Cardmarket is Europe’s largest market for buying and selling card video games (TCGs). Tens of millions of patrons and sellers commerce Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece and different TCGs throughout the platform.
When Sallar Rabiei joined as an search engine marketing Specialist, Cardmarket was already the dominant platform in its area.
However search had by no means been approached with the depth the platform’s scale and neighborhood deserved. Constructing that depth via high quality content material, belief alerts, and smarter segmentation modified the trajectory.
Inside a 12 months, AI-referred periods had grown greater than 200%, and a few of their high card pages had been pulling a whole lot of 1000’s of periods every.
They did not get there by merely working an AI search engine marketing playbook. The inspiration was less complicated and slower: earn the neighborhood’s belief and create content material that actually serves it.
The issue: search engine marketing constructed for a normal viewers, in a really particular area of interest
Earlier than Sallar joined, Cardmarket’s search engine marketing was stable however not but tailor-made to the TCG neighborhood — just like the alternative ways Pokémon gamers search in comparison with Magic gamers, or what actually issues to somebody deciding the place to purchase a card.
The size made it more durable. Cardmarket hosts thousands and thousands of card pages up to date each day by recreation specialists throughout a number of domains, in a number of languages. Generic search engine marketing methods aren’t sufficient to deal with this scope in a distinct segment, energetic neighborhood.
“It wasn’t tailor-made to us particularly within the TCG or passion business in any respect, which was undoubtedly a problem as a result of we’re a really area of interest neighborhood — and in addition very private.”
The answer: a playbook constructed on belief and real experience
Cardmarket’s method mixed knowledge segmentation, community-native content material, belief infrastructure, and off-platform narrative administration. Here is how each bit matches collectively.
Step 1: Phase your knowledge earlier than drawing any conclusions
Cardmarket’s catalog spans a number of video games, domains, and web page sorts. Early on, Sallar’s first transfer was to cease taking a look at complete visitors and begin monitoring the pages that basically mattered to the enterprise.
Every month, Sallar aligns with the video games administration staff on the advertising plan to establish the precedence areas — a brand new enlargement launch, a particular recreation, or a product class. search engine marketing reporting then focuses on whether or not these pages are rising, not simply whether or not the location as a complete is up.
This adjustments what the info can inform you:
- A flat general quantity could be hiding sturdy progress in Pokémon pages alongside a decline in Magic.
- A high-impression web page with a poor bounce charge is an issue to repair, not a metric to have fun.
Segmenting by recreation, area, web page sort, and branded vs. non-branded queries is what makes the info helpful.
For Cardmarket, with three separate domains to trace, Sallar consolidates all the things right into a single Semrush dashboard:
“It is not nearly progress month over month. It is ensuring that the expansion is the place we truly need it to be, and whether or not it is aligned with our precise mission for the 12 months.”
Step 2: Construct belief alerts that may be verified
Cardmarket operates as a market: The platform by no means holds stock, however it’s chargeable for what occurs between patrons and sellers. Belief is existential for this mannequin.
The staff reached a key perception: AI chatbots consider belief just about the identical means a skeptical human purchaser does.
When somebody asks ChatGPT, “Is Cardmarket secure to make use of?” the reply will get assembled from critiques, assist pages, discussion board discussions, and neighborhood posts — the identical sources a cautious first-time purchaser would examine manually.
With this in thoughts, the aim was to make current belief alerts concrete, documented, and findable:
- Purchaser safety mechanisms on the location: Cardmarket’s Trustee Service holds cost till the customer confirms their order has arrived. It’s documented intimately within the assist middle
- Verified vendor necessities: Skilled sellers should present an actual tackle, VAT ID, telephone quantity, enterprise registration, and clear transport insurance policies
- Clear pricing: Each card reveals a value historical past graph. Cardmarket positions itself as the worth authority for TCGs in Europe, and the info makes that verifiable.
- Occasion sponsorships: Sponsoring real-world TCG tournaments additionally builds credibility that extends past the platform into the neighborhood itself
- Channels: Each main recreation on Cardmarket has its personal devoted channel, creating ongoing movies and content material for the general neighborhood
“Success on this area will not be solely about content material and technical optimizations. It’s a steadiness: roughly 50% optimization efforts and 50% the general trustworthiness of the corporate.”
Step 3: Create content material to your neighborhood
One of many largest adjustments Cardmarket made was to its product pages. As an alternative of counting on generic descriptions, they began utilizing copy written by individuals who truly play the video games.
Buying and selling card video games launch new units of playing cards commonly, known as expansions. Every has its personal lore, playing cards, and aggressive relevance, making enlargement pages high-traffic, high-intent touchdown pages.
