Helping a gaming server replace paid search with organic SEO

Valheim Server Hosting (VSH) is a new hosting platform for the popular Viking-themed survival game that decided to try out our services after seeing the results we’ve provided for MentorCruise.

In less than five months, we’ve helped Valheim Server Hosting appear on the first page of Google Search for very lucrative queries, shifting their focus from paid search to a cost-effective organic strategy.

In this case study, you’ll learn how we’ve helped Valheim Server Hosting:

• Start their SEO strategy from scratch to getting thousands of monthly search visits.
• Compete with large incubents in a crowded market.
• Replace their paid search initiatives with a more sustainable organic search strategy.

The Problem - Zero organic search presence.

Before VSH reached out to us, the platform primarily relied on paid search to get new clients. While these were initially successful, there was a fixed cost behind each new client acquired, which increased as the ads became less effective over time. 

The business realized that ranking organically for their most lucrative keywords was the smarter long-term approach, allowing them to attract clients without continuously spending on paid ads.

As Xyrenne Khaice Eustaquio, the gaming server’s marketing director, says, “We had so many competitors who were ahead of us. Valheim is a very popular game, and big companies like G-Portal and Shockbyte are offering the same service. We wanted to invest in our SEO for a long-term customer acquisition strategy as we heavily relied on paid ads.” 

After searching for SEO marketing agencies to help the business move forward, VSH’s founder, Xavier Alabanza,  stumbled across our case study with MentorCruise, a mentorship platform that we’ve helped reach two million search visits in under two years. Xavier was also a client at MentorCruise and was impressed with the content we had made for the platform, so Valheim Server Hosting decided to use our services. A few months in, Xyrenne found that we were “very hands-on and transparent” as an SEO marketing partner.

We recommended a budget-friendly SEO content strategy focused on creating high-quality, helpful content related to Valheim servers. This approach aimed to start ranking for relevant queries by building the platform’s topical authority, with the ultimate goal of overtaking large incumbents on Google Search while working within a relatively tight budget.

The Solution - Becoming a topical authority in the niche.

The tight budget didn’t keep us from helping the platform rank quickly for related queries. As we do for many cash-strapped startups just venturing into SEO, we decided to employ a topical authority building strategy, which consists of:

• Prioritizing relevant low-competition, high-volume queries on one core topic. 
• Building a monthly content calendar targeting these queries.
• Creating an internal linking structure that helped Google identify related pages.
• Ensuring our articles outcompete the others in terms of content quality. 
  

As Xyrenne says, “the process is straightforward as they always provide the best topics for our SEO articles.”

By building topical authority, our goal was for Google to identify Valheim Server Hosting as an expert in their niche and rank their pages faster for relevant queries. Within five months, the platform’s SEO strategy had successfully reduced reliance on paid search while gaining strong organic visibility.

The Results - Gaining relevant search traffic and outperforming paid campaigns

Satisfied with the results we’ve provided, Xyrenne mentions, “Embarque’s expertise in SEO has been crucial in the growth of our product. Our website is now ranking on the first page of Google search for relevant queries, and our organic traffic has significantly surpassed what we were achieving through paid ads.”

In less than five months, we have helped Valheim Server Hosting:

• Overtake CPC campaigns with our organically-ranking pages.
• Scale their search traffic from zero to thousands of monthly search visits.
• Substantially increase their traffic from highly-lucrative US-based gamers.

Takeaways:

• Topical authority can help a website rank quickly. Valheim Server Hosting only had the budget for blog posts, but we still managed to rank for lucrative queries against large incumbents through an effective SEO content strategy based on building topical authority. Today, Valheim Server Hosting is ranking even faster for relevant queries.
• High-quality content can outrank large competitors. We executed a content-first SEO strategy with almost zero backlinks by building our topical authority. Today, we’re outranking companies like G2 by having very high-quality content.‍
• SEO is a sustainable alternative to paid search. Organic SEO is a long-term strategy that allows you to reach people actively searching for your services. While paid search can provide immediate results, there is always a fixed cost attached, whereas a strong SEO strategy compounds over time.

Scale your SEO content marketing strategy with Embarque.

Today, Valheim Server Hosting is still one of our loyal clients, and it is safe to say that we’re only at the beginning of scaling the platform’s SEO growth. Interested in our services? Feel free to email our founder today: julian@embarque.io.