SEO
How to win at content creation, Esports, gaming, and web3 markets with SEO
30-second summary:
- SEO is vastly underutilized in the content creation industry
- How can internet marketing lead to success in Esports and gaming?
- Anthony DiMoro discusses the needed innovation during the content, gaming, and web3 boom
Despite a strong track record and success model within the digital marketing world, for multiple decades, SEO still finds itself almost entirely abandoned in the new age markets of content creation, Esports, gaming, and web3 related properties.
But, why is that? Why would businesses, brands, and creators operating in these spaces, reliant on success in a digital marketplace completely ignore SEO?
Let’s explore why, and how things need to change as 2022 continues to show that the boom of these is not slowing down, but is also rapidly evolving.
1. Content creation and streaming
There is no rhyme or reason as to why content creators (which includes streamers) fail to utilize SEO, considering the fact that their entire brand relies on success within the digital marketplace.
Instead, creators seem to often lean into the following troubling trends, and solely rely on these recycled methods:
Automation and inauthenticity
There is no social platform that has not experienced, in some form or fashion, a form of automation. But content creators, particularly in the streaming sector (like Twitch and YouTube) use this to the point of “overkill”.
“Going LIVE” posts flood timelines, and when they are the majority of what a particular creator posts, it flatlines engagement. While it may seem like a “bot”, it actually is more a real strategy for creators. While informing your audience that you are going live is important, it shouldn’t be or appear, inauthentically posted or automated.
Going further down the rabbit hole will see a more aggressive form of automation in DMs and messages. DMing a new follower or connection is a solid tool for networking when done organically, but the second a bot steps into the chat, your chances skyrocket of someone not only disregarding your content completely but also unfollowing you altogether.
Authenticity is key in proper brand building, especially when you’re being looked at by a potential business or collaborative opportunity.
If you’re heavy into automation and inauthenticity, why would a brand or business spend money on your content or brand? They would, rightfully, assume that is how you do business.
Farming and cycling (aka Botting)
Every few years a new app or platform pops up promising to help creators and streamers reach milestones of affiliate or partner, but are, more often than not, simply a recycling of hacky, spammy, models
Follow for Follow systems have plagued the niche, and have fueled an even more robust “sub for sub” system, but not view churning. This is becoming a more prevalent issue.
Cycling content clips and/or highlights can be an engagement factor for a feed and can help keep your audience engaged, but when in a collective of other cycles, coupled with any incentivizing to push engagement is something completely different.
Some of these models try to divert away from appearing to be a clear violation of, for example, Twitch’s Terms of Services, but it’s all a mirage.
Take it right from Twitch’s TOS page:
“Fake engagement is artificial inflation of channel statistics, such as views or follows, through coordination or 3rd party tools. This behavior is characterized by the creation of incidental or duplicitous views or follows. One common form of this activity is often referred to as view-botting. Another, when done in a coordinated manner, is sometimes identified as “Follow 4 Follow” (F4F), “Lurk 4 Lurk” (L4L), or Host 4 Host (H4H), which involve a mutual exchange of interaction intended to increase the visibility of both channels over those with legitimate interaction. Using services that promise higher visibility in exchange for lurking in a large number of channels or viewing streams on pages with several unrelated, active embedded streams, is considered a form of fake engagement and is not permitted on Twitch services.”
Does the app or platform you use have instances where members are motivated to pop into someone’s channel to say “hello, I am here from PLATFORMNAME” and then leave? Are you a part of a system where videos are cycled to generate views and inject this behavior?
Then you may be, in essence, engaging in a form of view botting, albeit a more human version, and also engaging in fake engagement.
Let’s look further into how Twitch defines these things:
“Artificial engagement and botting limit growth opportunities for legitimate broadcasters and are damaging to the community as a whole. False viewer growth is not conducive to establishing a career in broadcasting because the ‘viewers’ do not contribute to a healthy, highly engaged community.
As a reminder, fake engagement and artificial inflation of channel statistics are violations of our policies. Participating in, organizing, and/or running these services will lead to an enforcement issued on your account, including and up to indefinite suspension”
Why run the risk? Furthermore, why try to “game” or “cheat” the system to inorganically generate some form of success?
Sure, it can be a good confidence booster, but you’re looking to monetize this, or even make it a career, rather than protecting your analytics and ensuring they are transparent is key, and could make or break a financially rewarding opportunity or deal with a business who will, assuredly, do their due diligence.
Community toxicity
One big issue in the industry, overall, is toxicity and how many creators and viewers engage in this at varying levels. But to take things further, many communities and platforms fuel this behavior or lead the charge.
Association is key, and if you’re aligned or using a service or platform, ensure how they interact, specifically when criticized, aligns with your brand and is something you would not mind a potential business partner or collaborative partner seeing.
Whether a member of the community leaves or someone reports an unsuccessful experience, a brand’s reaction and the behavior/conduct of their prominent members/admins speak volumes in the world of business.
The solution
Explore more viable outlets, look for services more rooted in things such as SEO and internet marketing, and lean into those service offerings and/or benefits.
There is a reason why influencer marketing and even things as minute as Twitch SEO are gaining impressive traction.
Because, with effort and a professional, dedicated, and intuitive approach, businesses can work in areas that really matter. They can take you outside of the box that a platform’s discoverability model may keep you contained in. It can make you more appealing to businesses.
Explore and re-invent the way you do business. If you’re investing hard-earned money into your equipment and also pouring hours into creating, you owe it to yourself to be efficient with your branding and marketing.