For every main launch, Cardmarket commissions content material creators who know the sport: individuals who can clarify which playing cards matter competitively, how a brand new set matches the present metagame, and why sure playing cards are value amassing. The content material can be verified by Cardmarket, translated into 5 languages by translators who know the sport, and revealed alongside the product listings.
“We do not write search engine marketing textual content, we write for the neighborhood. It is not simply: here is the brand new enlargement, it comes with X playing cards. We add: that is the way you construct round these playing cards, for this reason this set is thrilling, that is the way it matches the present meta.”
Creating helpful, descriptive content material written by actual gamers paid off. In 2025, Cardmarket’s high card pages generated a whole lot of 1000’s of periods every, with the Umbreon ex web page alone pulling 560K:
Step 4: Match your metadata to how your viewers searches
With thousands and thousands of card pages throughout numerous video games, Cardmarket cannot optimize every web page individually. As an alternative, Sallar works with the video games administration staff to construct metadata templates — grouping pages by recreation and utilizing language that displays how every neighborhood truly talks about playing cards.
This requires actual neighborhood information. A Yu-Gi-Oh! participant looking for a card makes use of totally different syntax, abbreviations, and set codes than a Pokémon participant.
Working with individuals who know the sport inside out and mixing their information with search engine marketing knowledge from Semrush helps the staff obtain the optimum steadiness.
Step 5: Use key phrase hole evaluation to identify high-signal moments early
With thousands and thousands of potential card pages, Sallar can not monitor what’s trending manually. Key phrase and immediate hole evaluation — carried out each day utilizing Semrush instruments — is how he identifies the place to behave earlier than a possibility peaks.
The Van Gogh Pikachu card is a transparent instance.
This card was out there solely on the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which made it extremely collectible and drove important search quantity effectively outdoors the standard TCG viewers.
By seeing the cardboard present up in Semrush Key phrase Hole knowledge as a high-demand time period rivals weren’t overlaying, the staff acknowledged early that this wasn’t simply one other card. It was a cultural second, and the web page wanted content material to match the demand.
Step 6: Handle your model’s narrative the place your neighborhood talks
AI search pulls solutions from throughout the web: Reddit threads, evaluate platforms, boards, and information protection. What individuals say about your model in these locations shapes how AI fashions describe you, no matter what your individual web site says.
To remain on high of this, Cardmarket employs a neighborhood specialist who screens and responds to sentiment throughout:
- Trustpilot and Google Critiques
- A devoted Cardmarket subreddit (Initially created organically by customers, it was later handed over to the staff and is maintained by the staff at this time.)
- Group boards for every main recreation
- Cardmarket’s personal information platform for coverage updates and bulletins
When coverage adjustments generate neighborhood concern, the neighborhood specialist responds with factual explanations earlier than hypothesis fills the hole.
The aim will not be making an attempt to control the narrative, although. It’s ensuring the correct model of the story is straightforward to seek out.
“Extra seemingly than not, the discussions made by the neighborhood informally about your organization are the place the search outcomes from AI will come from.”
Cardmarket has additionally pursued mainstream press protection — together with a current Forbes Austria and Switzerland characteristic on the monetary dynamics of the buying and selling card market — reinforcing its authority on card pricing effectively past the TCG area of interest
The outcomes: constant natural progress + AI periods up >200%
The community-first method paid off throughout each conventional search and AI.
Natural visitors has grown steadily over the previous a number of years. In line with Semrush estimates, cardmarket.com now pulls round 5.8M month-to-month natural visits, with over 74K key phrases rating within the high three positions.
AI visibility adopted an identical trajectory. Since October 2025, Cardmarket’s mentions throughout LLM outputs have grown from round 10K to 30.1K, with 26.4K citations and 30.4K cited pages, in line with knowledge from Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit.
AI-referred periods, tracked individually in Google Analytics, grew greater than 200% over 12 months. AI visitors continues to be a small share of complete quantity, however the staff treats it as a precedence sign as a result of it converts at a considerably larger charge than every other supply.
The takeaway
The six steps above share a standard logic. Search engines like google and yahoo and AI fashions are designed to floor probably the most related, reliable reply for a particular question.
In a distinct segment market like buying and selling playing cards, meaning figuring out how every neighborhood searches, writing content material value studying, and constructing belief alerts which can be concrete and verifiable.
None of that’s separable from good advertising. The search engine marketing work at Cardmarket is efficient as a result of the product, the content material, and the neighborhood administration are all pulling in the identical path.
Sallar then makes use of Semrush to seek out alternatives and observe the place that work is touchdown: natural efficiency throughout 4 domains, visibility gaps towards rivals, and AI visibility over time.
