BeatTheFish.com Case Study
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URL: www.BeatTheFish.com |
| PR: 3 | |
| Est: 2005 |
Overview
Just like pokertips.org, BeatTheFish was one of the sites I used to visit religiously to try and develop my game when I first started playing poker. Once more, BeatTheFish is just a simply a well laid-out site that is rich in content.
Instead of just offering the basics of poker strategy and poker room reviews, BeatTheFish steps outside the box and offers the visitor far more information, including; player profiles, book reviews, site comparisons and more. With all of this content, it possesses a major presence on the search engines, bringing in hundreds of visitors that it can potentially convert into RMPs each and every day.
Design
The design of the site is simple yet effective. It has been designed by the webmaster himself, and there has been no need to update it too much or change it. Although there is nothing flashy about BeatTheFish, it does its job well and goes to show how you can get along as a poker affiliate without having to pay others to design a site for you. If you can design something simply and cleanly, you will do well.
BeatTheFish makes use of a few banners throughout the site, but it does so tastefully. There may be the odd poker room banner here and there, but it does not interfere with any of the content, nor does it look out of place with any other part of the site. If you do intend on using banners on your poker site, take note of the way BeatTheFish uses them. Sparsely and appropriately is the key.
I am not normally a fan of wide sites that fill up the screen, because they normally look overly busy and can be a little confusing as well as overwhelming. However, BeatTheFish combats this by having a large amount of white space, and keeping the amount of images on pages to a minimum. The width of the site also changes with the resolution of your screen, as to avoid a horizontal scroll bar appearing within the window if the pages were at a set width.
Content
The content of BeatTheFish is what sets the site apart from the rest, and it is what makes it the money generating machine that it is. If there was a site that highlights how important content is to making money as a poker affiliate, this is it.
On first impression, the site looks fairly innocent with its simple design and navigation. However, as you start to dive deeper into the site you find numerous sub-pages, with their being hundreds of useful articles contained within the one site.
If you take a look at the strategy articles, you will see that the articles are not just basic 300-word pieces of work. These are healthy articles that go into detail about different aspects of the game, whilst being concise and informative at the same time. By having such quality content on the site, it is a perfect candidate for other sites to link to it, in turn helping to boost in rankings in the search engines.
It is also worth noticing that the poker room reviews contain a wealth of information for the visitor, so that they are fully briefed on each poker room before they decide to play. This helps the visitor to distinguish which room is best suited to their needs, so they are far more likely to click through the links from the site to sign up. Visitors are provided with enough information so that they will not feel the need to look elsewhere for a second opinion.
SEO
BeatTheFish does everything a good site should do when it comes to SEO. The site has solid h1 tags, title tags and most importantly of all, good content. When you create a website and want it to rank well, your main focus should be delivering articles and information that deserves to rank well. If your content is worth a lot of value to potential visitors, then the chances are that you will be near the top of the search engines over time.
BeatTheFish gives itself every opportunity to rank highly in the search engines, without utilizing any black hat techniques. This is how you get your hands on continued quality traffic for the life of your website. When those visitors are coming in, all you have to do is sit back and wait for the conversions (and continue to develop your site of course!).
Summary
When you visit BeatTheFish, it is obvious that the site was created to benefit the online poker community. All of the information is top notch, and there are enough articles on the site to keep you occupied for days.
When you create your website, you should create it with the intention of building a useful resource first, rather than with the intention of making money. Whilst everyone wants to make money as a poker affiliate, if you only see your site as a method to extract money from visitors then you are going about it the wrong way. However, if you try your best to create the best website you can, there is no doubt that the earnings and commission will follow.