When this card game brand first reached out, they weren’t starting from scratch.
The founder already had a decent grasp of SEO. The site was clean. Pages were structured fairly well. And there were no major technical issues holding them back.
But even with that solid foundation, they were hitting a wall.
Competitors with worse websites and less authority were outranking them for the exact keywords they wanted to own — like pokemon cards, japanese pokemon cards, and pokemon trainer cards.
In March of 2023, they brought us in to push things over the edge — to turn a decent organic presence into a dominant one.
By March of 2024, we had increased their monthly organic traffic by 194% and nearly tripled their organic revenue.
Here’s what we did to make that happen.
1. Technical SEO
Because the site was already fairly well-optimized from a technical perspective, we didn’t need to do much.
But there was one major improvement we made that paid dividends quickly: we reorganized the main navigation menu.
A number of high-priority product category pages weren’t included in the top-level nav, which meant they were buried deep within the site architecture.
By adding them to the main menu, we gave them a major authority boost. Google treats pages in the primary navigation as more important — and they tend to rank higher as a result.
2. Keyword Research
Our next step was to identify the best keyword targets for the site’s product category pages.
We began by plugging each category URL into Ahrefs to look for “low-hanging fruit” — keywords the pages were already ranking for on pages 2 or 3 of Google.
If the search intent was a match and the volume was strong, we locked those in as targets.
In cases where we didn’t find promising opportunities, we reverse-engineered competitors instead.
For example, for the Japanese Pokémon Cards category, we searched that term in Google, found a competitor ranking well, and plugged their category page into Ahrefs.
This showed us the exact keywords they ranked for, which helped us refine our own targets.
We also noticed something interesting: the homepage was hovering just outside of page one for the term pokemon cards.
That’s a massive keyword, and because we were already close, we made the strategic decision to optimize the homepage around it rather than a product category page.
3. On-Page SEO
With our target keywords selected, we turned our attention to optimizing the product category pages.
We added each primary keyword to the page’s meta title, meta description, H1 tag, and URL slug.
Then we expanded the on-page content. Below each product grid, we wrote 500 to 1,000 words of keyword-optimized copy that explained the product line, addressed common questions, and helped users understand why they should buy from this brand over others.
We also linked internally to other related product categories, strengthening the internal structure and helping distribute authority across the site.
4. Content Creation
We knew that to fully establish topical authority and bring in top-of-funnel traffic, we needed to support the site with strategic blog content.
We focused our content strategy around question-based queries, “vs” comparisons, and “best” keywords related to Pokémon cards.
Topics included things like:
- best pokemon card sleeves
- how to tell if japanese pokemon cards are fake
- magic the gathering vs pokemon
Every blog post was written to be the most comprehensive answer to the searcher’s question, with content ranging from 1,000 to 2,000+ words depending on the complexity of the topic.
Each post also included internal links pointing to the most relevant product category pages, as well as cross-links to other blog content.
We published three new articles each month — steadily building topical depth and supporting our core transactional pages in the process.
5. Link Building
In a competitive niche like trading cards, backlinks are essential.
We launched a targeted outreach campaign to secure high-quality links from relevant websites — including blogs and communities in the trading card, collectibles, gaming, and hobbyist spaces.
We prioritized websites with a domain authority (DA) or domain rating (DR) of 30+, at least 1,000 monthly organic visitors, and steady or growing traffic.
Each month, we built seven new backlinks: four pointing directly to the product category pages we wanted to rank, and three pointing to the blog content we had published.
Because our blog content was tightly integrated with internal links, the authority from those backlinks flowed naturally into the rest of the site — helping power up the pages that mattered most.
The Results
After 12 months of execution, the campaign delivered:
A 194% increase in organic traffic, growing from 17,809 to 52,455 monthly clicks.
A 199% increase in monthly organic revenue, jumping from $15,778.95 to $47,312.63.
And first-page keyword rankings for high-converting search terms like pokemon cards, pokemon cards canada, sell pokemon cards, and pokemon trainer cards
With a solid technical base, smart keyword targeting, consistent content creation, and a steady flow of backlinks, this card game brand went from “decent visibility” to a dominant player in the space.
They’re now ranking for some of the most competitive terms in the industry — and they did it without any shortcuts, hacks, or gimmicks.
Just smart SEO, executed consistently.