Post deleted by Mat Sklansky

[Sniper]

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Just saying the title tag is a bit over the top in blackhat SEO technique. It's probably not enough to get the site removed from google on it's own though.

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Bradley, can you explain what is "Blackhat" about the SEO?

[BradleyT]

The full title is "Full tilt Rakeback | Rake back | rakeback | Bodog Rakeback | Rakebacks | rake". The word rakeback is a bit overused and the title is not very english like.

Go to yahoo and type in "Full Tilt Rakeback". RR shows up #3 however I'd estimate that sites #2 and #4 get way more clicks because of their natural sounding title tags and descriptions. And then when you go to google, #2 on yahoo is #1 on google and RR is way down on the list.

Take a look at #2 on yahoo and #1 on google's title - "Full Tilt Poker Rakeback - Get 27% of Your Full Tilt Rake Back". It's clear and concise. It tells the user exactly what they're going to find.

The technique used on RR used to work for getting #1 on google about 6-8 years ago but not so much any more. It does however still work for MSN/Yahoo for the most part. I'd probably change the title to something like "Full Tilt Poker Rakebate and Bodog Rakeback reviews" and the meta description to something like "Get the highest available rakeback at full tilt poker and bodog poker. Reviews of the top online poker rakeback sites." I'd also make seperate pages for each poker site.

[grandgnu]

As I am the new owner of the site, I'm eager to tweak the SEO and design of the site.

I'm open to any suggestions, if someone would like to recommend a person or company who's reliable and reasonably priced for SEO work I'm all ears.

While I have worked in I.T./I.S. it was mainly hardware based (building, overclocking computer systems). I have the ability to work my way around most software errors (good at researching them) and I have a limited knowledge of HTML and SEO.

I think my main goal is going to be finding other poker-related sites (that don't conflict with my listed affiliates) to try and link exchange and/or advertise with.

Since many poker players aren't even aware of rakeback, I would likely have to literally flood my site with "key words" such as WSOP, WPT, Daniel Negranue and other popular search terms to try and increase the chances of being found on a search engine.

I would think it would be easier to snag quality traffic to the site by connecting with other sites, and again, I'm open to suggestions on this.

Thanks!

[Freakin]

[ QUOTE ]
As I am the new owner of the site, I'm eager to tweak the SEO and design of the site.

I'm open to any suggestions, if someone would like to recommend a person or company who's reliable and reasonably priced for SEO work I'm all ears.

While I have worked in I.T./I.S. it was mainly hardware based (building, overclocking computer systems). I have the ability to work my way around most software errors (good at researching them) and I have a limited knowledge of HTML and SEO.

I think my main goal is going to be finding other poker-related sites (that don't conflict with my listed affiliates) to try and link exchange and/or advertise with.

Since many poker players aren't even aware of rakeback, I would likely have to literally flood my site with "key words" such as WSOP, WPT, Daniel Negranue and other popular search terms to try and increase the chances of being found on a search engine.

I would think it would be easier to snag quality traffic to the site by connecting with other sites, and again, I'm open to suggestions on this.

PM me or send an email (in my profile). Thanks!

[/ QUOTE ]

if it was my site, I would replace the forums with vbulletin or phpbb (nothing against SMF, I'm just more comfortable with vb and phpbb). I would use various mods to rewrite the URLs to be search engine friendly and other SEO tricks for the session IDs and other parts of the forum.

I would start advertising freerolls or other incentives for forum members with X number of posts. This will (hopefully) start building the forums. If you can get forums off the ground then they are a great way to bring in traffic for a variety of keywords to players who may not already know about rakeback.

If you don't want to deal with forums, then I'd recommend having articles, either user-submitted or written by you. You could pay people for articles you will publish (doesn't have to be too much) and do proper SEO on those articles with title, h1, h2 and all the tags to target people to your site.

As for the homepage title, articles I've read suggest that the first 30 characters or so are the most meaningful.

I would do something like "Poker rakeback reviews for every site at RakeReport.net" or something to that effect. The first 3 words should tell any user what your site is about.

