Scrabble SEO: Ranking For Auto-Generated Anagrams

There’s a board game cafe in my Brooklyn neighborhood.

Whenever I walk by late at night it’s packed full of Dungeons & Dragon types obsessing over make-believe worlds:

I’ve never been into board games. I find them stultifyingly dull. Though I did love the card game, Uno…

Nevertheless, I can’t resist writing about this next niche because it’s so easy to rank. Even with automated and duplicate content.

I don’t even remember how I stumbled across the site, but I’ve been saving the URL in a Google Sheet for a niche report.

What’s The Site?

It’s a Scrabble word finder site called AllScrabbleWords.com.

If you’re unfamiliar with Scrabble, according to Britannica it’s a: “board-and-tile game in which two to four players compete in forming words with lettered tiles on a 225-square board; words spelled out by letters on the tiles interlock like words in a crossword puzzle. … Values of unused letters left to players are totalled and deducted from their scores.”

The site helps players construct words from the letters they’ve been dealt.

According to Ahrefs, the site ranks for nearly 600,000 organic keywords and it’s pulling in an estimated 1.1 million organic traffic visits a month:

Take a look at some of these crazy keyword rankings. One of their best performing types of keywords are “[number] letter words” searches. Evidently, there are a lot of Scrabble players using Google to help them compete:

Traffic & Earnings

According to SimilarWeb, the site is averaging over 12 million visits a month:

If you divide 12,630,000 by 1,000, you get 12,630, and you multiply that by a CPM ad rate of $10, the site would be earning $126,300 a month. That gives you a ballpark idea of what this Scrabble spinoff site is making.

Keyword Research

I extracted 1,000 of the top-performing organic keywords- you can do the same keyword research with SEMRush (click for free 2-week trial) or Ahrefs:

How It Works

On this 7 Letter Words landing page, you can see 3 ad units, numbered 1-3 below. Additionally, you can see they have a word uncrambler tool (4) that lets you input up to 12 letters and constructs words from them. They also have lists of words (5) That are related to the 7-letter word concept:

What I Would Do

Development Work

If I were entering into this niche, I would first figure out how I could replicate the functionality of All Scrabble Words.

I would speak to a couple of developers on UpWork and see what they think about designing something for WordPress that can scramble and unscramble words.

I’d also want to see how I could publish lists five-letter words, for example, using a shortcode. Once I had the development work done, I’d begin churning out some content. I probably go slow at first.

For example, if you’re able to push out hundreds of pages for different word lengths or letter combinations, I’d resist the temptation to flood Google’s index with this thin content.

Keywords & Content

I would consider choosing 25 keywords to target, creating landing pages for them, and then also including some unique content from a service like Hire Writers.

That way, the site starts off with a solid, unique content foundation. I would use a keyword research tool to do some rank tracking- Ahrefs or SEMrush, for example.

I would also have some standalone, informational content- really long-form blog posts about playing Scrabble.

For example, strategies and tips- this way the site has even more unique content on it, helping to immunize it against potential Google search penalties.

Link Building

I would make sure I am tracking my primary keywords and once I had 25 pages published, I would consider using my Backlink Breakthrough link building strategy (or outreach services from DFY Links and Authority.Builders) to begin creating backlinks to the site.

What I like

Easy rankings

As you can see in the keyword research table, there’s a lot of search volume for these Scrabble word searches. And there’s not much competition.

While there are some sites in the spaces like Unscrambled Words, and others, the universe of keywords is so big that numerous players can succeed in the space.

Moreover, there is an opportunity to get into tangential spaces like Wordle help tools which have lucrative keyword opportunities.

Easy Content

The content is pretty easy to create here- most of the landing pages are lists of unscrambled words.

What I don’t like

Thin Content

A site like this is going to be pretty thin on content. Once you figure out how to curate words by length and perhaps by some other filters, you’re going to end up with some relatively thin landing pages.

Getting Backlinks

It might be a little challenging to get backlinks. You can always outsource links to services like DFY Links and Authority Builders, or use my Backlink Breakthrough strategy, but if all you have is landing pages of Scrabble words, it might be a tough sell to other site owners.

Development

I searched around a bit to find WordPress plugins that are capable or designed to scramble or unscramble words and didn’t find any. You’ll probably want to hire a developer to figure this out for you. It shouldn’t be that hard to do, but it’s something you’ll want to consider before entering into this niche.

Summing Up

This is yet another illustration of a website that cleverly curates large amounts of duplicate and thin content while maintaining massive organic rankings. It would be a fun project to try out. As I’ve noted, though, you will need to do some development work to figure out how best to create these different letter lists.

Last Updated on July 25, 2022 by Ryan Nelson