Game production companies spend thousands of dollars preparing their games, but in some cases they may not pay enough attention to SEO. In this article, I will try to explain the points worth considering for SEO in the gaming industry.
While big budgets are allocated for marketing and advertising, small investments in SEO can bring games to a much wider audience. Given that Google plays a big role in gaming, utilizing SEO strategies for gaming sites is one of the most effective ways to increase SEO visibility and authority.
Steam Page Optimization
With this process, which we can call Steam SEO, you can optimize many areas of your game's store page, right down to its subcategories. Writing highly readable game descriptions helps your page rank higher in both Steam searches and search engine results. Since this area is very valuable, it's worth conducting professional keyword research:
Make sure to customize your game's meta description, and consider running A/B tests if needed:
In-game achievements will also generate search volumes on their own. These volumes may seem low, but when you consider that your users will stay in-game much longer to get this achievement, you can create pages on your site with information and even tips about these achievements:
Always translate your game into different languages if your budget allows. This way, your Steam store will be at the top of search results in the local language because you're offering a localized experience in that country. You can prioritize and plan this based on either conversion rate or the population and gaming statistics of the country where that language is spoken:
You might consider similar suggestions if you publish your games on sites like the Epic Store.
Creating Wiki Pages
You can build a knowledge base by predicting what your target audience might search for related to your game. Historical games with a large, detailed scenario gain much more SEO visibility from this kind of knowledge base, once you factor in the search volumes involved.
For example, someone playing Empire Total War can learn how to change from a Republic to a Constitutional Monarchy from a guide on the game's main site. In this way, you will keep your users on your site. If you have different DLCs for the game, you can even promote them on the site and earn money from these packages.
Also, in games that are close to real life or have a historical background, you can get much more visibility with some words because real search terms and in-game search terms can overlap. Like "Ottoman Empire":
For games where characters are at the forefront, I recommend creating pages dedicated to different characters. You can attract users by producing game-related content such as game reviews, guides, tips, tactics, etc.
Tracking Communities, Reddit, and Forums
What are the people who play your game talking about? Maybe your users are discussing a bug that passed your testing team's review but that no one else had noticed. You can track these bugs, along with what your users are asking for, on Reddit or other relevant gaming forums. If you already have the answer on your own site, you can have a team respond to these questions with the relevant URL, which earns backlinks naturally.
You can run game quizzes to increase engagement with your community. For example, users can test their gaming knowledge with quizzes such as How well do you know CS:GO. Since users search to find the results of these quizzes, that same search volume works in our favor.
Competition Analysis
Of course, the gaming industry may not have as many direct competitors as an e-commerce site would, but there's still enough available data to work with. You can regularly analyze the websites of potential competitors, such as CS:GO and Valorant. For example, if you have a simulation game, you can regularly analyze similar game sites with tools like Ahrefs or Semrush. This way, you can find content gaps and produce content that fills them.
Hreflang and Technical SEO
Technical SEO is a huge topic, so I won't go into details, but make sure your sites are technically ready for Googlebot and other search engine bots. In the example below, although the site has Turkish language support, we can see the lack of hreflang:
In fact, if you have commands in your robots.txt file that prevent search engines such as Yandex or Bing from crawling your site, and you serve in that language, be sure to change these commands. If you don't have a robots.txt file, I suggest you create it immediately:
What Are Users Asking?
You can answer these questions by analyzing what users are asking on Google about your game. In this way, you can always rank first in queries related to your brand, keep your target audience on your site, and bring traffic to your site completely:
Always analyze the results in the SERP and develop your content strategy on how to respond:
With the help of Google Trends, you can also detect instant trending queries that might be slow to show up in other SEO tools. From there, you can set up email alerts and automate these processes with AI:
Twitch & YouTube
When it comes to gaming, I had to include Twitch. If the content produced by Twitch streamers is also suitable for your audience, you can contact the streamers to direct more users to your site. You can extend the reach of your SEO strategy with links from broadcasts or other campaigns.
Gamers want to see how games are played to learn from other gamers or to see if the game is worth buying. Adding links to your video content is also one of the best ways to increase traffic to your gaming site and help optimize your videos for SEO. In response to this demand, you can prioritize YouTube-specific efforts like YouTube SEO:
New Game Releases & Dates
Queries about new game releases or additional packs such as DLC are always sought after. For example, before Age of Empires 4 was released, people kept asking "will it be released" for years. Therefore, if you can give an estimated time for new versions of games, you will both provide clear information to publishers and prevent conflicting news about your plans. It would also be an important step in earning the trust of your users.
For example, on a page like "When is Hearts of Iron 5 coming out?" you can provide information about the future of the game and add detailed descriptions. These pages may not be possible for every type of game, but I wanted to include this detail for games that get more frequent updates.
Reviews & Backlinks
You can have your game reviewed on as many different game review platforms as possible. Thanks to these reviews, you can make different users aware of your game and show the rating of your game clearly to everyone. In a way, it will also be very valuable for EEAT. An example reviewed by PC Gamer:
With backlinks from relevant review sites, you can boost your site's authority and attract more visitors. If possible, you can even surface a direct URL through Google from in-game information screens, so users don't have to type out their problem and you can resolve it quickly.
I wrote this article to contribute a little to the SEO strategy of game production companies. Enjoy your games, everyone!
