Following Up

Once you've gotten your feet wet and established your web presence, you'll want to start thinking about taking it to the next level. To do that, you'll need to move beyond the starter page and set up your own website. While the starter page is a terrific resource for getting going quickly, it won't take you as far as you'll want to go. The are many keys to success that you can only take advantage of with your own independent site.

Use Your Own Design Ideas

You may not like the look of the starter page, or believe that some things should be changed to make it more effective. Try different layouts, different colors, different wording, different graphics.

Make Your Content Unique

Everyone who uses the starter page will be displaying exactly the same content (except of course for the bonus/tracking codes). Search engines and directories do not like duplicate content and often lower the ranking of sites that do not seem to contain unique information. Try to set your site apart in some way so that visitors (and search engines) don't see it as just another URL leading to the same place as dozens of others.

Add Subpages and "Goodies"

In order to achieve higher rankings, you must add content of your own. This can be almost anything that will make your site more interesting and more comprehensive. A blog, a glossary, articles on how to play poker, instructions for building poker tables, biographies of poker pros, a list of recommended books, a discussion forum, etc. The more unique content you have, the better the search engines will like your site.

Include Dynamic Content

It's also a good idea to have as much dynamic content as possible. Having content that changes daily is an easy way to make your site seem more relevant and topical. If you don't have the time to frequently edit things by hand, you can include "feeds" for things like news stories, upcoming tournaments, and tournament results. Once you build these into your site they update on their own to provide up-to-date content continuously. Search for things like "poker news feed" or "poker tournament feed" for lots of options.

Exchange Links

The one thing you need above almost anything else is incoming links. But in general, people don't just link to you out of the blue. You have to ask them, and more often than not they will want something in return. If you don't want to pay for links the best alternative is to link to them in exchange for them linking to you. You can do this "manually" be emailing webmasters and asking for an exchange, or automatically using one of the many link exchange sites. With these programs you usually add some code to your homepage to display outgoing links, and in return you get incoming links on other people's sites. Just do a search for "link exchange" and you should easily find several good options.

Final Thoughts

Whatever methods you chose, I wish you the best of luck in your new business. I sincerely hope it proves as profitable and enjoyable for you as it has for me. If you'd like to share your results, please drop me a line at info@pokertruemoney.com.

You need my help at puting your Domain and Hosting or..? You are welcom to contact me! My Fee is €15.