Please review my website :)

**zeuls** · 6 June 2023, 1:37 am

Hey everyone,

I wanted to mention that this is the first website I ever designed by myself, and it is not fully complete yet (currently no links, not too many blogs, no reviews etc.). However, I would like to hear your honest opinions and suggestions regarding how I should move forward from here!

The website is built using a purchased theme, which I played around with until I got to this point. I am currently working with an SEO specialist in order to optimize the website and for keyword research, so I expect it to look even better in a few weeks! Let me know what you think.

The website is: https://elitegamblercasino.com/

Disclaimer: there may be some issues when trying to open the website, which I am going to fix with a developer in the future, so I apologize if it doesn't open for some.

Best,
Andre

**universal4** · 6 June 2023, 4:34 pm

It appeared to me far too many recommended properties do not contain affiliate links, add your affiliate links, in my opinion you are wasting traffic by sending visitors to operators and not getting credit.

Rick
Universal4

**zeuls** · 6 June 2023, 4:51 pm

Thanks for that, at the moment the websites with no links also have no written reviews since the partnerships with them are still pending. What do you think of the rest of the platform? Thanks!

**Former Member 14** · 8 June 2023, 12:11 am

Originally Posted by zeuls

at the moment the websites with no links also have no written reviews since the partnerships with them are still pending.

So why is it live, then?

Aside from being a casino-affiliate myself for 23 years, I also had an SEO business. Was contracted by some large casino groups. I find it odd at best, and at worst ethically questionable, that an SEO "specialist" would even accept such a job, when, your site is not ready, you still have the Pokatheme place holder pages active, with the PokaTheme logo.

Watch you don't get taken for a ride... aka scammed.

There is a lot of work to be done on this site, before it's ready to go live. Having it live now, will only hurt your SEO going forward.

An SEO Expert SHOULD know this.

**zeuls** · 8 June 2023, 12:50 am

Hi, thanks for your response. This is practically the first ever website that I've created, and the more I study the topic of affiliation the more I realize how little I know haha! Regarding why it is live, since I am creating it with WP the website was launched the moment I bought hosting for it. Do you have any suggestions on how to 'put it off' so it's not live?

Regarding the SEO specialist, I will have to have a conversation with them. Thank you once again for your insight!

**universal4** · 8 June 2023, 5:18 pm

Problem is, now that it is live turning it off could be harmful.

Initially, you could have put the site on a development server, or maybe had it answer in the IP, but then block the ip from all traffic and spiders from outside, except your ip so you could develop it. (allowing open access of the site on the ip means later when the site is live, you will have duplicate sites or pages, one on the ip one on the domain - simple redirect does not fix this easily)

You could also have developed it on your local PC at home, setting up IIS as local host.

All water under thew bridge now.

At this point now you are probably obligated to get more content on pages you have published, and turn the links on that you can as quickly as possible to not waste traffic.

Going forward, instead of publishing a page, save it as draft and don't add it to the navigation structure until it is ready. You can always see draft pages in any browser session that is "logged in" only and others can not access such drafts. Keep in mind as you make changes to such pages etc, be sure to continue the use the "save draft" button and not publish accidentally, as most seo plugins (such as yoast) will immediately add the page to the sitemap.

The day you are ready for the page to go live, just publish it and add it to navigation.

Writing pages up for operators you may or may not end up promoting since you "have not made a deal yet" in my opinion is a waste of time and resources unless you plan on promoting them with or without a deal in place, which is what you are doing now.

Rick
Universal4

**dannyx** · 8 June 2023, 5:46 pm

I did so that I quickly wrote X pages in low/medium quality.
To others I added Coming Soon.

Later I go back to those pages and improve them.
However, it is important that this quality is also not catastrophic or AI text. It can be fast but enough for search engines to index it.
Then you can go back to that already indexed page and write killer text.

A site doesn't have to be fully ready to be live, in fact a site is never fully ready, there is always some work to do. However, it's important to make it at least minimally usable so as not to waste possible traffic.

