Neverworks Gaming Blog

Sure, web developers are hip to the SEO game when it comes to optimizing for Google. But have you considered optimizing your SEO for reddit? Well maybe you should! When redditors look for new reddits to subscribe to, they will pull up the subreddit search bar and plug in some keywords. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s very important to pay attention to the results of these searches. This is a great way to catch the attention bored redditors. But how? Here’s my advice: make sure your subreddit has a fantastic description that covers all of the relevant bases for your content. For example my browser game, Nevergrind, is related to quite a lot of topics: indie games, web development, greensock, easeljs, free games, everquest, diablo 2, phantasy star, and RPGs. It’s very important to mention any relevant topic!

For example here is the description I am using for Nevergrind:

Alright! Cool. It’s a good idea to include links, too. As you can see I link to my website and some of the libraries that I use. You could probably try to optimize this further by linking to sites that are likely to refer traffic back to your site as well.

Initially I had a very simple description such as “Nevergrind is an indie browser game”. It had no links or anything. No good! When people are searching for fun new sub-reddits they need a good description to get a snapshot assessment of your site/game or whatever you’re hocking. Plus when all of those juicy, relevant keywords are in there, reddit is more likely to list you in the sub-reddit search results.

Here are a few examples of how my sub-reddit ranks in search results for different terms just moments after editing my description. This search was performed without being logged in to an account:

• #1: html5 game
• #7: html5
• #5: browser game
• #3: everquest
• #8: indie game
• #1: indie rpg
• #1: Diablo 2 (I don’t know how)
• #2: Phantasy Star
• #11: World of Warcraft (!)
• #25: RPG (last result on the first page)
• #5: javascript
• #17: animation
• #2: canvas

To some extent I am left to wonder how I am ranking so high in all of these searches. All I did was sprinkle in as many relevant terms as I could think of. Maybe there’s more to this special sauce than I even realize? In any case, I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. These search results look great to me. Give it a shot and let me know how it works for you! In the months ahead I will monitor the progress of the /r/nevergrind subreddit and see how the new description drives traffic to reddit and to Nevergrind itself.

If Nevergrind can maintain the recent wave of traffic since March 22nd, this website is on track to hit one million pageviews in a year. That’s a big if, but I think it’s within reach:

Nevergrind has been riding high on a wave of zero-dollar marketing efforts for the recent Kickstarter campaign. The marketing efforts have primarily targeted forums with high degrees of relevance to either indie games, RPGs, browser games, classic EverQuest, Diablo 2, or even in random places based on a gut feeling.

Courting this wide variety of communities was tough at times, as I was often accused of being a spammer. In some eyes that may be the case, but for many others I was greeted with joyous exultation, thanking me for introducing the game to them because it was “exactly what they were looking for”. So it’s a tough gauntlet to negotiate. On one hand people will hate you for sharing a free game in a somewhat relevant forum that you worked on for 31 months. On the other hand you will get through to a percentage of people, all while risking being banned or flamed with impunity.

The only battle damage that I actually took was probably from reddit, which got me shadow banned from at least one sub-reddit (/r/games). None of my comments show up there anymore. For now I just stick to /r/nevergrind, but I’m sure I’ll make a second pass through before the Kickstarter ends. I’ll engage my shields and fly as low as possible. If you want some advice, just completely avoid the large sub-reddits and have someone else post on your behalf. Post in the small, lightly policed sub-reddits and you’ll hardly ever take any flak for self-promotion.

Reddit’s policy is to “be a redditor with a project”, not a “project with a reddit account”. I guess that’s easy for them to say, but I don’t have time to sit on reddit all day posting about cats and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I’m too busy raising three kids and developing Nevergrind! In any case, reddit is definitely worth the hassle. Reddit has been my #1 referral driver by far ever since I waged my assault throughout their inner sanctum. Just be careful in the bigger sub-reddits and don’t get banhammered.

Banking while in Dire Maul? Sure, why not?

Here’s the first look at how the Kickstarter Merchant reward works! Just imagine how much time this account feature will save you! I should add that I have no plans to add this feature at a later time. This is for my $30+ tier backers only!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nevergrind/nevergrind-html5-action-rpg/posts/1191200