About six months ago I started building niche guide sites for individual Roblox games. Not as a portfolio project — as an actual SEO experiment. The question I wanted to answer: can you get consistent search traffic to a game guide site if you pick the right game and put in actual content effort?
I've now run 13 of these sites through the same process. Here's what the data actually shows.
The tech stack (deliberately boring)
All 13 sites run on Next.js 14 + Cloudflare Workers via opennextjs-cloudflare. Static generation where possible, edge-cached everything else. D1 for the codes database (Roblox codes expire fast — you need DB-backed content, not hardcoded MDX). R2 for images.
The reason for Cloudflare over Vercel: at 13 sites, Vercel's pricing per-seat model gets expensive. Cloudflare Workers free tier handles the traffic levels I'm getting on new sites without issue.
Build time per site: roughly 4–6 hours for the initial build (includes game research, initial content, and schema setup). Ongoing: 20–30 minutes a week per site to update codes and check GSC.
What "Build A Ring Farm" showed about niche selection
buildaringfarmcodes.com is one of the newer additions (launched June 2026). Build A Ring is a Roblox farming game with a semi-complex ring income system — players need to track which ring types yield the most per minute, and codes expire on a predictable schedule.
That predictability is actually what makes it SEO-friendly. Players search for current codes 2–3× per week. They search for the ring income calculator because the in-game UI doesn't expose the underlying formula. Both types of content are genuinely useful and thin on existing coverage.
Traffic trajectory at T+30 days is roughly what I've seen on similar P2-phase sites (my rough internal label for sites 20–40 days old): minimal organic traffic but GSC impressions picking up in the 50–200/day range.
What the 13-site dataset taught me
1. Game selection matters more than content quality
The sites that got traction fastest (maplehospitalroblox.com at T+60: ~500 organic/day) picked games with two properties: (a) the in-game information is intentionally opaque and (b) the player base asks searchable questions. Simulator-style games with RNG mechanics perform well. Tycoon games with no "meta" don't.
2. Codes-plus-calculator beats codes-only
A pure codes page competes with every major Roblox site (RobloxCodes.io, Pro Game Guides, etc.) on exactly the same content. Adding a calculator or tier list that requires game knowledge creates content that's genuinely hard to replicate at scale. My click-through rates on calculator pages are 3–5× the codes page CTRs.
3. Build speed matters for seasonal events
Roblox games run regular update events with new codes, new items, and usually a spike in search interest. Sites that are indexed and have some authority before the event cycle benefit disproportionately. This argues for building early and accepting mediocre content at launch.
The Cloudflare D1 codes pattern
The codes update problem is the main engineering challenge. Here's the simplified version of how I handle it:
// api/codes/route.ts
export const dynamic = 'force-dynamic';
export async function GET() {
const db = getD1Binding();
const codes = await db
.prepare('SELECT code, reward, expires_at, is_active FROM codes WHERE is_active=1 ORDER BY created_at DESC')
.all();
return Response.json(codes.results);
}
The admin interface is just a simple form that writes to D1 via a Cloudflare Worker endpoint with a secret key. No CMS overhead, no deployment on content update.
What I'd do differently
The main thing I underestimated is how important internal linking is at the P1 phase (first 30 days). I was building each page as standalone content without worrying about site-wide navigation. Connecting pages — codes → tier list → calculator → farming guide — keeps users on the site longer and sends better dwell-time signals early on when Google is making its initial quality assessment.
The second thing: don't try to build 13 sites simultaneously. Diminishing returns kick in fast and you end up with sites that are technically functional but have thin content at launch.
If you're building something similar or want to see the code structure, the sites are all public — the source for buildaringfarmcodes.com is the best example of the current D1 codes pattern.
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