I read an interesting comment the other day on @steemitblog's recent post on how to improve SEO on Steem and Steemit.com. The comment from Steemit user @protegeaa stated that the links in your Steemit blog posts get a 'no follow' tag if their rewards are under $10.
He also remarked that due to the current Steem price drops, the 'follow' tag gets replaced by a 'no follow' tag when your post's rewards drop under $10. I had no idea that this was the case, so I'm glad that I accidentally came across this comment.
Why Should You Care?
If you're using Steemit to link to your own blog, those links will not have any value to search engines. The 'no follow' tag prevents search engine crawlers from following the link on your blog post, thus it doesn't improve your search engine ranking.
I personally also like to reward services that I review through my articles with a quality backlink. Since Steemit is so highly ranked, these backlinks do have a pretty big impact on your visibility in search engine results.
How to Check if Links Are 'No Follow'?
The easiest way to check whether a link has the 'no follow' attribute, is by right clicking it and selecting either 'inspect' (Chrome) or 'Inspect Element' (Firefox). You'll then see the HTML code for that link, together with the 'no follow' attribute if it's there.
There are also plugins for both Firefox and Chrome that draw boxes around all links with 'no follow' tags. Just search for 'NoFollow firefox' or 'NoFollow Chrome' on your preferred search engine.
Solution
The most obvious solution to this, is just to buy votes to get over that $10 threshold. If you're using Steemit to promote your own blog or other websites that you own, you would definitely want those valuable backlinks from Steemit. Whether it's ethical or not, I'll leave up for debate, but it's definitely an easy way to get rid of those 'no follow' tags.
Conclusion
I'm not really advocating for Steemit to remove the $10 threshold, they probably do have their reasons for limiting the amount of 'follow' links on their main website. This was just something I thought might be helpful for people using Steemit alongside their external personal blog.
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This is so annoying.... My posts never hit $10 :(
I feel fucked over. Steem is just interesting as a platform when you have +100k in SP, otherwise your posts get ignored in the feeds and now even in the SEO department... I was contemplating powering up another 1000 SP, but now I am having second thoughts...
Yeah I was really bummed when I found out, it's been months since one of my posts got over $10. Now I find out none of them have backlinks...
You don't have 100k so to have fun & Make money on steem.
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Thanks for the shout-out! Good write up.
I would add that if you do use a bid bots, bid over $11. Those rewards often drop late in the 7 days as others self vote at the last minute.
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Thanks for the tip! I don't know if the threshold is actually right on $10.00. Just checked an old post of mine which had $10.00 and all those links still had the 'no follow' tag.
Yes-and some more data for you, I have an old post with $10.25 that is no follow and another old post at $10.50 which IS follow.
So the threshold MAY be around there somewhat.
Another reason to give yourself a buffer.
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I think they put in the $10 threshold to prevent link spammers.
Most other sites are infested with spun seo blogposts that are there simply to enclose a link and nothing else. By making it expensive, they've managed to keep this site clean of that stuff.
That's an interesting thought. I was wondering what Steemit could possibly gain from this practice, but maybe it makes sense.
Duidelijk gappie! Wist ik inderdaad ook totaal niet
This is kinda disappointing if they want adoption I feel like the team should make it easy as possible to cross promote. Every user should count we can’t afford to have people stop using the platform.
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I think they could perhaps lower the threshold a bit, currently it's even harder to get to $10.
how to do that?
This is great information to know. Bums me out, but still great to know.
Do you know if the tag can be switched from follow to no follow if the payout value drops below the threshold.
Good info to be aware of but I'm not sure how I feel about it. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Well done Daan, I would tell you that this really bums me out but it doesn't. First, I don't have another site to link back too so it wouldn't make a difference for me.
But I did find it interesting and I did learn something new by reading it. I also have a question regarding your topic, the back link you are referring too, is that a link that you physically put into your post or is it like detected that you might have say a link on your blog page up in the header section under the name and to left a little?
If it is one that you physically inserted into the post then would that not be a form of censorship by making it a "no link" or a non functional link?
I am just curios about things like this, I may not ever have a site to link back too, but in the event I ever do I would like to at least have an understanding about how it works or in some cases doesn't work.
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Great info! Someone had mentioned something to me about this the other day and I wasn't quite sure what they were talking about. This explains it really well for me though. Thankfully I don't have a blog I need to worry about this for, but I can see how it is a big deal to those that do.