Case Study — SEO & ASO
Organic traffic +50% year over year, app installs +35% — and a 1M+ pre-registration launch.
Year-over-year organic performance
Organic traffic
+50%
Year over year
App store visits
+100%
Year over year
App installs
+35%
Year over year
Two years owning SEO and ASO for a mobile games publisher: landing pages, blog growth and organic launch plans that drove millions of monthly organic sessions and hundreds of thousands of organic installs — capped by the Toy Story Drop! pre-registration campaign.
Milestone Timeline
- 100
Prior-year baseline (indexed)
Feb 2017
- 1 migration
https + CMS migration, sitemaps, canonical tagging
Foundation phase
- 3 launches
Cooking Craze, Decurse, Toy Story Drop!
Launch playbook
- 1M+
Toy Story Drop! pre-registration installs
Through Apr 2019
Year-over-year growth by channel (indexed, prior year = 100)
Index vs prior yearThis was a two-year run owning SEO and ASO for a mobile games publisher — landing pages, blog growth and organic game-launch strategies, all pointed at the same thing: organic app installs. Across that stretch the work drove millions of monthly organic sessions and hundreds of thousands of organic installs, which fed millions in in-game purchases through the website and the app stores.
The first phase was unglamorous: migrating the whole site to https, cleaning up sitemaps, auditing and implementing a CMS migration, and wiring the game forums and Zendesk into the site with proper canonical tagging so support content stopped competing with marketing pages.
With the foundation in place, each title got a digital launch plan — Cooking Craze, Decurse, then Toy Story Drop! — and the plans got sharper each time. Toy Story Drop! is the clearest version: publish and index the pre-registration page ahead of the store submission, route Android visitors straight into Google Play pre-registration, collect emails everywhere else with sneak-peek content and free in-game unlocks, and lean on Disney fan sites for pre-launch awareness.
By launch the page was ranking on the first page for "Toy Story Game" and its related terms, and the campaign had brought in over a million pre-registration installs.
Program performance
Year-over-year outcomes across web and the app stores, Feb 2017 – Apr 2019
+50%
Organic traffic
Year over year
+100%
App store visits
Year over year
+35%
App installs
Year over year
1M+
Pre-registration installs
Toy Story Drop!
Launch spotlight — Toy Story Drop!
Pre-registration campaign built on branded search demand and fan-community awareness
The pre-registration landing page was published early so Google could index it before the game was submitted for store pre-registration. Device recognition sent Android visitors straight into Google Play pre-registration, while iOS, Amazon and desktop visitors handed over an email in exchange for drip sneak-peek content — and anyone who pre-registered unlocked free in-game items. Partnerships with Disney fan sites carried the awareness pre-launch, and the branded search volume around Toy Story did the rest. By launch, the landing page, content campaigns and backlink work had Big Fish ranking on page one for "Toy Story Game" and related terms, hitting both the awareness and conversion goals.
1M+
Pre-registration installs
Page 1
Ranking for "Toy Story Game"
At launch
2
Sign-up paths by device
Store pre-reg or email drip
Category Breakout
Channel breakout
Indexed against the prior year at 100, so each channel's year-over-year gain reads side by side
Organic site traffic
Before100After150App store visits
Before100After200Organic app installs
Before100After135
Branded query capture
The Toy Story term family the pre-registration page was built to absorb — unranked before the campaign, page one at launch.
- toy story gameUnranked#1.0
- toy story dropUnranked#1.0
- toy story mobile gameUnranked#3.0
- toy story game pre registerUnranked#2.0
- new toy story game 2019Unranked#4.0
Execution Roadmap
- 01
Technical foundation
Clean the site up so everything published afterwards could actually rank.
- Full website migration to https
- Sitemap optimizations
- CMS migration audits and implementation
- Game forums / Zendesk API integration with canonical tagging
- 02
Brand experience content
Copywriting and editing for the pages that carry each title's search demand.
- Brand experience pages per title
- Blog growth as an organic traffic engine
- Editing across marketing pages
- Big Fish Scholarship program content
- 03
Launch playbook
A repeatable organic launch plan, proven across three titles.
- Cooking Craze digital launch plan
- Decurse digital launch plan
- Toy Story Drop! digital launch plan
- Pre-registration landing pages with device-aware flows
- 04
ASO and store conversion
Carry the same discipline into the app stores where the install happens.
- App Store creative A/B testing
- Store listing copy and keyword sets
- Web-to-store routing by device
- Install and in-app purchase tracking
Growth Drivers
Device-aware pre-registration pages
One landing page, two outcomes: Android traffic into Google Play pre-registration, everyone else into an email drip with unlockable in-game items.
Branded search volume
Rather than building demand from scratch, the campaign captured the search volume already sitting behind Toy Story branded terms.
Fan-community partnerships
Disney fan sites carried the pre-launch awareness and the links that got the landing page ranking before the store listing existed.
App store creative testing
A/B testing on store creative kept lifting the conversion rate on the traffic SEO and ASO were sending in.
Key Insights
- Organic site traffic grew 50% year over year across the program.
- App store visits doubled year over year, and organic installs rose 35%.
- The Toy Story Drop! pre-registration campaign passed 1,000,000 installs.
- Publishing and indexing the landing page early meant page-one rankings for "Toy Story Game" were in place by launch day.