**Former Member 14** · 8 June 2023, 8:44 pm

Originally Posted by dannyx

A site doesn't have to be fully ready to be live

True.

However using theme place holder pages, theme logo and what not; anything other than the site's intended niche, should never be on a live working site.

**dannyx** · 9 June 2023, 11:30 am

Originally Posted by AussieDave

True.

However using theme place holder pages, theme logo and what not; anything other than the site's intended niche, should never be on a live working site.

I think so too, there is a minimum that should be done to make the site visible. And certainly the theme logo etc should not be visible.

As for the site I still noticed that in the footer you have Begambleaware, gamcare etc and they are the logos themselves. This topic was discussed on the forum and it seems pointless to post the logos alone without a link to these sites.
I guess it's better to either eliminate it completely or do it with links. That's what I think.

**Former Member 14** · 9 June 2023, 1:04 pm

Originally Posted by dannyx

there is a minimum that should be done to make the site visible. And certainly the theme logo etc should not be visible.

Best advice I can offer... put the brakes on right now!

Add a .htaccess file to your root, in that file place a deny from all, allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (your IP only). This will prevent any IP other than your own from accessing the site. I've added the code below.

Now that your site is no longer live, and only you have access to said site, it's time to put head down and backside up. Get all the pages you intend to have operational. That would be guides, reviews etc, to begin with. You also need to signup with programs to obtain your affiliate links. Without these your a cooked-goose.

When applying for program partnership, should be a space to allow you to comment. Simply say it's a new site and not live yet, but happy to grant access if given an ip addy. It's not rocket science, I'm sure most can work it out

If an Affiliate Manager supplies you with an IP, you simply copy "allow from IP" line and past that below the other.

Code:

order allow,deny
deny from all
allow from IP

NB - remove the wording IP and replace that with your actual IP addy. Repeat with additional IP addy's. Each IP uses a separate line of code.

EG:

allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

**chaumi** · 9 June 2023, 2:18 pm

I'd agree with AD.

I think the game where you could get away with placeholder pages with nothing on them is long dead. It's more likely to cause very likely short term harm, at least medium term harm, and then make it harder to recover longer term, too.

The 'good' news is it appears (according to ahrefs) that nothing has been indexed yet. Although that wouldn't be conclusive and you'd need to manually search or check GSC for some more certainty.

And if nothing is indexed, it can't (or at least, shouldn't) do any harm in taking it off air till you have significantly built up the pages you have and got a good overall structure in place.

And agree on the SEO aspect, too. I guess it depends on what your agreed scope is with the SEO 'help' you've enlisted. But really they ought to be telling you all this stuff without even thinking about it.

**dannyx** · 10 June 2023, 11:35 am

Originally Posted by chaumi

I'd agree with AD.

I think the game where you could get away with placeholder pages with nothing on them is long dead. It's more likely to cause very likely short term harm, at least medium term harm, and then make it harder to recover longer term, too.

The 'good' news is it appears (according to ahrefs) that nothing has been indexed yet. Although that wouldn't be conclusive and you'd need to manually search or check GSC for some more certainty.

And if nothing is indexed, it can't (or at least, shouldn't) do any harm in taking it off air till you have significantly built up the pages you have and got a good overall structure in place.

And agree on the SEO aspect, too. I guess it depends on what your agreed scope is with the SEO 'help' you've enlisted. But really they ought to be telling you all this stuff without even thinking about it.

Although this is an expert opinion, let me argue.

In my opinion, as I have already written if the site meets the minimum. Let us assume that the minimum is

1. an article longer than 500 words or, in the case of large topics, longer than 2000 words. Averaging because text length doesn't matter much without quality.

2. human text

3. average quality, can be written on the fly, but keeping to certain rules

Such a sub-page will be indexed, but with a poor position.
The creator of the page can do so, for example, 10 pages from a given section.
He can then revisit these pages creating much better text and internal linking as there is already something to link to.

The final step after the page is crawled is to submit it to the GSC, after which the rankings should be updated with improved quality.

