Turbo Dork, LLC

Paint

in Action!

One of the key concepts here at Turbo Dork is the idea of bringing fantasy into reality. Tabletop gaming has its roots in this idea, but it isn’t always one that is easily realized. The core focus of our line has been to make those dreams easier to achieve while at the same time, inspiring new ones.

More traditional hobby paint lines have done a fantastic job of recapturing historical accuracy, such as having 30+ greens and grays to represent the various uniforms of real life infantry and armor. But those colors fall short of being able to make a gleaming knight in shining armor, a mystical magical spell, or a futuristic space marine. Our focus has been on building that color library so that any colorful dream can be created.

While we are most known for our Turboshift paints that change color as you move them about in the light, I think one of the best parts of our line is our colorful metallics. The ability to have a bright blue or deep red metal without having to layer multiple colors and effects is great for painters of all levels. Even beginners can achieve previously thought of as advanced color effects with ease.

Even my 68 year old father has started painting miniatures for his tabletop games and loves that he can make something that stands out on the tabletop with minimal effort and skill.

We have heard much the same from our retail painters when they host Paint and Take nights. Customers who normally aren’t painters have fallen in love with our bright inspiring palette and are excited to take home a mini that they are proud of.

The use of Turbo Dork paints for in store-run painting nights is something we encourage, and have bundles available for. Once customers get to see the colors in action, it opens up a world of possibilities for them. While it may be easy to translate some of the colors for the more popular space-saga games, even TTRPG players who want to add a little extra magic to their player minis can find a color they love in our line of Turbo Dork paints. We are excited to continue this journey of helping new painters with the launch of our YouTube and Twitch channels this quarter.

We firmly believe that once customers see our paint in action they are hooked, and building an educational resource that they can rely on is key. Our focus is going to be on beginner based content to help your new customers get up to speed on how to use our paints, as well as advanced techniques to achieve specific effects.

We also want to provide stores with graphics and videos that they can share on their social media, and in-store television displays. A graphics package will be coming by Q1 of 2023. Turbo Dork paints are for everyone, and we are excited to see what you, and your customers, will paint up next!

What Is Your SEO Strategy?

7 Steps to Come Up With A Plan To Boost Your Website Rankings

By John Stacy, Executive Director GAMA

Did you know that there are nearly 90,000 Google search every single second? Boom another 90,000 searches were just made. Is it any wonder why you may be having trouble attracting traffic to your website and your business? When I was teaching marketing, on the first day of class I would put up a graphic that simply read, “Marketing isn’t rocket science. Find an audience and get in front of it.” The trick isn’t finding an audience to sell your products to, its figuring how to get in front of them with your offer. That is where having a solid strategy to attract their attention matters.

One key factors in that process is having a search engine optimalization (SEO) strategy for your website to make it easier for your customers to find you. Here are 7 steps to help you have a better optimized website. Good luck!

1. Why You Need A Solid SEO Strategy And A Way To Measure Results

Trying to get traffic to your website without a solid plan is a bit like driving around with a vague destination in mind, but no directions on how to get there. You may eventually make your way to where you want to be, but it will take a lot longer and require more effort than if you had your route mapped out.

So where do you start? Learn the basics of how SEO works. Set up a good Website Analytics program so you can start to measure what traffic you’re getting now and where new traffic is coming from. Google Analytics is a great program that will grow with you. Install it, look through the reports, start to learn to use it and expand your knowledge as you go along.

Your next step will be to formulate a strategy. This should be a five-step process that includes: 1. Determine your ideal target audience. 2. Figure out what they are looking for and what keywords and key phrases they use. 3. Generate high-value content around those terms. 4. Implement on page and on-site optimization. 5. Track results and adjust as needed.

2. Keywords - A Glimpse Into Your What Your Target Audience Wants And Needs

Let’s talk about keywords. These are the words your target audience types into their favorite search engine (think Google), to look for more information on topics you can help them with. It’s the cornerstone of any SEO strategy. important to note that we’re not talking about single words here. You’re not going to rank for “butter” for example, even if you are a dairy farmer and that’s what your customers are looking for. Instead, what you want to go after are longer key phrases that give you a good indication of what your people are looking for.

For example, let’s say you are a small dairy farmer who sells fresh milk at the farmers market, and you’ve been hearing people say they are interested in figuring out how to make butter. A key phrase you may want to look at for a blog post or informative article could be “how to make butter at home with fresh milk” or something along those lines.

