I got a request in the comments to write a post about “how to write a poker review”. With some exceptions, most of the information included here about how to write a poker review also applies to how to write a casino review too. (And how to write a bingo review.)
Let’s start out by looking at how NOT to write a poker review. Most poker reviews suck because they’re not really poker reviews; they’re just thinly-disguised sales letters for the poker room. That kind of “poker review” might convert well, but it won’t help your site get links or build authority. And honestly, how credible is a poker review site where all the reviews are sales letters anyway?
Here are a few examples of some “salesy” statements in some poker reviews I’ve seen. (I’ve edited them a bit, but in essence, they’re about what you’d find on 95% of the amateur-run poker review sites on the Internet.)
- “This poker room offers all popular poker game variants and more.” (I’m not entirely sure what that means. Does that mean they also offer the unpopular poker game variants too? It’s not so much salesy as it is vague.)
- “This poker site has such a large amount of traffic that you can always find a table that suits your level.” (Now this is probably accurate, but it’s written as a sales feature, not a review. A real poker review would say, “I was always able to find an open table at the limits I was looking for. And I tried playing $1/$2, $2/$4, and $3/$6 limit Texas holdem at various times over the course of 3 days. The only time I had trouble finding action was when I was looking for a $3/$6 pot limit Omaha 8 game at 2am on a Tuesday morning. There was only one table going, and it was full.” Notice the difference there. A real poker review is written from a first-person perspective and provides specific details about someone’s actual experience playing at a poker site.
- “Since this poker site is an industry leading cardroom when it comes to innovation, you can expect cool things to be added very frequently.” Again, using the word “you” in the review makes it sound like a sales piece. Also, this sentence is complete fluff. Get specific. How is this poker site leading the industry when it comes to innovation? What kind of cool things are going to be added frequently? How frequently are these cool things added?
So here are some specific tips based on those examples:
- Don’t use the word “you” in your poker reviews. That just makes it sound salesy, like you’re communication the benefits and features of the poker room to the customer. A real poker review isn’t a sales piece.
- Be specific. Vague statements about how awesome or innovative a poker room isn’t helpful. Why is this poker room awesome? What does this poker site need to do to improve? How do they compare to other poker rooms? (And be specific – talk about how PokerStars compares to Full Tilt Poker, instead of just saying that PokerStars is better than all the other poker rooms.)
- Details, details, details. This follows from being specific. Tell a story, and include details in order to give the story authenticity. “I like to play seven card stud, and Full Tilt Poker doesn’t offer a lot of stud action compared to PokerStars.” That’s a specific detail. It’s helpful to at least some of your readers. It gives your review some authenticity.
- Write in the first person. You were probably taught to avoid the word “I” in your high school writing class. Your high school writing teacher wasn’t writing poker room reviews for the Internet though. The thing about writing from the first person in your poker reviews is that it gives your writing an immediacy. Just using the first person gives your writing a sense of “I’ve got something to say about this poker room.” That doesn’t mean you start every sentence with the word “I”. But it will help you avoid sounding like you’re some cheap show salesmen who decided to become a poker affiliate one day.
Like I said earlier, the same advice about “how to write a poker review” applies to the following:
- How to write a casino review.
- How to write a bingo review.
- How to write a skill game site review.
- How to write a website review.
- How to write a dating site review.
- How to write a software review.
Any time you want to write a review of a product, it’s a good idea to avoid sounding salesy. If you want to see some examples of some real reviews, check out John T. Reed’s reviews of various real estate investment gurus. His reviews follow all of the principles I mentioned in this post:
- They’re written from a first-person perspective.
- They’re honest.
- They’re not salesy.
- They express opinions.
- They’re detailed.
- They’re specific.
The Internet doesn’t need any more sales pages for online poker sites. But real poker reviews are a valuable commodity, because there are so few of them out there.
And thanks to Poker For Free for suggesting this topic for this post.
Hey Randy,
These are perfect examples of how things should be written. The same would apply to strategies as well. People often look for room reviews and strategies only to find 2 paragraphs with half of it stating the “great bonus” they offer or the “room is cool” or I rate this a 9.95 out of 10 (when all their room reviews do ) You don’t go shopping at walmart, fred myer, and the mall trying to find the same product for the same price..you try to find a good product at the best price available. Same applies to room reviews! The tips you mentioned that I don’t use I will start applying right away! Thanks!
I’m sooo happy that i read this before writing for my new site. There would have been “you”s all over the place
Hey Randy,
Enjoyed this post. I never really know where to go with reviews becasue I’m not sure how many people just skim read them anyway?! I think its key to have generic sections which apply to all the reviews on your site so people can compare and contrast different features.
I read your link building section and would really love to read some more stuff on how much effort you put into ranking your internal pages. Not just your bonus pages but long tail stuff as well. Do you even bother?
Doovde
Writing poker room reviews always seems challenging because you think people won’t play at a room unless you give the room a good review. Not only is this not true, your visitors will trust you more when you give them a real review that doesn’t gloss over any of the poor points. In addition, who are you to decide what is good and bad about a poker room? Treat your reviews like a news reporter would. State the facts in an easy to read and understand format.
Doovde-
It depends on how competitive the phrase I’m targeting is. For the most part, I don’t try to build links to internal pages, because I have plenty of links from my own site pointing to those pages. (Those count too. A lot of people forget that.) But if I have a site where my main page is targeting the phrase “poker games”, and one of my internal pages is targeting the phrase “texas holdem”, then yeah, I’ll try to get some external sites to link to that internal page too. But honestly, I don’t do tons of linkbuilding. I’d rather write content.
Hope that helps.
Randy
Cheers for the reply Randy. You seem massivly content driven as a webmaster. I mean how many pages of a website does one need before you really start to see the results in your affiliate accounts? Assuming these pages are all unique and good content?
Another outstanding post my man! I have some changes to make on my sites!
Doovde-
I generally don’t really see much in terms of results on any of my sites unless I have at least 100 pages of content, but it depends on the site and the terms, the link popularity of the site, etc. There are just so many factors that play into it, and you’ve definitely got to play to your strengths. My strengths are keyword research and content generation. I’m also pretty good at on-page optimization. I do a decent job of linkbuilding, but it’s not my favorite activity. I also don’t think it’s the activity which gets me the most ROI when compared to writing content, etc.
Randy
Thanks again for the reply Randy. Well at the moment I have 500 pages of content but it doesn’t seem to be performing that well. My site is only a couple of months old though.
Looking forward to your next blog.
Doovde
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