I did this myself, wrote one section, short texts, just so they were. Google indexed them but in the last places on the 15th page.... Then after 3-4 months I went back to that section and wrote better and longer texts. The rankings improved significantly.
In a few months I plan to go back to these pages again and make them even better.

The route I'm talking about is suitable for people who have very limited time to create a page. Of course, it is better to create a great website with 100 pages straight away.
Especially as everything now takes a very long time to get into the search engines, it is worth publishing earlier. Of course, when you reach at least a medium level.

Once again, I emphasise that I am arguing with a big expert and there is a high probability that I am wrong. However, I am simply presenting a different point of view from a person who does this 1/4 time.

**Former Member 14** · 10 June 2023, 12:26 pm

Does a person need to wear shoes? One could argue, NO... However, wearing shoes protects one's feet.

The same goes for the OP's topic. Following an established, and relatively proven set of guidelines, will, give the best results.

Right now the OP is shooting himself in the foot (no pun intended).

**universal4** · 10 June 2023, 4:41 pm

Often in seo as well as many other questions, the answer might be "It depends"

Originally Posted by AussieDave

Does a person need to wear shoes? One could argue, NO... However, wearing shoes protects one's feet.

There are many factors to consider. Wearing shoes while swimming, depending on the type of shoes could be a bad thing and lead to drowning.

A number of good points made such as lower value pages possibly edited later to increase value and better indexed. The debate centered around this point I think is whether those pages are simply placeholders or function as presenting at least some information that has any value to a reader. (even if such content can be improved or added to)

In the above case I think the site is committed to the pages that have been published, and should try to get more information on many of them that have almost zero information for the reader. (IMO this has a big impact on ranking possibilities)

I still stick with my original point, having visit links to operators without affiliate links has an even larger impact on revenue and should not be done in most cases.

Rick
Universal4

**BenjiMon** · 10 June 2023, 10:32 pm

This is all great advice for OP. You should take it graciously, as it was offered.

**chaumi** · 11 June 2023, 11:05 am

Originally Posted by universal4

lower value pages possibly edited later to increase value and better indexed. The debate centered around this point I think is whether those pages are simply placeholders or function as presenting at least some information that has any value to a reader. (even if such content can be improved or added to)

I think this is the main point in your case, Danny.

And your case (from what I can see) is different from the OP's site.

If you put up at least some useful content (as in 'answering the query' useful), you have a better chance than just naming a page, putting a few operators on it, and nothing else.

The problem is....a page gets crawled...and using the data collected (ie the information on the page) , the algorithm decides whether to store it/index it. It has to be useful, or why waste resources storing it and indexing it.

Clearly, seeing zero information is logically a no brainer for the algorithm. And, at that point, if it decides the page is worthless (alongside seeing the whole site is worthless, if there are many other similar pages), then the site has potentially shot itself in the foot. It may get filed somewhere where it will never look at it again, unless other signals tell it otherwise. And those signals may not have any relation now to data retrieval, even if the content has been radically improved in the meantime, so it may now need extra signals (ie links, mentions etc etc)

The question then becomes 'what's useful content'. And, at the point of crawling/decisions, it's not what we think is useful (although we should know), it's not what a visitor thinks is useful, it's what the robot thinks is useful.

So, whatever you put up logically has to have some value.

The best position you can put yourself in is to make your page(s) as strong as possible right from the start. So, from the beginning, the algorithm sees the site as an intended valuable resource. Yes, you might still get away with a half-way house in places, but logically, that still won't be an optimal approach.

*******

I have not tested/proved this. But we know enough about crawling/storing/indexing/retrieving - and all the reasons why it doesn't make sense for an SE to be wasting it's time on 'pointless' pages - to know that it's a common-sense view.

**Former Member 14** · 11 June 2023, 12:17 pm

Originally Posted by universal4

Wearing shoes while swimming, depending on the type of shoes could be a bad thing and lead to drowning.

A ship sinking, falling overboard, a flash-flood, lots of scenarios, where, inappropriate foot wear for "swimming" could cause "drowning".

But that's just playing semantics, hey!

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