---
title: "Big Fish Games Case Study — Rambling Media"
url: https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/big-fish-games
description: "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."
lang: en
---

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

1. 100
   Prior-year baseline (indexed)
   Feb 2017
2. 1 migration
   https + CMS migration, sitemaps, canonical tagging
   Foundation phase
3. 3 launches
   Cooking Craze, Decurse, Toy Story Drop!
   Launch playbook
4. 1M+
   Toy Story Drop! pre-registration installs
   Through Apr 2019

### Year-over-year growth by channel (indexed, prior year = 100)

Index vs prior year

This 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

Work with us

## The same playbook, as a service

Launch demand does not appear on its own. Creative that earns the click and partners who already have the audience are the two levers we pulled here, and both are available on their own.

Ad Creation: https://ramblingmedia.com/services/ad-creation

Influencer Partnership: https://ramblingmedia.com/services/influencer-partnership

## 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
  Before
  100
  After
  150
- App store visits
  Before
  100
  After
  200
- Organic app installs
  Before
  100
  After
  135

### 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 game Unranked #1.0
- toy story drop Unranked #1.0
- toy story mobile game Unranked #3.0
- toy story game pre register Unranked #2.0
- new toy story game 2019 Unranked #4.0

## Execution Roadmap

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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.

## More Case Studies

Programmatic SEO

### Career Vault

From 10K to 220K monthly organic traffic in eight months.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/career-vault

Search Growth

### Cruise Parking

From a standing start to 31.5K clicks and 2.04M impressions.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/cruise-parking

Programmatic SEO

### WAY

Local-intent programmatic pages built at scale across gas, parking, car wash and insurance.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/way

Startup Launch

### MaineLove

Zero to top-5 for "canned water" in year one — non-brand search doubled in the final six months.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/mainelove

Content SEO

### Crowd Cow

Non-brand organic search up 63% year over year — 76.8K to 125K clicks.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/crowd-cow

Programmatic SEO

### VRAI

Faceted jewelry pages, original content and a review engine built for high-intent search.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/vrai

Short-Term Rental Marketing

### Arnold Haven

Bought the house, ran the remodel, built the marketing — a Superhost listing running three-plus years on big-group pricing, not high occupancy.
https://ramblingmedia.com/case-studies/short-term-rental

Talk about your growth plan (https://ramblingmedia.com/contact)

## Structured data

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