Steemit.com Dropping in Alexa Rank - Write Posts Reflecting Current Trends to Catch SEO Traffic!
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Yesterday I was watching the Apple Keynote address regarding its launch of some new products such as Apple Arcade which have just launched now in September at a special offer of $4.99 per month (first month free) where you can play unlimited games, similar to how you would subscribe to Netflix for unlimited movies.
Apple also announced the iPhone 11, Apple TV (like Netflix) for $4.99 pm and 12 months free subscription with the purchase of any new qualifying Apple device. In the keynote, they had stories on how the Apple Watch saved lives by calling 911 if you fall down or tell you of elevated heart rates during pregnancy that can catch a problem early.
Anyway, you get the idea, the point is that when I look at the Steemit trending page I don't see any content there that is capitalising on current trends and most searched keywords. As an example, the snapshot of today's trending page and all I see is Steem and bitcoin-related stuff, which doesn't have much search value outside of our community and the greater crypto community. While SEO doesn't discriminate based on trending page rank on Steemit and other UI's, the composition of trending shows us a small sample window as to what content is mostly produced on Steem, one would assume most of the content is fairly niche and not specifically designed to redirect SEO traffic.
I remember the days when Steemit.com was ranked circa 3000 on Alexa and even better I think, today it is ranked 6720 as per the below stats:
The declining ranking will affect advertising revenue and the ability for Steemit to reduce their stake selling over time if this isn't addressed. Content is not up to Steemit Inc, that is up to the community.
My suggestion for you today is to get out of your comfort zone and write about trendy stuff, we as crypto enthusiasts generally like to write about fringe topics but that won't bring the mainstream audience.
So if stakeholders shift focus to curating SEO trend friendly articles and writers adjust their writing to suit (Don't copy-paste!) and do summaries and reviews of such events for example then we may get more eyeballs on Steem again.
Regards,
Ricardo Ferreira
@thecryptodrive
BuildTeam CEO
Steem Consensus Witness
If you like what I do, vote for @thecryptodrive witness with this vote link: https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Or use the quick SteemConnect link: https://app.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=thecryptodrive&approve=1
Beneficiary & Burn Disclaimer: I am giving 20% beneficiary to @pennsif, we had a nice discussion about this today which helped me streamline my thoughts. Also, I will be testing the new MinnowBooster Burn Promotion Service which will burn some of the promotion transfer I send.
The top post on trending literally gives a handful of solutions to that concern though. I would love to have your input on it.
As for making more SEO friendly articles that get attention and clicks, starting by changing the titles and first few sentences is the first step, as that's what people read on google. Not only are most Trending posts Steem/crypto related in the headlines, but many of the quality posts made on other popular topics starts with sentences liek "dear Steem community" or "hello steemians", or "X Curation project post number #503". Aka things that don't mean anything to people outside, and instead makes content appear unfit to them since they're not the ones being talked to.
So yeah, we need to curate content marketing material for the many communities, bloggers and apps in here that have appealing messages to the outside. And as written in our post, we'll be running competitions for that (curious if you would be interested in also curating such contributions?)
As for Trending being mostly Steem-based, I don't think that matters. Most of the traffic contributing to Steemit's Alexa rating and thus ad-revenue come from people finding Steem content via google searches and people sharing their posts. Very few come to the Trending page who doesn't already know Steem and crypto. So I don't think it matters if Trending is filled with Steem stuff, as long as there are plenty of good articles and posts elsewhere that get good results on Google (who doesn't care about their proof of brain rating on Steem)
I noticed your post, it was quite alot to get through so I have earmarked some-time later tonight when I have some downtime.
Yes, I agree that starting posts with "Hey Steemians" has no external appeal to drive SEO traffic, I didn't actually consider that, thanks for pointing it out. Luckily my post starts with a sentence referring to the Apple keynote which should be fine for that purpose.
Sure I would be happy to curate externally focussed content, however I would need to either auto-follow a curation team or be linked the posts by some sort of notification service as I am generally too busy to seek out posts to vote.
Regarding SEO not caring about Steem trending vs non-trending, I inserted an edit stating that, however I still believe trending is a good reflection fo what our community likes to write about and in any event if someone comes to Steem via a non-trending normie type post and then takes a look at trending overrun with crypto articles, it may not appeal to them, communities will solve that though..
Good stuff! And yes it is quite long, but hopefully well worth the read and can result in many spin-off conversations on how to improve Steem at many levels.
I'll get back to you in more detail on how we will do these competitions. I have a few neat solutions.
