The gaming industry took the internet audience by storm, becoming one of the primary sources of entertainment worldwide. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic and the multiple lockdowns have contributed to the booming of this industry, especially for online games. So, it’s no wonder that gaming websites use SEO strategies as part of their marketing plan to attract their audience.
Gaming-focused Digital Strategies
In 2020, the video gaming industry had a revenue of $159,3 Billion and it’s forecasted to be worth $200 Billion by the end of 2023. The development of new technologies and the emergence of new markets and opportunities contribute to the increase of the gaming industry, but also to the competition to find new players and boost sales. This is where digital marketing strategies and SEO can help you.
To be visible to your target audience, you need to invest in those marketing and communication strategies that work for your brand. You can use the same principles and best marketing practices that work for any online business and combine them with different SEO strategies specific to the gaming industry.
What Is SEO And How Does It Work?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and means increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your site in search engines when people search for information related to your business. SEO simply refers to the unpaid display of your website (also known as “organic traffic”), that is originated when people are looking for different inquiries.
Implementing effective content and SEO strategies helps your website to rank in the top pages of SERPs and this is important as people prefer not to spend too much time when looking for some information online.
Major Factors to Consider When Choosing Your SEO Strategies
Having a solid SEO strategy involves many elements. Some factors are the basic elements that every online business has to take into consideration, other of them are specific to the gaming industry. Here are the most important three aspects you should think about before designing your SEO strategy.
Know Your Target Market Before Design Your SEO Strategies
Knowing the market and its characteristic is the first step for any business, not just for gaming companies. Think about this: if you don’t know who your players are, how can you reach them, talk to them and convince them to play or download your game? You can’t, at least not in an engaging way.
When you know your target market, you can create an efficient marketing strategy that in addition to SEO includes content strategy, email, social media, and offline marketing campaigns. Usually, in this step, you gather information about your ideal customer(s) and set up their profile(s). By knowing this information in advance, you can create a marketing plan and set up your budget to accomplish it.
Know What Gaming Site You Want To Be
With so many game genres, system requirements, and many other aspects to consider, deciding which gaming site you want to be is an imperative step that will also help you to build your best SEO strategy.
As the majority of gaming sites involve game-related content like gaming blogs and videos, rulebooks, and portals, the first two steps of this process help in attracting the right target audience for your gaming site.
Analyze Your Competition
The main goal of efficient SEO strategies is to help your website get ahead of the competition and meticulous competitor analysis will help you get an edge over them. This way you can identify the areas where they excel and replicate their success. At the same time, you can figure out which gaps and weaknesses they have, so you can take advantage and increase demand for your website.
SEO Strategies To Implement For Gaming Websites
Optimize Your Website for Both Short- and Long Tail Keywords
On-page SEO optimization is an imperative step in designing an efficient SEO strategy and a key factor in how well will rank your website in search engine results.
This involves expertise in precise and targeted keyword research and in combining the usage of short and long-tail keywords and you’ll find this approach for the best gaming websites.
Here are a few aspects to consider:
– Long-tail keywords are known to be more specific and generate less traffic than the short ones, but also have lower competition and generate more conversions;
– With a large number of players opting to use the long-tail keywords for their searches, take advantage and optimize your website to fit their needs.
To find the best keywords for your website, make your keywords research using SEO tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, Keywords Everywhere, or Ubersuggest. All of them offer you very accurate data related to keyword performance (search volume, SEO difficulty, and trends).
Combine the usage of short and long-tail keywords for your website optimization with solid SEO link-building strategies and with engaging and useful content, and you’ll help your website to rank higher in search engine results.
Create Blog Posts and Video Content as part of your SEO strategies
According to Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, increasing slightly from 85% in 2020.
Video content has become nowadays more important than ever and 9 out of 10 viewers state that they want to see more videos from brands and businesses. In fact, it’s predicted that in 2021, a person will spend every day about 100 minutes watching online videos.
So, creating unique video content related to gaming tricks and tips, games tutorials, reviews, etc, can attract viewers, substantially improve traffic and increase your gaming website downloads. In addition, many forums and portals have already gamer communities waiting for engaging and helpful content so gaming blogs are very popular among them.
It is also important to make your videos and blog posts SEO-friendly, as Google shows both Youtube videos and written content in their search results.
Use Updated Content As Part Of Your SEO Strategies
Your frequent website updates offer search engines plenty of fresh content and sources of new information for their search requests. In other words, when you update your website frequently with fresh high-quality, and SEO-optimized content, Google will love you for this.
Besides, fresh content also means frequent indexing, so you have the opportunity to rank higher, based on the content you provide.
Think Mobile
As the number of people using mobile devices has increased in the past few years, Google announced switching to mobile-first indexing starting on 1st July 2019. This means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking.
The new websites have already included this option that improves the user experience through better navigation. But if you have a website older than that date, you must optimize it for mobile as soon as possible.
IN terms of website design, it also means you have to place the main information in a way that is visible for both mobile and desktop versions.
Optimize For Voice Search
With 71% of consumers preferring to conduct queries by voice instead of typing, voice activation and recognition systems are utilized more than ever before. So it’s better to take the advantage of the technology development as sooner as possible.
Voice-based search terms work better when your content can be seen in Google’s Featured Snippet. So make sure that the question inquiry and the answers a5re on the same page, as Google tends to ensure that users get instant results and favors more those sites.
Use Gaming Forums To Create Quality Backlinks
As mentioned before, gaming forums are the best target area for SEO for gaming sites, and quality link-building plays a major role here. Gaming forums are the best way to increase the social interaction of gamers and to draw attention to your gaming website. Providing the gamer communities with relevant links which have the content they are looking for, will not only generate their interest but also help you in elevating your efforts in implementing the best SEO strategies for gaming sites.
Use Social Media To Improve Your SEO Strategies
No matter what industry you come from, social networks are the best place to promote your business or products. Posting relevant content on social media platforms and engaging your target audience in commenting, liking, and sharing posts can generate more interest than generic SEO strategies. In addition, by generating viral content through SEO for gaming sites and by using social tools such as hashtags you can increase traffic to your website.
Takeaway
Implementing SEO strategies for gaming sites means taking the same steps as for any other industry – from identifying your target audience to keyword research to taking the advantage of social media and building quality backlinks through gaming communities. However, you need to be strategic both in choosing the right target market for your game, optimizing your content for the right keywords, and using the right platforms to gain the most visibility with your target audience. Also, the relevance of the content is essential because players only want what is useful and captivating when accessing a gaming site.
