MVP101: Is SEO Worth It For Your Game Store?

Does Your Game Store Need an SEO Specialist?If you've been in business for any length of time you've probably been pitched SEO services at least a few times by people promising to get you on page 1 of Google.That sounds pretty good right? The trouble is hiring someone for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be very hit or miss.Some people are great and others will try to rip you off completely, and it can be challenging to know who's who.SEO is technical and somewhat abstract so it can be hard to tell if someone you hire is doing a good job or nothing at all, and it generally takes a few months to see any real benefits from the effort.Something to keep in mind for someone who is planning on opening a new store in the near future, SEO is a long term strategy and if you're opening up shop in month or two, SEO isn't going to do all that much since you only have a short amount of time to get things rolling.You should definitely get the basics started so you have an online presence that people can find to learn more and that you can grow over time, but if you want to prime the pump on your opening week, you should be spending time on promoting your store on the local Facebook groups in your area and trying to get the word out with some paid ads.That would be money better spent than hiring an SEO specialist.But all that said, it's still worth your time to get some SEO basics in place for your game store business.The good news is 80% of what you want to achieve with SEO (namely better rankings for keyword searches that matter for your business) can be done yourself in the course of an afternoon assuming you already have a website created.Here's a quick rundown on what you need to know to get your SEO going this weekend.The Set UpStart with getting the basics in place.Open up Google and search for Google My Business and go through the set up process. It’s pretty straightforward and the app will walk you through what you need to do to get everything online. You will have to verify your address with a code they’ll send you in the mail so it might take a couple weeks to completely finalize GMB.Make sure your graphics and logo assets match your website and branding, same with the copy.Grab your Yelp listing and be prepared for a Yelp rep to call you and essentially hold your page hostage unless you pay them. Don’t worry about that too much though, the direct impact of Yelp itself on your business is minimal, but it does help rank what you actually care about, which is your website.Don’t worry too much about Yelp reviews, direct people to your GMB or Facebook page to leave reviews there. They rank higher than Yelp and most people default to these first since they use them everyday already.Set up your Facebook page and other social media accounts. Make sure the graphics and information match your website and branding. Also make sure the social media accounts that you plan on using are linked up on your website. Most website platforms make that pretty easy.Create a listing on Yellow Pages. Not much to this one. The vast majority of people searching will find your website or Facebook page first and use that to contact you, or get your info from the GMB info box.That's the foundation and will get you most of the way there. You should also try to register your website with other relevant directories like the Chamber of Commerce for your local area, or Industry Store Locator directories and GAMA, and any others that make sense.None of these extra directories will drive any significant traffic to your site, but they will help build up your backlink profile, which I'll explain down below.The GoalSEO has three end goals. You want people searching for keywords relevant to your business like “game store near me” and “magic cards/board games/dnd (your city)” to either: call your store, get the info they need to visit your store in person, or go to your website.You get those clicks by ranking highly on those search results. To get those rankings, you need to align with what Google is trying to accomplish.Google is in the business of delivering the information that people are searching for, and that means giving them search results that solve their problem or answer their question.At this point, the algorithm is pretty smart. You used to be able to get some top rankings by jamming a bunch of keywords into your page, but that doesn't fly now.If you want to rank on the first page of the search results, you need to play Google's game. Think about it from the searcher's point of view when you look at your page. Are they going to find what they are looking for?The vast majority of traffic goes to the first three results in Google (75.1%). Less than 1% click results on the second page, so if you're not on the first page for a keyword you might as well not exist.If you want to get organic traffic you need to understand the basics of SEO and have a simple strategy to make it work for you.Real quick though, one common misconception that most people have about SEO is that you rank your website, but that's not the case. Pages rank, not websites.Your website has a Domain Authority score which affects the ranking of individual pages on your site, but we can ignore that for the most part right now.All you need to know is that you want to rank individual pages, and there are two main ways that you can do that. On-page SEO and backlinks.We'll break those down in a sec. The first thing you need to do, now that you've set up all your accounts, is do some keyword research and figure out what search terms you want to rank for.Keyword ResearchTake 30 minutes and do some research on what people in your area are searching for.Open up Excel or Google Sheets and create a spreadsheet to keep track of what you find. You're going to want two columns, one for the keyword and one for the number of monthly searches that keyword gets.One of the easiest ways to get started is to go right into Google and search “game store near me” and see what comes up. Take a look at the top results and see where those keywords appear. Chances are you'll see some of the big name players near the top like Gamestop or BestBuy.These are the businesses that you are going to be competing with, but don't get discouraged. Just because a keyword has a lot of traffic, that doesn't mean it's the keyword that's right for you to target.You have to think about intent. The “game store near me” search query is a good start, but it might be too broad. It's better to rank for more specific keywords that align with what you are offering.So, scroll to the bottom of the search results and you'll see a Related Searches section. You'll see a number of similar searches that people are putting into Google and chances are those are the ones you want to focus on.Copy and paste those results into your spreadsheet, then click on each one and repeat the process.See what pages rank near the top and then scroll down and grab some new Related Searches.Rinse and repeat.You might also see a People Also Ask section in the middle of the results page. Those are great ones to add to your list and keep in mind when writing copy for your website.You can also go from the angle of whatever products you sell. If you specialize in TCG's start searching for "magic cards near me" or "best magic card store" and that sort of thing and add those to your list. Keep up the process until you've got around 100 keywords on your spreadsheet.Next up, use a tool like Google's Keyword Research Tool, SEMRush, or MOZ to get some traffic stats for those keywords.Many of those tools will also give you additional keyword suggestions that you can add as well. Once you've got the traffic filled out, you should sort the sheet by volume and take a look at which keywords are going to give you the most bang for your buck in terms of effort.Ideally, you're looking for a handful of keywords that make sense for your business (ie. you sell those things and want to sell more of them), have a fair bit of traffic (100-1000 per month, 10-100 isn’t bad either ), and not too much competition.You'll probably find that the best ones for your game store are four to five words long."Board games" gets 246,000 searches per month, but it's going to be almost impossible for the average game store to rank on the first page for that term.The average web page that ranks in the top 10 has 51,609 backlinks. That's over 51,000 other websites that link to those pages!Places like Wikipedia and BoardGameGeek are going to take those top spots and there isn't too much you can do about it, but that's okay.Longer search times like "tabletop game store near me" are going to drive better results for your business, since people searching that are showing more purchase intent and are more likely to be local to your store and therefore turn into actual paying customers, which is the whole point of this exercise.So now that you've got some keywords you want to rank for, you can start doing the actual SEO work.On-Page SEOThis is the side of the SEO coin that you directly control. For something like your homepage, you should try to rank for the broadest and...