Also while on this topic, I think it is worth bringing up the value of comments and engagement on Steem. If I write a comment to someone on Steem, it brings their attention back there to read it, which helps Steemit make money. It also makes it more likely they'll then go curate some people or engage with some content as a result of me bringing their attention back to a Steem front-end with my comment, which then again feeds that same loop. So another idea would be to encourage more of the conversations we have on slacks, discords, and elsewhere to take place on Steem if possible. And to do our best to encourage and incentivise good engagement.
Actually yes you and I both are on the same page regarding on-chain chats that we have in slack. Remember I even created the https://neosteem.com forum with all sorts of developer, marketing, witness and governance categories. Forums are also nice for quicker discussion threads, but no-one in slack wanted to embrace it, pretty much a solid day of structuring wasted. I think most people in Slack feel comfortable in there.
Big domains are very unlikely to link to link to steemit for those sort of topics. SEO is less about keywords and much more about authority given to content from linking domins. It may help rank very far down the SERP but at that level it may as well not exist...
Hi @thecryptodrive :-)
What you are saying is a situation that has been going on for a long time in Steem, for the general public Steem is not attractive, in fact it is a clash of technical information and project information. Many situations have happened that have encouraged users to create content on cryptographic projects and technical issues. I work in a community where we are focusing on making an educational plan for bloggers and vloggers, we have not yet made the public proposal but we are looking for private investors. What we want is to give young people the opportunity to express their talents in the best possible way, starting their career at Steem.
Platforms without communities are just empty spaces, that's why we have to give them value.
I really enjoyed reading your publication and I understand your call to action.I love it.
I am very glad my post was of value to you. I think it is interesting that you have a community in the works, as a rule of thumb I don't invest money in anything other than my own businesses, but I'm happy to consult and give support where I can with my time and resources. I think some of BuildTeam's projects such as TokenBB could be of use to you to create niche community forums, dlease.io can help you lease Steem Power to serve your community. Feel free to join https://discord.buildteam.io and ping me in DM to discuss your project further.
It's really amazing to see all of the stuff apple has underground, also I like your style of writing - it's somewhat entertaining and worth anticipating for more. As an early user on steem, I was hoping to see some new and existing topics like the one you provided but that wasn't the case. I sincerely hope we get other content creators who'll write outside the box and make the platform interesting.
Thanks so much, nice have you on Steem. Welcome, be friendly and engaging like you have just been and you will get far. I encourage you to write some exciting topics and link me and I may vote. Enjoy your time on Steem.
Thanks for the encouragement buddy, although I bought some steem, (may buy more in the future) my discord handle is anonymousman1#1412
I can't find anonymousman1#1412, maybe join https://discord.buildteam.io and find me.
Okay buddy!
The issue is the lack of feedback and gamification for people going out and doing so.
I love Twitter because I know my impressions, link clicks, profile views and so on. It’s fun when I can see I’m getting 50k impressions and look at the conversation rate into other metrics.
I could not tell you how my content on Steemit is performing outside of what metrics I see on where I share it on other sites and, upvotes or comments. I need more information and it's frustrating not knowing.
I even tried using a dapp that had google analytics so I could better understand my traffic. Sadly that content was seen as duplicate t and hidden/delisted from results. I had several Cornerstone content pieces I wrote that where very time consuming and while I could see the short term massive spike in impressions and clicks it was short-lived when it got hit for being duplicate content on that dapp.
We also have all these other apps and frontends getting their own traffic. Steemit the website itself is not that great of user experience. While I still promote my Steemit URLs to the outside world I’ve considered using Steempeak. So many are already use it and it’s just more enjoyable to use.
Most people aren't authors. I, for one, really do not care where traffic is coming from. That's for fun and giggles.
When I use Twitter, I don't care about my impressions. The problem still lies in there are too much stuff being promoted that nobody wants to read.
If most Steemians care about the analytics? Then, we have a lack of consumers problem.
This is an excellent point. It should not be too that hard to give authors access to some better analytics on where traffic is coming from. We seem to have become very insular and the only metric that matters is upvotes - which can only come from other steemians.
Agreed, upvotes aren't even a good metric, half of that isn't even human.
Yes I agree that metrics are a problem and also concur that steempeak.com is really awesome, I mean the scheduling, beneficiaries and all other extra tweakable posting features are fantastic and they pulled it off as a team of two with no funding, quite amazing. It is likely Steemit is losing its audience to steempeak, I myself am slowly switching.
it's a much better frontend. i think a lot of it has to do with how integrated they are in the community. it's interesting to watch the difference between a managed community and a community manager on steemit -- also, pushing features, steempeak are CRANKING them out. i love their status page in reaction to the steem blockchain downtime, that's the stuff we need.