The current title is decent for SEO (slightly keyword overloaded) but it's kinda ackward for real users to read.

[grandgnu]

[ QUOTE ]
if it was my site, I would replace the forums with vbulletin or phpbb (nothing against SMF, I'm just more comfortable with vb and phpbb). I would use various mods to rewrite the URLs to be search engine friendly and other SEO tricks for the session IDs and other parts of the forum.

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I'm not familiar with the differences here, would you care to elaborate? Programming was never my specialty.

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I would start advertising freerolls or other incentives for forum members with X number of posts. This will (hopefully) start building the forums. If you can get forums off the ground then they are a great way to bring in traffic for a variety of keywords to players who may not already know about rakeback.

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I see so many poker forums out there that are just ghost towns. Not enough traffic and/or too many threads. I want to avoid useless/underutilized forums.

I have an idea I feel is pretty creative in how I want to approach the future of the forum usage, but for now I'm keeping that private until I can hash out all the details.

[ QUOTE ]
If you don't want to deal with forums, then I'd recommend having articles, either user-submitted or written by you. You could pay people for articles you will publish (doesn't have to be too much) and do proper SEO on those articles with title, h1, h2 and all the tags to target people to your site.

[/ QUOTE ]

It looks like the site already had previous article dealings with Bluff Magazine. I have some contacts there and will likely look to continue that setup if possible.

[ QUOTE ]
As for the homepage title, articles I've read suggest that the first 30 characters or so are the most meaningful.

I would do something like "Poker rakeback reviews for every site at RakeReport.net" or something to that effect. The first 3 words should tell any user what your site is about.

The current title is decent for SEO (slightly keyword overloaded) but it's kinda ackward for real users to read.


[/ QUOTE ]

I still believe that my best bet is to work with pre-established poker industry sites (that don't compete with listed affiliates) and establish relationships/partnerships or just outright pay them to advertise my site.

There's a lot of garbage out there, oversaturation of the market if you will (have you seen Tony G poker and the gallery of pictures of him? Who comes up with this stuff???)

While I'm interested in eventually enhancing the SEO, I believe that a lot of players out there will be searching for terms besides "rakeback", such as WPT, WSOP or popular poker player names or what have you.

I want to avoid the clutter that a lot of spam-style sites make use of (i.e. adding a bunch of keywords at the bottom of the page, etc).

So I'll be looking for sites to advertise or partner with that volume players are likely to frequent (i.e. quality signups for affiliates) as well as high-traffic sites in the poker world that have tons of exposure and may bring in otherwise unaware consumers.

[Freakin]

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F & B,

Where were you guys a week ago? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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lol, i didn't know what your website was.

kyleb had mentioned it in the past but I couldn't remember it.

[grandgnu]

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F & B,

Where were you guys a week ago? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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All your site are belong to me!

Maybe I'll sell you the site back at twice what I paid for it, buy a web cam and start producing midget wrestling porn instead? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Once I get this really going you'll find me here:

[Sniper]

grandgnu,

Is it your strategic plan to maintain the brand identity and focus of the domain the same as it was previously, a rakeback directory?

[grandgnu]

[ QUOTE ]
grandgnu,

Is it your strategic plan to maintain the brand identity and focus of the domain the same as it was previously, a rakeback directory?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, the site will still be an affiliate rakeback listing directory.

I am looking into changing the use of the forums, as they were hotspots for spammers, and some of the site layout.

But my main goal is to develop partnerships with poker industry sites that do not conflict with the businesses of the listed affiliates, to increase quality traffic to the site and thus the value listed affiliates receive.

I could care less about click-throughs and site visitors, if all we're getting is a bunch of grandma's looking to play bingo. I'd rather listed affiliates get a handful of high-volume players during the course of the month, than hundreds of players who never signup or signup and generate $3 in MGR every month and then bother the affiliates every other day about where their 60 cents in rakeback is for the month, and if they can cash it out now. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

So I'll be doing my best to find ways to target the site to the correct demographic, I have ideas on this, but I'm always open to suggestions