot of them who are probably older and do not care about a "pretty" poker site.

Also, when you have the amount of traffic and authority rankings that his site does it would be foolish to try and "fix" something that is not broken. Even if he only lost partial rankings or rankings for a week or so... he could still lose a lot of money when you have that kind of positions and it's not worth the risk.

Also, just because an individual may have switched over a site months ago to a new template without a problem, there are many different individual factors for each site to consider, as well as the fact that the google algorithm is constantly changing.