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That really isn’t a pretty sight to see, and it’s going to send you into a daze if you stare at it for long enough. Hence why there is a nice distance between this text and the horrific image above. But anyways, on with the article…

The animation above was actually taken from a real website. In fact, the actual website looked a lot worse; if you scrolled up or down the page it didn’t look much better. The saddest part of it all is that the webmaster may have thought that this looked good in some way, but unfortunately for him or her, 99.9% of the visitors to that site won’t be able to find the ‘back’ button quick enough.

You might think that this site is just a one-off; however, banner-farm-syndrome is ripe amongst poker webmasters. For many starting out in the poker affiliate industry looking to build their own site, good web design skills are often not immediately at hand. Therefore it is common to find amateur webmasters filling up their self-designed sites with these free banners, thinking that they help the site look more attractive in some way.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

The main cause of banner farms is that new webmasters have limited ability in web design, and so in an attempt to compensate for this they use a large numbers of banners on their sites. Whilst these banners may be professionally designed, their flashy nature will be overly distracting and will simply look like a mess if a number of them are in a close proximity.

How to avoid creating a banner farm

The best way to avoid creating a banner farm is to simply restrict yourself from using any banners whatsoever on your site when you first start. This may sound a little extreme, but trust me; in my opinion flashing banners make sites look worse on almost every occasion. Poker room logos are fine to use in the right situation; in fact I recommend you use some classy logos in your reviews and such. But banners should be a big no-no.

If you look at some of the best performing poker websites (case studies), you will notice that many of them will not have a flashing banner anywhere on their site. This is because these webmasters are aware of the fact that they have a very low click-through rate, and so they are happy to leave them out from the site. Big banners will also often make sites look a little unprofessional, so it’s easy to see why the big name poker sites are not using them

There always seems to be the underlying idea that more banners = more signups. In reality however, the more banners you have on your site, the uglier it is going to look. Now if your site looks ugly and unprofessional, you can guarantee that you will be turning away visitors. So your banner will unintentionally be doing more damage than good.

Realize that your site will do just fine (if not better) without banners and you will save yourself a whole load of trouble. Focus on writing lots of quality content and you will be on the road to creating a resourceful and profitable poker site. Put banners at the back of your mind, or you will be doomed to fail as a new poker affiliate.

What you can use instead of banners

A lot of the time flashing banners are thrown into a page because a webmaster feels that they are necessary… this is not the case. So a lot of the time you shouldn’t really be looking to ‘replace’ a banner with something, because ideally that banner shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Instead of looking for reasons to add a banner, look for reasons to avoid using one.

However, it is common to find webmasters using banners within articles to help break them up, or at the end of an article to try and give the page more ‘substance’. Instead of using a banner, try a text link like “Try out our top rated poker room X Poker” or something similar. I am 99% sure that this text link will convert much better than a banner, and I’m 100% sure it will look better too. So give it a try

Summary

If you want to be successful in this industry, you want to avoid making a banner farm at all costs. If you end up creating a site packed full of banners with little to no content, you are guaranteed to fail; there are no two ways about it. Google is not impressed by how many banners you have on your site, but they are impressed by how much useful content you can provide to your visitors, so work on that.

To help get you started creating a content rich (and banner free) site, try using one of these free templates. This is a good way to start making a website with a solid design, and they are perfect for new webmasters who might be struggling with web design. Alternatively you can pay a web designer to create a unique template for you, which will cost around $200 if you use these guys.

Both of these options will set you on your way to making a useful and great looking site. So don’t mess them up with loads of banners!