SEO QUEST: The Hunt for the Forgotten Site
In the whimsical world of Convertia, there once stood a glorious website known as the House of Leads. It was a shining example of all things SEO: scrolls (aka content) were rich with meaning, magical metadata lit the way, and calls to action guided brave contractors from across the land to its welcoming halls.
But over time, the House of Leads declined.
A strange fog rolled in. Titles and descriptions lost their sparkle. Alt text vanished. The sitemap? Swallowed by chaos. And the code? Cursed by mysterious bugs and slowdowns. The House of Leads faded from view, hidden from searchers and forgotten by time.
That’s where our heroes come in.
Two collectives, the Order of Optimization and the Guild of Visibility, have been summoned. Their mission: to lift the curse, reveal hidden issues, and return the site to its rightful place at the top of the rankings.
Armed with riddles, clues, and a bit of teamwork (and perhaps a wizardly spreadsheet or two), they’ll hunt down broken elements and apply the right fixes to restore balance.
The Rules of the Quest
Each team received a series of cryptic clues—riddles wrapped in metaphor, hints cloaked in mystery. These clues didn’t point directly to solutions, but rather nudged our heroes toward hidden problems lurking within the forgotten site.
To succeed, each guild had to:
- Decode each clue to uncover a real SEO or site health issue (broken links, slow page speeds, or vanishing alt text).
- Collaborate to investigate and confirm what was truly amiss—no lone wolves in this realm!
- Document their findings and report them back to the Guild Oracle (a.k.a. the game moderator).
- Cast the correct spell—whether that meant making a fix, suggesting a solution, or explaining the SEO principle behind the problem.
Only by working together could the site be restored and its rightful place at the top of the search results reclaimed.
How We Made It
The SEO Quest was brought to life by Abby Yolda, Energy Circle’s Director of Solar and Digital Marketing Strategy, who blended technical training with fantasy storytelling, powered in large part by ChatGPT. The AI helped craft not only the story setup but also fantasy-coded clues that hinted at SEO problems without revealing the answers, creating a fun, immersive experience that fit Energy Circle’s culture.
To execute the game, we duplicated a small WordPress site into two identical sandbox environments. This gave us full control to intentionally “break” SEO elements while keeping the site scope limited for faster quests. The sandbox approach allowed participants to work hands-on in a controlled setting, hunting for clues and making live fixes, turning a standard technical training into an engaging and highly customized adventure.
Video Introduction
To set the stage for the SEO Quest, the team created a whimsical intro video featuring a wizard character who explained the game’s backstory and rules. The character was generated using Apple’s Image Playground, then brought to life with voice generation, magical animation, and lip-syncing powered by Runway. The final video was assembled in Final Cut Pro using a suite of AI-assisted tools to splice together visuals, audio, and effects, creating a seamless, enchanting kickoff that immersed participants in the fantasy world from the very start.
The Clues
Each of these cards corresponded to a clue in a spreadsheet, combining some tarot-inspired themes with our Dungeons and Dragons quest:
The Quest Debrief: What EC Team Members Thought of the Exercise
“I was pretty amazed by the creativity and ingenuity on display during our latest workshop. The minutiae of search engine optimization can get a bit dry, even for me, but this was an excellent example of how training can be engaging and illuminating. By the end, I felt like the entire team had leveled up on skills we use on a daily basis for our clients, and it didn’t even really feel like work!”
—Cory Allyn, Associate Director of Content & Strategy
“The creativity and originality that went into developing the SEO Quest was truly remarkable—and delightful! [Senior Strategist] Cara and I had the loose 'concept of a plan' that we pitched to [Director of Solar and Digital Marketing Strategy] Abby, and she took it and—well, to say she ran is an understatement—she flew (like a dragon!) with the idea. I think it goes to show how invested we are in leveling up (Dungeons and Dragons pun intended) our digital marketing chops that our team puts this much thought and effort into honing them. It was a perfect marriage of our digital marketing nerdery with garden variety nerdery. I know everyone who plays on the semi-regular EC D&D campaign felt very seen!”
—Emily Ambrose, Director of People Operations
“It's crazy to see how much goes on behind the scenes to build and develop your search ranking. And how important it is to keep your site clean and up to date in Google's eyes. It was really eye opening to see how impactful technical SEO changes were to site health, and just how many little things on a contractor's website often need to be changed!”
—Catherine Tierney, Sales Operations Specialist
“This training set a whole new standard. It combined creativity with real-world application in a way that resonated with every team member at EC, regardless of their role. Anytime we can make learning engaging, our team shows up, doubles down, and gets a lot out of it—and this experience was no exception. Being part of its development was genuinely fun, but seeing how Abby brought it to life and built such an immersive journey was truly impressive. Helping guide the team through the training—solving riddles, navigating twists, and working together—was a blast. More importantly, it gave our folks a chance to lean into one of EC’s greatest strengths: problem-solving through collaboration.”
—Cara Auty, Senior Digital Marketing Strategist
“I personally find SEO work tedious and frankly boring to discuss both with fellow marketers and clients. However, it has large impacts on my client's performance and is a vital part of healthy marketing strategies. Being able to approach SEO in a fun and creative way has helped me rethink some of the tasks that felt overwhelming and/or confusing. I left the SEO D&D challenge feeling more confident in my ability to identify, understand and fix SEO problems.”
—Sarah Hammer, Digital Marketing Account Manager