Dang I know, it's so awesome seeing new features, imagine they had a 800K Steem budget like Steemit!
I was thinking the same. We dont have enough content that people do searches for. For example How to type article, long form, rich in long tail key words, these can rock in rankings and seo.
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Yeah that's right, any sort of how to's are good. Even gardening, woodwork, life hacks etc, we need to move away from Steem and Bitcoin centric stuff, not move away but have more normie stuff on or at least a balance.
@thecryptodrive
This is exactly what the new tribe Build-It is encouraging. Yes, it has its own front-end which might seem that it drives away traffic from steemit.com or other front-ends. However, it's much easier to encourage specialized content on designated front-ends for several reasons:
The key here is diversity of specialized content rather than pleasing the masses. This is what tribes will help in :)
Oh cool I didn't know about this tribe, I certainly love the idea and will check it out more often. That's exactly what we need, very encouraging to see.
Basically, actually read the stuff from the tribes? That's a curator problem.
There are people making those posts, but big voters don't care about them.
Agreed, the authors making those posts can also promote themselves to be seen more, the services are there, aka MinnowBooster.
It's also a bit more complicated than simply promoting.
Those who care about rewards may fear being blindly downvoted. They would be noticed, but not for the content.
Then, multiple tribes have their own token sink to promote content within their trending. So, boosting to the general Steem public feel unnecessary.
I think some of the blind downvoting has stopped, also in the latest @minnowbooster post we mention that we have introduced a burn aspect to our service so it is less likely stakeholders will downvote a post upvoted by MinnowBooster.
Would be cool if a UI like steempeak could assign an SEO value to the article based on current search term popularity ranking found in the post. Tagging @asgarth and @jarvie. :) This could be abused however by posts just listing the most popular keywords.
Ah actually would be nice if someone did a post to educate writers on how to find trending topics and keywords, I'm not even sure myself, would have to google it and wouldn't it be nice if the tutorial I found by searching was on a Steem post!
Synchronistically, I have just uploaded a video looking at the Alexa rankings of Steem sites and related platforms. Steemit is dropping yes, but Steempeak and other steem sites are growing at significant rates. Considering Steemit.com is pretty poor compared to steempeak I would totally expect Steempeak to gradually phase out Steemit.
That was an awesome video, very insightful. At least some of the ranking is staying within the Steem community on 3speak, steempeak, splinterlands, drugwars etc.
Thanks - Yes, in a decentralised community it is to be expected that traffic will be dispersed among the newer arriving domains. It's similar to the way that new pages on a website receive more traffic than older ones. Google doesn't, as far as i know, accommodate for inter-related domains in the same way as it assigns domain authority as a partial result of the combined effects of each page under that domain. It might make sense from an SEO perspective for all Steem sites to point to steem.com or a similar site - except steem.com isn't really high quality enough for that.
I wonder how steempeak.com is doing? they added some advanced features to make posts more SEO friendly
@asgarth @jarvie can you comment here?
I'm not sure what you're asking for...
Here's one interesting stat i suppose
And this stat
You can tell me what to make of them i suppose. haha
Well it seems your no 1 source of traffic is google, which is awesome. Facebook even, nice. @ash check the above.
that's awesome! what's the alexa ranking? above steemit?
That's acquisition... i'm guessing that means new visitors to the site?
yeah correct, that's where they are coming from.
it's like 44% google 20% direct
Part of the reason: Tribes and other alternative frontends. Can't blame it all on the content producers. Can't create your own brand if all you do is follow trends either. It's great to have content that drives eyes here, and to the ads. To keep those eyes around, variety matters.
Search "constiposted." Search "NoNamesLeftToUse" even, click the images tab on Google, majority of the top image hits are my work. There's actually quite a few strange queries that would lead directly to me, but now they don't always lead to Steemit, whereas before other frontends became popular, all these little roads I made led here to Steemit. So I suppose it's worth mentioning even if people do everything they possibly can to drive eyes here, there's still a chance the hit will lead to another frontend.
I noticed that issue a while ago. If google sees the other website as the "better option" it might even hide the Steemit URL version of it or at the very least it could be very deep down in the search results.
Over the long run I expect one of the tribes I use to over take my Steemit pages if they keeps growing and my content keeps performing well there.
That's cool we need as many roads as possible that lead to Steem! Keep laying down the "breadcrumbs".
Good call man.
lol, the witness me .gif is hilarious. Mad max for the win!
I know right, I think it helped get a few extra votes in. :) Best call to action ever.