I am new here, but I figure that's of little consequence when you come right down to it. The fact that I'm new here doesn't alter anything I'm going to suggest (though it may alter how much attention some of you pay to it =) ).
1a) The main page is most assuredly not the best it could be. The first impression given by the site is that it's more for reading opinions about games, or giving opinions about games, as opposed to anything else. This will give anyone searching for site to -get- games from the impression that they have stumbled upon a site that cannot help them accomplish that and will almost immediately leave. While it is important to have members that will come to a site and contribute, it is necessary to realize that simply by coming to the site and using it, even if not posting in forums or etc, they are contributing. Their first visit might be simply to download a game and then leave, but this increases the chances that they will return. If they run away from the site from the get go, you lose a potential member.
1b) Potential ways of correcting the problem in 1a include downsizing certain things which, while fun to have, are not necessarily condusive towards attaining new members. When first arriving on the page, the GameVsGame Voting section is so dominant to the page that it's disgusting. Move the voting section to a less dominant position, replacing this area, perhaps, with a non-graphical header along the lines of "CWF - Your source for Freeware Games", or the like. Not only will this help with Google searches for the site, but it will also help in alleviating problem 1a.
1c) Another potential way of helping alleviate the problem is to modify the existing "toolbar". The best of freeware sites have some method of navigation that is dominant and allows for the direct access to that which most people will come here for -- the games themselves. Underdogs have this. GameHippo had this. It works. It cuts through the crap that most people won't be willing to deal with at first and allows them to get right at the heart of the matter.
2a) While dropping links to the site around the net helps, along with banner swapping and etc, there is more that can be done to help. First off, restructure the webpage directory system, or at least, modify it. It doesn't matter how many pages you have if they're all hidden using .php?blahblah. For accessing games, use some philosophy like,
http://www.curlysworldoffreeware.com/ga ... snoth.html or the like. By having the page name as the keyword, as well, you tend to increase the chances of your page being found. (A search engine will choose Freeware-Game.html with the page title "Freeware-Game" and meta keywords "Freeware" and "Game" over the exact same page renamed Bob.html).
2b) By adding certain pages, such as pages that might be linked to the toolbar suggested in 1c, which contain direct links to all the games on the site, you help to ensure that the spider will crawl through all of your games, helping to increase the chances that visitors will come to your site. But, the number of pages that the spider has to crawl through decreases the chances that the spider will place any relevance on the page (having to crawl through 20 links to get to a page containing the word "freeware" will be less relevant than a page that required crawling through 10 links to get to "freeware".)
2c) Balance this with the human aspect of things. Provide a combination of organization sets that appeal to both spiders and users. A user will find sectioning things based on certain, logical fashions much more useful (say, a page for RPG's, further subdivided into links towards RPG's A-C, D-G, etc etc) than a spider would (which would prefer having to crawl through less pages).
I had quite a number of other ideas, but I'm afraid that I lost track of them whilst writing up those. Yet another proof that the more things you have to crawl through, the more things fall apart. =)
