Technical SEO for Gaming Websites: Tips and Best Practices

Are you looking to improve organic search visibility and user engagement on your gaming website? If so, implementing technical SEO best practices is essential. In this blog post, we'll provide tips and best practices for optimizing your gaming website with technical SEO and discuss why it’s such an important part of long-term success in search engine optimization (SEO).

Top SEO Strategies for Gaming Sites

Focus on Keyword Optimization

Technical SEO combined with On-page SEO is critical in scoring a top rank in search engine results. This involves building a solid strategy for targeted keyword research. This should find a combination of long-tail and short-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords involve specific queries such as “how to get rid of pimples at home,” “how to clean paint stains from tiles,” etc. Since they are long, fewer people will likely use them as search queries. This is why they generate less traffic than short keywords. 

However, they have a significant advantage in ranking as they have lower competition. If you target these keywords, you will rank higher and generate more conversions.

Use keyword research tools like Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, Ubbersuggest, Keyword Planner, or Keywords Anywhere. All these tools provide accurate data related to keyword performances. This includes a keyword’s search volume, trends, and SEO difficulty.

Embed Video Content on Your Site 

Visuals speak louder than texts in the gaming world. Video contents get more engagement on the internet. 9 out of 10 viewers prefer watching a video about brands or products to reading about them. 

Therefore, creating game-related videos such as game tutorials, game and gaming device reviews, walkthroughs, etc., generates more viewers. You should upload your videos simultaneously on youtube and embed them on your website. So, whenever someone watches a video on your page, it will increase the views on Youtube too.

Alternatively, provide your site information and link in the description section of your Youtube page. This increases your chance of driving traffic from youtube to your site.

Gaming blogs are quite popular among users. Gaming portals and forums are another prominent engagement point in gamer communities. 

Use Disavow Tool to Block Bad Links 

You should create and submit a disavow file in the Google Disavow tool. Bad links are poison to your website’s SEO practices. Spammy and malicious links are quite predominant on gaming websites. 

With new sites erupting daily, you never know when some bad site will link your site to them. You don’t need a bad link pointing at your website. This could create a bad impression when Googlebot crawls your site. Plus, visitors may see troublesome ads linked to those bad sites if you have ads running on your site.

You can permanently remove these links manually. However, for that, you have to personally email the site owner. This task is not easy as most site owners don’t provide their contact details. Instead, the disavow tool is a great alternative. You must create a file including all the links you want Google crawlers to ignore. 

Optimize Voice Search 

Voice search is on the rise now. More than ever, voice activation and voice recognition systems are being utilized by companies. Plus, voice-based search helps your content appear in the featured snippet. 

Strategic keyword research is the key to finding relevant queries. Search for the most frequently asked questions from users and answer them precisely. For that, you have to work on the structure of your content, adding appropriate headings and titles. Integrating primary keywords in the title and headlines is the first thing you should do. Plus, make sure to answer the question right below the question.

Build Quality Links Through Gaming Forums 

Create a solid user profile in gaming forums. Include your company name as your profile name and include your link in the profile. Remember not to post unnecessary links in the posts. Only post a link if it answers the question in detail. 

For example, answering the question “Which Elden Ring Starting Class Should You Choose?” Now, this is a question that cannot be summarized in a small paragraph. Start by giving your opinion in the answer section, followed by the link. In this way, your posts won’t look spammy to the moderators.

Reddit, Gamefaqs, and NeoGAF are some of the popular gaming forums and discussion boards you can try. These forums increase your opportunity to get solid backlinks and drive massive traffic to your site.

The best thing about gaming sites is that you will always have a wide range of content to publish. A single level of a game can be played differently. So, you can create unique content without depending on information from other sites.

Do a Technical SEO Audit 

Doing a technical SEO audit of your gaming site gives you a scope for improvement. You will encounter several elements during an SEO audit that could harm search engine ranking. 

For instance, outdated information, broken links, old keywords, etc., could hamper your website from search engine visibility. Redirecting errors, bad interlinking, and exclusion from robot.txt and nofollow links can stop crawlers from visiting your site.

Conclusion

Technical SEO provides the necessary groundwork that makes content optimization possible and enables websites to earn higher rankings in SERPs. With more people playing video games than ever before, it’s important for game developers and publishers to prioritize technical SEO for gaming websites if they want their content to stand out among the competition.