It’s a cut-throat world in online gaming where attractive interfaces, fascinating gameplay and top-notch features aren’t always the winning recipe for success. One crucial aspect often overlooked or seen with indifference is a website’s search engine optimization (SEO), the process of improving the visibility of a website or web page in the search engine results page. Why does this matter?
Normal traffic acquisition activities such as SEO and efficient content marketing can lend significant support to your gaming website. A well-performing website in Google search results is a magnet for organic traffic, brand awareness and increased registrations, which of course translates to more active players in the long run.
This guide shows you what tools and tactics you need to optimise your online gaming site for search engines so you can start climbing up the rankings.
Know Your Audience: Gamers Are Your Players
Before attempting keyword research or any technical SEO tweaks, you need to figure out who you’re reaching out to. For an online games site, this means understanding the kind of gamers you want to engage. This, in turn, means understanding what kind of games they play; whether your attitude should match that of die-hard strategy fans, casual puzzle players or competitive eSports audiences; who they are, and where to find them online.
Online gaming websites are quite popular at the moment, so it’s important to start implementing a water-tight SEO strategy if you want your website to stand out from the crowd. Online gaming is an interesting industry and one that has really made it into the mainstream over the past decade.
Online casinos usually offer a variety of games like roulette, slots, and poker, which can make creating a SEO strategy a little bit harder. For some websites, they may have a more niche offering, like delivering real casino slot games. For this genre, you’re trying to target those who are fans of casinos, but also those who stay up to date with the latest gaming trends – like progressive slots, cryptocurrency additions, and lucrative bonuses.
Research popular game genres for your niche. If your focus is on first-person shooters, role-playing games, or mobile esports titles, creating optimized content and keywords that cater to these specific genres will boost your site’s discoverability among relevant players.
Smaller targeted communities of sites that gamers already congregate on such as forums and social media groups are good places to listen and learn what it is that players are talking about right now, what games they are playing, what frustrates them, and what their needs are. Use this information to update content and fulfill player needs.
Content is King: Creating Compelling Content for Gamers
Even the best SEO strategy is nothing without great content. But search engines aren’t gamers. For an iGaming provider, creating blog posts about fashion or interior design won’t cut it. So why not create content that players want to read, and that Google wants to present to players? It’s not hard. Here’s how.
- Game Reviews and Guides: Write thoughtful reviews of popular games in your niche, and break them down through analysis and critical thinking to gain attention from users. Create detailed walkthroughs and strategy guides for the rookie or brand-new gamer.
- Gaming News and Trends: Be up-to-date in the gaming industry. Give your opinion of the latest releases, esports competition, and gaming scoops. Constantly creating new content keeps your site fresh and tells search engines that you are busy and current.
- Community Building Content: Encourage networking, reinforce friendships and create conversations by hosting polls and discussions that relate to your niche.
- Introduce Variety: Offer content in as many different formats as possible, to suit the different ways in which people learn. Pair explanatory written content with insightful video reviews, walkthroughs or infographics.
Technical SEO: Optimizing Your Website for Search Engines
Aside from the great content that makes your site worthy of a high ranking, technical SEO makes sure that your site is crawled and indexed by search engines. Some of the key elements to look at:
- Speed and Mobile Optimisation: Gamers are a fickle crowd. If your site doesn’t load quickly enough, they’ll go elsewhere. Make sure your website loads fast and works well on mobile phones, the preferred gaming device for most. Check your website speed with Google Pagespeed Insights or other speed-testing facilities and optimize your images for speed.
- On-Page Optimisation: Use keywords relevant to your business in titles, meta descriptions, and headings and structure your website to make it easy for people and search engines to navigate and find related pages.
- Image Optimization: Add images and/or videos that complement your content. Make sure the resolution of the image is high, they are familiar, so users know what they’re getting, and they are optimized in terms of their file size for fast loading speeds. Include alt text that is relevant to your keywords when possible.
- Implementation of Structured Data: Structured data helps search engines get more context about what’s on your website. Use schema markup for titles of games, release dates, genres, and ratings to make your search results stand out more.
Measuring Success and Refining Your Strategy
SEO is continuous rather than a one-off operation: check your metrics regularly and adjust your approach accordingly. Take advantage of website analytics software, which tracks where your traffic originates, details about the users visiting your site (including the keywords they use), and your rankings for key search terms.