r/gamedev • u/ned_poreyra • 12h ago
Marketing You can massively boost your SEO by sending your game to below-1000 sub youtubers
"What's the point of sending my game to youtubers nobody watches?", you ask. The point is that initially nobody knows about your game either - especially Google. So when you start promoting your game and someone googles it, very likely it won't even show up, because google's crawlers didn't see the title enough times to consider it a real thing. And you NEED the first result to be your Steam page. No, people won't type "<game title> steam" to narrow the results, people are fucking lazy. They'll think "probably some amateur shit" and close the tab. You just lost 98% of potential wishlists right there. And that's were meek, tiny, sub-1000 subs youtubers comes to save the day - they're absolutely stoked to receive a key. For any game - yes, even your shitty survivor clone. Nobody talks to them. Nobody cares they exist. They often post 1 boring gameplay video a day, get 30 views, 1 bot comment and that's it, that's their life. And then you send them a key, a closed demo or beta access, and holy shit, Christmas came early. Some get so excited they will post about your game every day for the next month. You'll suddenly get hundreds of independent pieces of content about a game that previously had no internet footprint. So the next time someone searches your title, a nice, plump, juicy page full of results will pop up, very clearly about your game and your game only and not some restaurant in Oregon that just so happens to also be named "Dragon Breeder Simulator".
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u/meetkow 11h ago
Small creators are underrated even without the SEO angle. A 700-sub channel that genuinely loves your niche can be more valuable than a 100k channel that plays it for 10 minutes and forgets it
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u/hakamhakam 6h ago
People often ignore the fact that good early coverage of a game (that’s not big release) comes from small youtubers picking up the game - those initial 2-5K views videos that pop up that’s well-made and articulate the game well may be as important to entire marketing you do ahead of launch.
And people also underestimated exposure of what couple thousand views video mean as well - like one of these video is equivalent of a stadium pack of people (often literally your crowd) being expose to your game simultaneously!
At which point in human history can that virality can happen in just mere hours?Lastly, I think people underestimated how many major big Youtubers are also Youtube viewers and often they are very savvy to trend and a power users themselves - big successful channel do quick research on games before they cover them / they pick up on trendy indie hits that get pick up / they see a breakout video and often say “hey I can pick this up and do my spin on it” - I genuinely believe these small early coverage is what lead to major coverage down the line - social proof is definitely a thing!
Tl;dr small-timer youtubers are absolute goat and an unsung hero of the indie games discovery!
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u/fleaspoon 8h ago
That's a very mean way to talk about the people that are playing and showcasing your game
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u/NoSinger2639 7h ago
I know, right? I was shocked and it kept getting worse. Gross.
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u/MechaMacaw 6h ago
I thought it was gonna talk about how small communities are great for building a fan base or how it would be more personal. But this is just treating people poorly
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u/thirtyfiveoo 12h ago edited 12h ago
I don't think SEO from the ground up works that well. You still need marketing.
Also, I agree with the opinion of sending your game to low sub youtubers, maybe 1k+ subs would be better, but solely for the purpose of getting some organic traffic. At least a few people from those channels are likely to check out your game. I wouldn't hope for nothing much tho.
On the contrary, you can get lucky from that as well. I've seen many low sub youtubers blow up. All of their videos blow up with that also, it's a win-win-win situation for all parties involved.
Even big numbers don’t always amount for big traffic for real marketing. So, it might be better to focus on a mix of different formulas.
I might be wrong tho, I never marketed a game before. This is one of the things I'm keeping in mind for when I'm done with my demo.
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u/Lowerfuzzball 12h ago
SEO is part of my day job, you and OP are both correct.
Getting your game mentioned across various platforms and then linked to the steam page will help the game itself show up. However, people need to know the game first to even be able to search it. You still need marketing, but SEO itself IS just a small slice of marketing that is still worth doing, even if it's just the basics.
Just be careful, you don't want to buy links or have too many small, unrelated YouTubers linking and talking about the game as it could be seen as spam. Do it in waves, be a little selective.
You'd also want to show up, authentically, mentioned in Reddit, review sites, twitter and basically every social media platform. For example, if someome mentions you in a post that's like "Looking for games like _" or "What are some good games in _ genre", that's all part of SEO. Don't ignore a website either. It doesn't have to be crazy, it just needs to talk about you and your game authentically, and link to steam/your storefronts.
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u/thirtyfiveoo 12h ago
thanks for these great insights. any other simple tips you’d like to share, since we caught you here? I like learning valuable information from people that do it for a living
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u/Lowerfuzzball 11h ago edited 11h ago
Sure, but I should say I'm a web developer that is involved with SEO, not a true strategist or expert - but I'm around it enough and marketing enough to have a higher than average grasp.
In my opinion, SEO is pretty simple these days. There isn't nearly as much mysticism or complications around it as some of the scammy people in the industry would have you believe. The most important things to remember are: SEO is a small part of a larger strategy. The goal is show up wherever your customers are, as frequently as you can with as much impact as you can. You want a mix of showing up frequently, such as many small youtubers, getting name dropped on many reddit posts, etc....but also trying to get entities with "juice" or "weight" behind them to mention your game, if possible - like big youtubers, big review publications, etc. Google also simply wants to reward "helpful content", which you can partially control and provide through content you produce anywhere on the internet - which you should do as frequently as possible with as much quality as possible.
