Chess.com SEO Case Study: Scaling to 30M+ Monthly Visitors and $150M in Revenue

Chess.com scaled from a hobbyist chess site to one of the most dominant players in organic search—pulling over 30 million organic visits per month and generating more than $150 million annually from SEO.

This isn’t a story of shortcuts or hacks. It’s a case study in long-haul, data-driven strategy, international localization, and evergreen content.

The Shocking Scale of Chess.com’s Reach

Most people don’t think of a chess site as a global superpower. But with over 200 million registered users, Chess.com now rivals the population of Brazil.

If it were a country, it’d be the 8th most populated in the world. And the growth hasn’t been random.

• India leads with 50.3 million users.

• The U.S. follows with 43.9 million.

• The UK stands out: 8.9 million users in a country of 68.3 million—meaning 13% of the population plays chess on Chess.com.

This kind of adoption didn’t happen by accident. SEO wasn’t just a channel; it was the engine.

From 13M to 278M Clicks: The International SEO Blueprint

In 2016, Chess.com had 13 million users, one language (English), and a clunky website. By 2025, the platform supported 56 languages and generated 278 million organic clicks per year. Here’s how they did it:

• Dedicated URLs for each language: /hi for Hindi, /de for German, /es for Spanish, etc.

• Full-page translations using Crowdin—not just metadata, but every heading, paragraph, and CTA.

• Localized link building: They reached out to regional chess blogs and influencers in Brazil, Portugal, and beyond.

• Adapted content: Translated lessons, videos, and articles—not just landing pages.

• Native social media teams in each country, creating culture-aware content in local languages.

The result: a one-time translation investment that continues to deliver evergreen traffic. One language alone nets 12 million visits annually.

Chess Openings Revamp: How UX Doubled Organic Traffic

In 2021, Chess.com had 5,000 opening pages (e.g., Sicilian Defense, French Defense), most of them low-value and poorly designed.

They still pulled in 116,000 monthly clicks—but barely.

The overhaul was simple but strategic:

• Redesigned every page from scratch.

• Added internal links between related openings and grandmasters.

• Created new content focused on what users actually wanted—who plays this opening, how to learn it, what to avoid.

Traffic more than doubled to 260,000 monthly clicks. And because people will keep Googling “French Defense” or “Queen’s Gambit” forever, the traffic just keeps coming.

Building Internal Tools to Move Faster

Chess.com’s team built a simple redirect tool internally to manage URL changes (like 301 redirects) in seconds. Before that, redirecting a broken page meant submitting Jira tickets, waiting on devs, staging, QA—it could take days. Now it’s instant.

That change eliminated friction, saved dev time, and made SEO fixes part of the daily workflow. Smart internal tools like this are the invisible backbone of scalable SEO.

News, Discover & EEAT: Journalism Meets SEO

Chess.com's SEO team early on tried to give headline structure feedback to a senior journalist.

The journalist replied by saying not to touch his articles.

Eight years later, that same journalist won’t publish a piece without looping in SEO. That mindset shift led to:

• Google News traffic: 157,000 clicks, 5.27 million impressions, 3% CTR

• Google Discover: 1.56 million clicks, 38.1 million impressions, 4.1% CTR

• EEAT optimization: Full author bios, credentials, contact info, and structured data—for example, chess journalist Peter Doggers has a full profile linking to his book, past work, and Chess.com email.

When the content team and SEO team stopped fighting and started collaborating, distribution exploded.

Evergreen Content That Pays Rent Forever

The most obvious keyword in chess—“how to play chess”—wasn’t being optimized. Chess.com decided to fix that.

But instead of cranking out a generic blog post, they created a full multimedia guide:

• Text, infographics, and step-by-step videos

• Translated into all 56 supported languages

• Updated periodically to stay relevant

This guide alone brings in 60,000 to 70,000 clicks every month. It’s also one of the top AI Overview results on Google. People will always search for it. And it converts—into subscriptions, game starts, and long-term users.

Events Coverage: Real-Time Traffic Goldmine

Chess.com turned live events into a product.

They built real-time coverage pages for every major tournament—from World Chess Championships to local matchups. These pages stream games, show live results, and work in every language.

• 400,000+ organic clicks per month

• Massive spikes during championship season

• Long-tail value across every time zone and locale

Even if you’re not in media, this strategy works: turn industry events into SEO moments.

Turning Chess Players into Click Magnets

Magnus Carlsen. Alireza Firouzja. Ding Liren. These names get searched every day.

So Chess.com created 80,000+ Wikipedia-style profile pages with:

• Ratings, ages, bios

• Tournament wins and latest updates

• Translated versions in all languages

This “players as pages” strategy brings in 152,000 monthly clicks. And it scales—new players, new traffic.

A pure Programmatic SEO play.

The 3D Chess Page: A One-Day Build That Delivers

“3D chess board” was a high-volume query with almost no good results. So the team spent a single day building a page: chess.com/3d-chess.

It lets users play against a computer on a 3D-rendered board. That’s it.

• One day of work

• 40,000+ monthly organic clicks

• Strong conversion to registration

Sometimes SEO is about spotting low-effort, high-reward opportunities—and shipping fast.

Glossary Power: 1M Monthly Clicks from Definitions

People Google chess terms constantly: “What is castling?”, “What is en passant?”, “What’s the Queen’s Gambit?”

So Chess.com created a glossary—200+ standalone pages for every chess term:

• Each page has a definition, video, infographic, and visual examples

• Translated into all languages

• Designed to be beautiful, not just functional

It now drives 500,000 to 1 million organic visits per month. These pages win because they’re helpful and high-quality.

Chess.com didn’t win SEO by accident. They treated SEO like product design: iterative, cross-functional, and focused on user experience.

• Localized content in 56 languages created long-term growth

• Internal tools made the process efficient and scalable

• Evergreen content built compound traffic month after month

• Collaboration between SEO, engineering, and editorial created institutional alignment

It took eight years. But now, with more than 30 million organic visits per month and $150M+ revenue attributed to SEO, the results speak for themselves. This is what it looks like when SEO is treated as a serious, strategic investment—not a marketing afterthought.

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