Why is gaming link building different?
Gaming link building means earning links for video games and the businesses around them: studios and publishers, hardware and accessory brands, esports organizations and the tools players use. It’s not gambling. If you run a casino or sportsbook, the publishers and rules are different, and casino and iGaming link building is the page you want.
Gaming media is huge, but it’s thin in the middle. At the top sit a handful of big outlets that cover the biggest releases and rarely link out for anything else. At the bottom sits a long tail of fan sites and hobby blogs, many of them updated once in a while and gone within a year. The useful links mostly come from the middle: niche review sites, genre blogs, esports and hardware sites with a steady audience. Finding them takes manual research, because no list stays current for long.
Editors in this niche are players first. A pitch that reads like marketing gets ignored, while a pitch built around something a player cares about, like a mechanic, a demo, a developer story or a spec that actually matters, gets read. Coverage also runs in cycles around announcements, demos, launches and updates, so the calendar shapes what a gaming site will publish and when.
Then there are the fakes. Plenty of “gaming” guest post sites are link farms with a gaming theme: generic articles, a price list on the “write for us” page and traffic that doesn’t match any real rankings. They look fine in a spreadsheet and do nothing for a real game.
Where gaming backlinks come from
These are the placement types that work best for game and gaming brand campaigns:
- Game review and indie game blogs. Coverage of your game, a preview of a demo or a feature on your studio, with a link to your site or press kit.
- “Games like X” lists and genre roundups. Discovery articles rank for the searches players actually make, and they’re among the pages AI assistants cite when someone asks for recommendations. One inclusion can help with both, which is the idea behind generative engine optimization.
- Hardware and peripheral reviewers. For hardware and accessory brands: “best gaming mouse” style roundups, setup guides and reviews where your product earns its place on merit.
- Esports and community sites. News, team and tournament coverage for esports organizations, tournament platforms, coaching services and competitive tools.
- Guest articles on niche gaming blogs. A genuinely useful piece, such as a design breakdown, a beginner’s guide to a genre or a hardware explainer, linking to a relevant page on your site. See guest posting.
- Niche edits in articles that already rank. Existing guides and roundups that rank for queries close to your game or product, where a link adds something for the reader. See niche edits.
- Unlinked mentions. Games are often named in coverage that links only to a store page, or to nothing at all. A short, polite email to the editor turns some of those mentions into links to your own site.
Wikis and walkthrough sites also cite tools, mods and resources, but many of them mark every external link nofollow. That’s shown on the opportunity before you approve it, like the attribute of every other placement.
Who gaming link building suits
The same manual process works across the gaming industry, but the targets and angles change with the business:
- Indie studios and publishers building authority for a studio site and each game’s landing page, ahead of and after launch.
- Hardware and accessory brands that need links to category and product pages from reviewers and roundups. The store side of this works much like ecommerce link building.
- Game-adjacent software and services, such as server hosting, mod tools, overlays and coaching platforms, where guides and resource links are the natural fit.
- Esports organizations and tournament platforms that want coverage and links beyond their own social channels.
- Gaming media and affiliate sites that need links themselves, from relevant sites rather than from the networks that sell to everyone.
Review keys, press kits and Google’s rules
Review copies are a normal part of games coverage: an editor can’t review a game they can’t play, and most will ask for a key before writing anything substantial. That’s fine, as long as the key buys a chance at coverage, not a link. Google’s guidelines list sending a free product in exchange for a link as a link scheme, so a key handed over on the condition of a link is treated like a paid link.
So I pitch the story and offer keys for coverage, never a key for a link. If a publisher makes a link a condition of a key, I tell you before anything happens, and it’s treated like any paid placement: the fee, the key and the link attribute are on the row before you decide.
A proper press kit makes all of this easier. A page on your own site with a fact sheet, screenshots, the trailer, logos and a contact address saves editors time and gives them a natural page to link to. If you don’t have one yet, it’s one of the first things I’ll suggest.
Where should gaming links point?
Store pages on Steam, console stores and app stores are where players buy, and editors often link there by default. But a link to a store page builds the store’s authority, not your domain’s. The pages that should collect your links are on your own site:
- Game landing pages, one per title, with the trailer, key features and links on to every store.
- The press kit, which editors link to naturally when they cover a game.
- Category and product pages for hardware brands and stores.
- Guides and devlogs, which are easy to earn links for and pass authority on through internal links.
In outreach I ask for a link to your site. A store link alongside it is fine, because it helps the player who wants to buy right away. You approve the target URL on every opportunity before it goes live.
Timing outreach around launches and updates
Games coverage follows the release calendar. Editors plan around announcements, demo events such as Steam Next Fest, launch weeks, major updates and seasonal sales, and they plan early. A pitch for launch coverage that arrives in launch week is usually too late, so outreach for a release starts well before it.
At kickoff I map your calendar and work backward from each date. Between those beats, evergreen angles keep links coming: genre roundups, beginner guides, developer stories and hardware explainers don’t depend on a release window.
How I vet gaming publishers
Gaming sites need a slightly different eye than most niches, because traffic can spike and vanish with a single viral post. Before a site reaches your sheet, I check:
- Traffic trend over the year, not one month. A spike from a single viral guide says little about the audience that will see your link.
- Publishing activity. Many fan sites go quiet without anyone noticing. A site that stopped posting months ago is unlikely to publish your story or keep a link visible.
- Real readers. Comments, community activity and a following that actually engages are good signs that people read the site.
- Outbound links. Sponsored posts about casinos, loans and supplements on a “gaming” site are the classic sign of a link farm.
- Platform and genre fit. A mobile puzzle game doesn’t belong on a site about PC strategy games, however good its metrics look.
- Audience geography and language, so links come from the markets you sell in.
Sites that fail never reach your sheet. My link prospecting checklist explains each check in detail.
What I need from you
Gaming outreach works best when I understand the game or product, not just the URLs. At kickoff I ask for:
- Your titles or products and the pages you want to build authority for.
- A press kit or product details: fact sheet, screenshots, trailer, specs and anything editors usually ask about.
- Your key or sample policy: whether you offer review copies or samples, on which platforms and how many.
- Release and update dates, so pitches reach editors while they’re still planning coverage.
- Markets and languages you sell in.
- Brand guidelines and the claims you can and can’t make about the game or product.
From there, the campaign runs like the rest of my outreach link building work: vetted prospects, personal pitches and a shared sheet, updated weekly, where you approve every placement and pay publishers directly. The full sequence is on the process page.
I’ve been doing outreach since 2020, and gaming is one of the niches I’ve worked in. If your site has a problem that links won’t fix, such as a game page with no text for search engines to read, I’ll point it out before the campaign starts. Agencies with gaming clients can offer this as their own service through white label link building.