2. Esports
The Esports boom is not slowing down and you can expect the industry to expand further as there is considerable buzz around the college Esports industry in 2022.
The projected boom shouldn’t come as a shock, in fact, it was projected back in 2019 when a report from Estreme Networks and eCampus News “which surveyed 281 technical and administrative leaders across K-12 and higher education in North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East, found that –
- one in five schools already have an esports program
- 71 percent were considering or might consider adding an esports program in the future
Fast Forward to 2021, and the State University of New York (SUNY) reported that 2,077 students enrolled in a SUNY esports program in the 2021 fall semester, compared to 636 students that enrolled in the 2020 fall semester, and those numbers are going to grow in 2022.
This creates a more competitive marketplace driven by greater revenue opportunities, meaning that Esports teams, players, casters, and businesses need to gain an edge to keep up and scale.
So, where does that come from? Esports SEO.
Let’s backtrack to my article back in August 2021 and what eUnited’ Matt Pothoff said regarding the importance of SEO:
“eUnited does use elements such as SEO to increase visibility when selling merchandise or showcasing new sponsors. Additionally, we help players revise their stream titles and descriptions for better chances of obtaining new viewership when users are searching for different topics on Twitch”
Now, let’s circle back to the here and now, and an interview I did on Gamactica Portals with Christian Bishop, Director of Twitch Properties:
“SEO and working through the Google machine is incredibly important,” Bishop said.
“This can very much make or break the success of a website or piece of content. Investing in SEO has been one of the most fruitful and rewarding decisions I have made with my media companies. I would love to see creators do more around SEO to drive traffic to their channels and content.
Discoverability and growth can be hard for a lot of creators, SEO might be one of the angles to break through.”
The fact is, internet marketing and SEO are proving to be differentiators in many layers of the industry, including esports, and making it a huge part of the foundation of your team, career, or your organization is more vital than ever.”
There is no denying this need within the esports landscape yet it remains vastly unutilized by many organizations and teams.
3. Video games (Developers and publishers)
Regardless if you’re a big named studio, an indie team, or a solo developer, video game SEO should be a big part of your strategy, because the industry is seeing a rapid YoY increase in revenue flow.
Take this infographic from Statista, demonstrating the market size (in US dollars, billions) from 2010 to 2021 and it speaks for itself.
The influx of revenue means that it demands a more competitive and fluid marketing approach that reaches an exact target market. Given the number of game genres and considering that markets aren’t always the same, you cannot always approach it broadly. For instance, fans of Animal Crossing may not like your FPS game.
4. The new markets of web3, cryptocurrency, and NFTs
Regardless of where you stand on cryptocurrency or the controversial Non-Fungible Token (NFT), they aren’t going anywhere. If you operate in the gaming and streaming industries they are likely already operating in your space.
So, you can choose to disassociate them completely from your brand or be open to working with businesses that operate with them. Regardless of where you lean, you should understand the niches and network with the brands and names within them – they will, more often than not, overlap in your niche.
Marketing will likely do the same and you have probably already seen it exist, in some fashion, in your favorite game, or on a platform you use (such as Twitter), and with the birth of NFT SEO and Crypto SEO, these sectors are going to be pushing even more efforts into penetrating your market space.
Business owners in these spaces will need to rely more on these methods, as a shiny, new-age-looking website will only take you so far.
The importance of marketing and targeted networking will only continue to scale upwards, and those who either don’t use it or refuse to use it all together will either be making their track to success or a much more difficult path.
Anthony DiMoro is CEO of Gamactica. He can be found on Twitter @AnthonyDiMoro.
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SEO
Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It
Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when…
SEO
8 Free SEO Reporting Tools
There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?
In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.
Price: Free
Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.
Most common reporting use case
GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.
As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:
- Total Impressions
- Average CTR
- Average Position
Tip
But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.
If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.
Price: Free
Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.
Most common reporting use case
Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.
Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.
Such as:
- Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
- Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
- Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
- Social media platforms – Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter
- Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage
Sidenote.
If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks
Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:
With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.
Favorite feature
The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.
Price: Free for 500 URLs
Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.
Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.
Most common reporting use case
When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.
Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.
Favorite feature
Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs.
If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.
Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.
Price: Free
Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.
For example, you could use our:
Most common reporting use case
One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.
With AWT, you can:
- Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
- See the performance of your website
- Check all known backlinks for your website
Favorite feature
Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.
If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).
Price: Free
Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.
Most common reporting use case
For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.
With the free version, you get the following features:
- On-page SEO report
- Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
- Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
- SERP positions
- Country changer for SERP
The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.
If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.
Favorite feature
The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.
Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.
Price: Free
Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.
Most common reporting use case
GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.
Favorite feature
You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.
Price: Free
Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.
Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.
Most common reporting use cases
The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.
This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.
Price: Free
Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.
Most common reporting use cases
Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.
Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.
Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.
Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.
Favorite feature
Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.
Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.
You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.
Final thoughts
These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.
The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.
Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂
SEO
Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO
A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.
These findings include:
- When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
- 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
- Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.
Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.
As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.
High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects
The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.
The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.
The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.
This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.
The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.
Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results
With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.
When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.
Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.
New Competition From Unexpected Sources
The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.
On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.
An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.
Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search
The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.
Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:
“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”
Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.
Methodology & Limitations
To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.
The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.
While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.
Why We Care
The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.
Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.
SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.
As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.
How This Could Help You
While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.
Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:
- As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
- Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
- Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
- Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
- Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.
Looking Ahead
While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.
By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.
Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock
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