Make Games SEO Audit

edited in General
Following our talk on wed about SEO by @dammit, and seeing @dislekcia ranting about the poor discoverability of Make Games, I decided to test out if I could find Make Games in the same way I found this community back in it's SA Game Dev Days.

Google > Game Development South Africa

The only mention of make games is a forum thread on page 2. SA game dev is still right up there at number 2 result. I realise it has a ton of back links still and it's got a prime url, but I feel like it's a dead site, no ways we shouldn't be able to out rank it. I mean for ffs this page is ranked first: zagames dot net/SaGameCompanies.aspx

Next I tried googling "Make Game South Africa"

And I got the facebook page. Again no link to make games sa, only the third result pointing to a forum thread. Which I find a little weird.

So whilst I don't really want to be responsible for volunteering someone else's time unless they are up for it, I suggest we give @dammit the keys to the ranch and give MakeGames a bit of an SEO overhaul! :)

tl;dr can't find make games from google

Comments

  • I would love that! I have no idea how to make our SEO better
  • Wow sagamedev.com is a huge black hole. I think we really need to look at trying to get that url again? Or at least get makegamessa represented on that page?

    We should put in the URL makegamessa.com into the description on the facebook page. And probably give it a cover photo with the URL in. I'll supply that later. But it's not the biggest fix.

    The biggest fix to SEO is to have, yeah, linkbacks, as far as I know. Heck knows we have enough activity and content - so I guess it's really down to real SEO tweaks with the site, which forms part of the design, but we could definitely get it started with background changes.

    Good initiative! Love it!
  • SAgamedev has almost no linkbacks anywhere. It's a stub that just links to one guy's projects. I assume that it's got correct meta-information or something...

    We were promised that URL earlier this year, then apparently Korax took it back and made it a shrine to himself again. I am not a fan.
  • I would love to help out here :) I've already been in touch with the social media team for makegames to help out on that side too.
    Thanked by 1hanli
  • edited
    Great, @Fengol if you could help @dammit with whatever credentials she might need. I tried in my very limited capacity to figure out what the problem might be but failed. I have to feel like make games is being penalized for something silly, seeing as there is WAY more content here than at the other sites. Wonder if the spam posts maybe have something to do with it?
  • :) I'll see what I can uncover. This will be my first time working with a forum, so it may take a little experimentation and research...the latter of which I'm going to go look into now.
  • @dammit PM me with what you need


  • The only mention of make games is a forum thread on page 2.

    ...

    Next I tried googling "Make Game South Africa"

    And I got the facebook page. Again no link to make games sa, only the third result pointing to a forum thread. Which I find a little weird.

    Do you happen to remember which thread you where getting on the results page? I'd like to compare your results with a incognito search :)
  • http://makegamessa.com/discussion/10/south-african-game-developers-association/p1

    Though this time I do see a direct listing for make games down on the first page of of results. That's different and an improvement at least :)
  • Cool, it makes sense that that page would come up given the content :) Hopefully I can get the home page to a similar density of keyphrases.
  • So, while it's still a work-in-progress (everyone, stay calm! the home page will change), @LexAquillia has pointed out that we're now ranking where we should :D

    image
  • Great Success! Well done!
  • That is awesome!
  • Our SEO is working better and better! Thanks @dammit!

    image
  • :)

    I would love to try some cool search ads when we have the funds to see how those work for us (and so that we can replace the ad for vibrators on a search for game jams :P )
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