Start With the Listing
Most of the traffic that reaches a server page came from somebody searching for a gamemode rather than for your server by name. They did not know you existed, and the listing is the entire reason they found out.
That makes the boring fields the ones that matter. A well filled listing beats anything else you might try, and no amount of votes rescues one that nobody is shown.
Tag It Honestly
You pick between one and five gamemodes. Pick the ones you actually run, at the size you actually run them, and leave the rest.
Tagging modes you do not have is the fastest way to be skipped. Somebody who arrives expecting bedwars and finds none leaves inside a minute, does not come back, and has learned to distrust your name for next time.
It also risks the listing itself. Inaccurate gamemodes are the commonest reason a listing gets removed, and that is not a punishment so much as the site doing the one job it has.
Write Something Worth Reading
The description has a minimum length, and a minimum is a floor rather than a target. Say what the server actually is, what makes it different from the four others on the same page, and who it suits.
The tagline is the single line that shows up beside your name in a list, so it should say what the server is rather than repeat the address. A tagline that is just the address tells a reader nothing they cannot already see.
Set the Regions Properly
Pick where the server actually is rather than everywhere you would like players from. Somebody joining from the other side of the world gets a bad game and blames your server for it, which costs you a review rather than winning you a player.
Then Votes and Reviews
Ranking is 60 percent votes and 40 percent reviews. Votes are weighted heavier because a vote means somebody came back, while a review is written once and then sits there.
A vote from a player who has linked their Xbox account counts in full and one that was only typed counts a quarter, so pointing your regulars at linking is worth more than chasing raw numbers. What Votes and Ratings Do covers the whole formula.
Rewarding Voters
Handing out rewards for voting is fine and always has been. Manufacturing the votes is not, and buying reviews will lose you the listing outright.
Key rewards on the Xbox ID rather than the gamertag. A gamertag changes when somebody renames and an Xbox ID never does, so rewards keyed on a name quietly stop reaching the players who earned them.
Stay Up
We ping your address ourselves and keep the record, so a server that is frequently down looks frequently down to anybody reading the page. That is not something a description can talk its way around.
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