WorldWorksGames makes the best, most economical gaming terrain - but it is surprisingly hard to find if you don't already know about it.
WorldWorksGames.com needs is to be the first site people find, the first time they start looking for buildings, props, or terrain for their gaming/modeling hobby.

In my case, it was a search for "paper castles" that finally led me to WWG.
What would your search be

Please post the search criteria you did/would use, if you had never heard of WorldWorksGames and/or were not already into cardstock modeling.

Great thread and great suggestion. Any search related meta data ideas/keywords are most welcome. In fact we just had someone contact us who was kind enough to offer to implement that info for us!

paper
cardstock
card stock
terrain
city
castle
dungeon

I original followed a link from RPGNow, but I was searching for "paper terrain".

I honestly never even thout to look for cardstock Terrain. (which I am abit ashamed to admit, since in university I built many many building models out of cardstock, balsa, basswood and so on)

As a gamer my quick looks at terrain (glances really) gave me $70+ price tags on unpainted single models. As I am not made of money this was never any serious consideration.

I did use vinyl battle maps, water based markers, minis (painted and unpainted) and matchbox cars. And had been doing this for years.

Oh and any number of extra die for badguys turned with a different number up.

What really started getting me looking was when I had gun battles and the players got into sidetracked discussions whether or not it was 5 hexes around that car or 3 as the matchbox showed.
Or, whether or not it was partial cover, full cover or any other number of thoughts. Playing Shadowrun and any other firearm based game, cover means alot.

So! that lead me ontp a search for 1:60 scale vehicles. Which I quickly found were also not cheap. I don't recall the exact method that I stumbled on WWG, but I did eventually.

Which lead me to purchase Bits of Mayhem. At that point I just wanted car props. But that very quickly grew into a building or two. After seeing other persons builds, it made perfect sense to go ahead and get Streets of Mayhem.

After all, It may take me just as long of a pause in game to set up the new map, but the detail is so much more than a quick sketch.

Great thread., and something we've spoken about here a few times before.... glad to see it back on Denny's radar

I performed a couple of searches I would normally perform, and would have expected a direct link to WWG in the top 5 of each of these, at a bare minimum... but in fact found not a single direct link. I won't mention what I did find, but lots of WWG competitors popped up first, and based on the style of responses, I doubt I would have looked at WWG without knowing them beforehand.

Here are the searches and the WWG result for each:

modern paper terrain
6th response... brief round-up article on Tabletop-Terrain.com

modern cardstock terrain
6th response... McClaud's blog post reviewing WWG products

sci-fi paper terrain
1st response... Germsworld links page.

sci-fi cardstock terrain
2nd response... directory listing on dmoz.org

3D paper terrain
8th response... Dungeon Crawlers.com links page.

3D sci-fi paper terrain
12th response... Dungeoning.net links page.

3D modern paper terrain
86th response!!! Dungeoning.net links page.

3D sci-fi cardstock terrain
2nd response... directory listing on dmoz.org

3D modern cardstock terrain
1st response... swminisinfoworld.com brief mention of FirstLight

modern cardstock buildings
16th response... brief round-up article on Tabletop-Terrain.com

sci-fi cardstock buildings
6th response... directory listing on dmoz.org

Arabin

Hmmm... going with single words.
Fantasy
Terrain
Dungeon
Model
Hell
Printable
PDF
Game
S.F.
SF
SciFi (and Sci Fi and Science Fiction)
Village
Ship
Island
Skull
Toy
Pirate
Boat
Galleon
Cannon
Trebuchet
Siege Tower
Trench
Earth Work
Tent
Ruin
Town

One dispicable trick that I have seen is to include such words in black text on a black background, as bait for search engines. Hiding text behind pictures is also done. (So, make sure to add Naked, Topless, and Nude to the list, everyone else seems to.... There are times I hate the internet. )

The Auld Grump

The search engines are a lot more sophisticated now. A lot more, and most of the old tricks to fool them don't work anymore. It seems the ranking algorithms change all the time, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a moving target and somewhat of a black art.

From what I know these days (and I'm not an expert, but I've implemented SEO and PPC on a few sites), the rankings on highly-used search engines (like Google) is based on two primary things: content and linkage. What your content says, how its presented, and where it says it (page location) is important. And then who links to you - in a relevant context - and how well they're ranked is important. For example, being on a page a full of links with no context won't do much to help, and might hurt you, whereas a link or reference found in a blurb of text relevant to your site's content will help.


When Denny did the new design, I didn't really look at it with an eye towards the content, and unfortunately the page design has a menu and graphic at the top, where the key search content should be. In fact, most of the pages have that kind of page design, and it hurts the rankings. We also haven't targeted any pages specifically for SEO, which means the rankings are kind of scattered.



None of that helps the present situation, however. But it does give you an idea of why WWG doesn't show up well. I have it on my list of things to do this calendar year to get that fixed up for Denny. If he's got experts pitching that to him, too - thats great. I find it a lot easier to implement someone else's design for something like this, especially since I'm no expert.

http://www.monstersmallbusiness.com/eco ... -works.asp

http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/search-engine.htm

Understanding how search engines work is key to getting to the top.

CCotD'

One great way to get a top place in the search result is to make a banner that gets put into your sig on an any forum you're a part of, also if you are running a website, put another banner link to WWG. If there are enough people willing to do this, I'm sure we could get a number one spot on the Google list.

Actually, from what I know of search engines, better than a banner (an image) is contextual text. Some to the effect of "". That way the link is tied in with text consistent with terms the search engine already associates with the link.

Blogs are ranked exceptionally high for links and content (at least for now).

By far the easiest way to increase WWG visibility would be to start a regularly updated blog (we're talking minimum 3-5 posts a week, preferably twice that) that discusses...well, anything really, as long as WWG:s products can enter into it and be linked to.

Do that, and I bet WWG - or at least a blog post mentioning WWG - will be in the top five for almost any reasonable search term already mentioned within two weeks.

A blog is a lot of committment though. Not something I plan to do anytime soon. Actually, one of my favourite authors, Robin Hobb (AKA Megan Lindholm) wrote a really good rant article on her website about the dangers of online blogging. It's not entirely relevant to this dicussion, but relevant to blogging in general.

"", by Robin Hobb.

Enjoy

Arabin

My has WWG in the side bar for favorite sites...

CCotD'