The next question is of course where you find those keywords. How can you find out what your target audience is typing into their favorite search engine?

It starts with a guess. I hope you know enough about your topic and niche of choice to come up with a list of several words and phrases that you think your readers may be using. From there you have options. One of your best and free tools is Google. Start to enter one of your keywords and see what the autofill options are. Play with different terms and start making a list. Once you have that list, search each term and scroll down to the bottom of the first search results page. You will see a list of related searches. Add

those to your list of keywords and key phrases and choose several that make sense for you and the type of content you want to create.

3. Is Your Site Trustworthy? Simple Ways To Boost The Trust Factor That’s Becoming More And More Important For Ranking

If you did an audit of various websites, you’d quickly see that not every page that does on-page SEO well ranks well. They may have chosen keywords wisely and optimized their content for them. Yet still, they are buried deep down in the search results while other sites rank with the bare mention.

One of the main reasons is the trustworthiness of one website over the other and there’s a lot you can do to make sure you measure up. Show the search engines and just as importantly your readers that you have a website that can be trusted. Here are some ways to increase your sites trustworthiness score. • Install a SSL certificate so user data is safe and other will not be able to create fake copies of your site • Improve your website’s load time and make sure it is mobile accessible and responsive • Add privacy policy, terms of service, and FAQ pages to your website • Set up social media profiles to go along with your site. Build your audience there and share your best pieces of content regularly. As others like, comment, and share, your credibility will start to go up.

4. Boost Your Authority And Make Sure Google And Your Users Take You Seriously

Cross post links to your original content on social media. This will allow other people to see and share your content. Guess what. That gives you incoming links and sends what are called “social signals”. As your post about your latest blog post or article get shared around and liked, your content and with it your site gain authority.

5. How The Small Guy Can Win - Relevancy Matters

Large websites (think Wikipedia) and those that have been around for a long time, often have a leg up in the competition for the top search result spots in your favorite search engines. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a shot though. To bring their customers - the people that type in the search - the best results possible, search engines like Google are weighing relevancy quite heavily. And that’s what you can use to your advantage even as a small guy. Here’s how: • Be specific - Use key phrases like

“where to buy blue widgets online” or “best place to buy blue widgets in

Springfield”. Even better, find a way to set yourself apart from the competition by becoming the place that sells blue widgets for bicycles. Make yourself the expert • Relevancy is all about staying on topic.

A small website dedicated to share great content exclusively on one topic will rank higher than larger sites that share everything. • Go local where it makes sense – Think

“best place to buy blue widgets in

Springfield” rather than a more generic

“best place to buy blue widgets”.

6. Let’s Talk About User Behavior and What It Has To Do With SEO Rankings

Search engines want to point to the best content based on what the consumer is looking for. They want to minimize “bounce”, which is when a person clicks on a website, realize that the content isn’t relevant or useful for them and click the back button to return to their search. The more time a person does this the less trust they have in the search engine results.

So always create your content for your target audience first. If you’re looking at a list of keywords that you want to create content around, ask yourself if a particular search term matches your how you audience would use the content you share. If so, go ahead, if not, move on to a better keyword choice.

7. Putting It All Together and Formulating A Solid SEO Strategy For Your Site And Your Business

Key take aways for creating your SEO Plan: • Start by setting a goal so you can measure results • Determine your content topics and publishing schedule. Consistency maters. • Find your keywords. Look at what others in your industry are doing and put your own spin on it. Be unique and stand out! • Work on identify social signals and building incoming links • Rinse and repeat as it takes time to build authority and relevancy. Don’t give up! • Track, test, and adjust as needed.

We hope you found this article useful and if you would like more resources on this topic, download “Creating Your SEO Plan for Your Website”, which is available on GAMA.org under the Resources and Benefits Tab, scroll down to the list of Publications. If there is an educational topic or resource you would us to see, please email Dawn Studebaker dstudebaker@gama.org.

About John Stacy

John Stacy is the executive director of the Game Manufacturers Association. A lifelong learner and gamer, he has worked in the nonprofit, education, and governmental relations arenas for more than thirty years. He holds a master’s degree in Marketing and Communications and was an adjunct instructor for the University of Phoenix for four years facilitating marketing and business classes.