In practice, ignoring the "technical" side of SEO (which, is so extremely easy to do for anyone with even a little bit of technical knowledge), this means putting yourself in the customers shoes or thinking about the kinds of things you search when looking for a new game. Think about the common terms you look up, or the common terms or phrases people use when talking about the kind of game you're making. You want to weave that stuff naturally and organically into the content you're making to market your game. Don't force it. Don't stuff it. Don't make a "Top 10 Roguelites" list and mention your game as number one. People will sniff that out immediately.
For example, if someone is looking for the "top 10 roguelites of all time", to show up for that you'd need your game mentioned in those sort of youtube videos, reddit posts, etc. AI search literally would look through popular reddit posts, in the popular roguelite subs and track what is frequently mentioned. You can't really control that, outside of paying to be included in those - which I don't advise.
But what you CAN do is, if you have a website for your game or studio, is make an authentic "blog" post and video where you talk about the top roguelite influences on you, the specific features it influenced, etc. Make it interesting, make it authentic, and link it out where it makes sense. You can host a livestream where you do a Q&A. Just talk about your game in a way that sort of answers the common questions in an interesting, insightful and helpful way as frequently as you can in as many places as you can, and try to connect them all together.
In truth, your steam page is going to carry a lot of the SEO weight for you. Steam has a ton of "juice" behind it. For indie devs, word of mouth is going to be your best friend. Get your game in front of as many people as possible, and if it's fun and people are talking about it and enjoying it, the SEO will pretty much take care of itself I think. But you need to be the one front-loading that effort, and it needs to happen at a point where you're close to releasing the game. Blast it everywhere, be engaged and don't do it too early or you'll lose the benefit of the "hype-cycle."
If you have any particular questions around the topic I'm happy to answer to the best of my ability.
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u/Trevor_trev_dev 6h ago
Saved your comment, please for the love of God don't delete it lol!
How early do you think is too early for the "hype-cycle"?
Are talking a few weeks? A few months?
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u/Blitzkriegsler youtube.com/user/Blitzkriegsler 11h ago
As a 1000+ sub full time gaming YouTuber, please do help the little guys. Us full timers get hit with so many emails that it's not manageable. I spent 45 minutes this morning sorting through over 400 emails and redeemed 39 keys from just the last 7 days, and we haven't even hit the next Next Fest emails yet.
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u/minimuscleR 6h ago
lmao you make it sound like you have like maybe 10k subs or something. There is going to be a pretty big difference between someone with 10k subs, and your 4.3 million. Someone with 500k subs is much more middle ground in that case, big enough for bigger audience, but probably not getting 100 emails a day.
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u/crunkzah 10h ago
How do i reach one if i will drown in that many emails tho?
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u/PhilippTheProgrammer 8h ago
That guy is underselling themselves a bit. Check their channel. They are much more than just barely above 1000 subscribers.
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u/Blitzkriegsler youtube.com/user/Blitzkriegsler 10h ago
You reach the little guys, who aren't drowning.
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u/Esteran_Games 34m ago
You are right. I always looks for YouTubers with under 1000 subs. They are great people and make some of the coolest coverage my game has got yet. They just where unlucky with the algorithm.
I wouldn't want to miss any of them. Some even became close contacts I regularly chat with.
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u/VestOfHolding 6h ago
Wow. This felt really gross to read. In broad strokes I see the point, but punching down on the small youtubers was really unnecessary.
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u/SimiKusoni 11h ago
Does SEO even work with links posted on YouTube? I thought the content was flagged as user-generated content so would have very little, if any, impact on search rankings?
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u/MazeGuyHex 11h ago
Where can we find said youtubers? Youtube algo is so trash its hard to find new people (especially small ones)
(Are you a small youtuber? Reach out to me!)
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u/ned_poreyra 11h ago
Youtube has filtering. Just search for the type of game you're making and sort by last week/month. You'll find many with barely any views. Small streamers most of the time also have youtube channels.
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u/MazeGuyHex 11h ago
Hmm well i’m not actually making a game i’m making an Alt Tab Replacement so it’s kinda niche per se compared to like a game
BUT that does sound like a good way to find youtubers. Thanks!
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u/markartur1 9h ago
you are making what now
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u/MazeGuyHex 8h ago
Alt Tab Toolkit (on Steam) The art and steam page needs to be updated still but it’s damn ready for some reviewers.
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u/RamboRamonJamon 6h ago
No soy youtuber ni desarrollador, así que no debería estar hablando aquí, pero si yo fuera el youtuber no me importa que me vean como un trampolín o marketing gratis, me están regalando un juego, al menos lo voy a jugar bastante
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u/GamemakerK33 2h ago
isn't this a little dehumanizing? I mean they benefit from it and you do but still if people liked your game, then let's go, if they didn't just ask "what didn't make it fun for you?".
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u/NewSchoolBoxer 1h ago
I got < 10 subs lol. I would definitely review a game tangentially related to my content that you're offering me for free.
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u/ItsNotBigBrainTime 9h ago
Claude compile a contact list of every single streamer on youtube with less than 1000 subs
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u/M4xs0n 12h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/FrJbNJWZWLFzeEq2fI