A while back there was a strategy presented about developing games or widgets and then using them for link bait. Is this still a viable strategy to improve ranking?

[larahill]

We are developing a game (might be an app or a widget or both) and are looking for the latest advice about how to leverage it for seo benefit. Can anyone share their recent experience with this? I know it was a strategy used in the past, but what considerations should we be looking at (technically and strategically) as we begin developing. Thanks in advance for any advice.

[larahill]

We are trying to use the game to indirectly promote products, not to get traffic to the game itself. We would like to increase our brand awareness and generate any of the signals that Google would smile upon.

[Carson-Ward]

To be clear, are you trying to get organic traffic to promote the game itself, or are you trying to use the game to promote a product/service? If you're thinking about the game itself, I'd worry more about making a game people like and getting good reviews to it in the app stores - SEO is among the last things I'd consider to help a game succeed.

If you're trying to use the game to promote something else there are some things you can do. Without more details (your industry, the target market, etc.), though, I'm limited to general advice. Put it on your site; make it easy to share the game on other sites and the results on social media; try to tie it in more closely with your offerings; give people a reason to link to your site naturally, e.g. scoreboards or additional features.

Happy to provide more thoughts with a little more info

[larahill]

Thank you for your insight. The idea of this would to house the "game" or "informational app" on our site and have other sites that might partner with us to link to the game also.

[GlobeRunner]

Lara, this has been an issue that has been debated recently, and it's kind of a grey area. If you're going to build the app or widget in a way to take advantage of its SEO value, then that's really not a good plan. It's logical that you include a link back to your site since you're developer of the widget or app, so that's fine. But if you really just want to include a keyword rich anchor text link to your site then I would take a different approach.

Your best bet is to consider the traffic that the widget or app will bring your site, and the notoriety your company will get by providing a widget or app. If you include a link, then it should be a branded link and not a keyword rich anchor text link.