Secured Loans Review

I have to admit that I hesitated long and hard on doing a review of Secured Loans. I truly expected the site to be one of those sites that is chock full of no content affiliate links that is designed to do nothing more than get people to click through and make the site owner some money. How do you review a site like that? I can summarize in one line. “Waded deep into the affiliate links that the site is comprised of and barely survived the trip.”And I would have been mostly right. Prominently centered in the page is a nice little bit of flashy/ajaxy code that displays the best rates for three different types of loans. Of course, they have conveniently managed to secure affiliate status with each and every provider on the list. I do sometimes wonder if people are not smart enough or are naive enough to believe that sites like this have no alternate motive.

I also question why a site like this would want to run google ads. It takes something away from the professionalism of the site. I suppose that it is becoming more and more accepted on most any site but it still seems a little out of place on this site. And if you look deeper into the site, it’s more like a blog than a pro site and the adsense seems to fit in a little more.
After quite a bit of looking at the site, I realized that the site was merely a section of a much larger site called “The Thrifty Scot.” And you know what? It’s actually a pretty good site. I’m sure that the secured loan section must be one of the higher revenue sections for them, but I think they would have been better off asking me to review their entire site rather than just the one section.

There is an abundance of content on the site overall. Most of it rather good news and advice on finances. In all fairness, there is a smattering of it on the loans section, but your eye gets pulled away from it all with the big flashy table. And there is something similar on their main page, but it seems to blend in a little better and the content seems to come out at you.

But they didn’t ask me to review their main site. The link that they gave me is the one at the start of this post. It’s the main page for their loan section. And like I mentioned, it has an overabundance of ads front and center. After some digging, I clicked through to the secured loans link on the upper left navigation sidebar and looky what I found there! Content. Useful content at that.

My final say on this site is that I really would have liked for the site to not look so spammy at first glance. Integrate the content more into the pages and make the ads blend into the background a little more. I don’t think the hit would be that great in your click-through and it might even give it a boost. The truth of the matter is that if I hadn’t been being paid to do a review of the site, I would have taken one look at the page and moved on to something else. However, because I was being paid for the review, I gave the site the benefit of the doubt and looked around. And when I did, I actually found plenty of useful content that I would have missed if I had just happened upon the site.

Take a look at the site that I was given the link to and see if you get the same impression.

[tags]secured loans,loans,finances,reviewme,review,site review[/tags]