choosing a direction for the Online Poker Circuit website

Lost and Without Direction

Over the past week, I’ve done a great deal of soul searching and studying in regards to the direction and purpose of the Online Poker Circuit website.  When circumstances beyond my control drove me out of my previous “life,” I assumed the path of least resistance was to re-enter the online poker realm.

Poker Blogger

As a poker blogger I had a fair amount of success, via the “old” Poker Pub.  After the legislative changes in the US, and shortly after returning from blogging the Aussie Millions, I made a career change or perhaps more accurately, a career adjustment.  Left behind was my successful online poker blog and a somewhat successful freeroll poker portal that primarily consisted of a leaderboard style poker tour.  I knew…  or thought I knew the business pretty well when I left, and was even more certain, upon my return that I knew the business.

I was wrong.

Returning to the online poker world

I resurfaced via the Online Poker Circuit.  I somehow believed I would immediately recapture enough of my past customer base to kick things off smartly, effectively, and profitably.  I was wrong.  With respect to SEM – I also believed if I wrote it, it would rank.  I ranked top twenty for quite some time using the phrase Endgame Poker Tournament Strategy and quite honestly, when I wrote the post, I knew little about search engine marketing/ranking.  I simply wrote the series of posts to offer strategy advice to my readers and members of my poker site.

My old freeroll site itself was weak…  and I am being generous at best when I say that.  I’m not even talking from a design standpoint, I’m speaking from a content perspective.  From a content standpoint at this very moment, my site is still weak.  I’m working on that though.  One of the issues I have to address first is direction.

Finding my place

I planned to go the freeroll leaderboard poker tour route, as I mentioned when I first got things moving with the Online Poker Circuit site.  Eventually, as business picked up, my intention was to gradually adjust towards catering to the higher end poker player.  The problem there is that there’s such a leap from the free to micro end to the high stakes end, I doubt my ability to successfully transition.  Additionally, I suspect the current high stakes marketplace is such that unless I am bringing to market something totally new and innovative, which while I love to think I am – realistically I am not…  yet – I’m not going to capture their interest to the point of gaining commitment. Obviously, I have to choose a target market or audience and customize my blogging and website content to that specific audiences’ needs and interests.

I also have to do a better job of organizing my website.  Honestly, it is a mess – even to the untrained eye.  My content was so thin that I decided to implement a navigation bar so that all my poker site’s links were packed into it.  That killed my search listings.  I’ve done some experimentation and observed favorable results so far.  I need to strengthen my poker website’s content, as well as improve upon the navigation bar.  I think I’ve found a way to have my cake and eat it too with respect to my poker portal navigation, only time will tell.  There’s such a fine line between creating a user friendly website, while not scaring away the spiders.  In a perfect world, I’d like to have complete navigation without wasting link juice.  I think I’ve found a way – again – only time will tell.

In a long trip, here’s what I plan to offer via the Online Poker Circuit website (in no particular order)

Focusing my poker site’s efforts

poker news – primarily commentary on poker political in nature, as well as poker tournament happenings (both online tournaments such as the upcoming FTOPS, and live tournament news such as the World Series of Poker).   The Poker Pub Poker Blog, as well as the oft mis-utilized Online Poker Circuit News blog will be the primary outlets for such commentary, with appropriate areas of the main Online Poker Circuit website serving as support.

poker reviews – I’m going to focus more effort into featuring and reviewing online poker rooms of interest.  I’ll be utilizing the Online Poker Circuit’s Poker in America, as well as the Complete Poker Listings areas of the Online Poker Circuit to primarily house these poker room assessments and reviews.

Poker Tournament Strategy – Tournaments are my passion.  As a player, the bigger successes have come from my poker tournament play.  I seem to have a greater understanding of tournament poker play, thanks mostly to my observations while working the Aussie Millions.  I plan to utilize this higher level of understanding to my advantage and as an asset for my readers and website visitors.  I’ll be utilizing the strategy section of this poker blog, as well as the poker strategy library area of the Online Poker Circuit website to feature my poker tournament strategy discussions.

Poker Resources – I’ll be featuring various poker tools to help with areas such as bankroll tracking and poker bankroll management, poker tournament charts, poker odds calculators and equity calculators and other basic poker tools.  Of course, I will also review and feature tools more advanced in nature such as poker player trackers, and player analysis programs such as Poker Office.

The first step in all of this is to optimize the navigation of the Online Poker Circuit website, then write or rewrite the content – and then expand from there.  I’ve chosen my direction and made my plan – now its a matter of building and shaping my plan into execution.