When I first joined Steemit, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
How was any of this possible? Where the hell was all the money coming from? I had no idea.
And without really understanding what I was doing, I wrote my first post. It made about $100 and completely blew my mind. I was hooked.
I spent the entire day trying to understand what Steemit was, and how exactly it all worked. It took so many hours of reading before I actually understood what was going on.
But I did understand and I figured that other people were going to want to figure it out, too. So I broke it down in the simplest way I possibly could.
I felt like an imposter writing a guide. But my second post was the guide in question:
Steemit for Dummies (like Me): Everything you Need to Know in Simple Terms
It earned a whopping $.15 in the first 24 hours. Eventually it grew to about $150, but at the time it was crickets.
The Top Ranked Steemit Guide on Google
Over the last month, my Steemit guide continued to get new comments almost every single day. But I never understood how people were still finding it. It hadn't trended in weeks.
Yet every day people were writing in to say they were finally able to understand what Steemit was all about.
Eventually I discovered why when one of my commenters said: "I found your post googling for "steemit guide" (not directly on Steemit site) and it was #1 result on google!"
(I changed the name after posting the guide but it didn't update on google)
I was blown away.
I wasn't sure how in the hell it had happened but it had and that was all that mattered.
Or so I thought.
In the end it didn't matter at all, because on Steemit, SEO just isn't a part of the equation.
SEO vs Curation:
I want to say that I do understand the rationale behind the Steemit algorithms. I completely get why SEO doesn't really make sense on a platform that churns out an endless stream new content every single day.
The name of the game here is personal curation and while it's not perfect as it stands now, it does work.
But it also makes you wonder. Is there a place on Steemit for SEO as well?
Is having the best content continuously cycled out of visibility every 12 or 24 hours really the best way to do it?
Would it even be possible to implement a system for long term visibility of popular posts?
I definitely don't have the answers. Maybe someone else will.
But seeing my post at the top of Google, something I've never been able to do with my person blog, made me wonder if perhaps there is a better way.
I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks!
Like it.
I completely agree with you that the current way Steemit.com is set up is too fast-paced. A lot of content that has long term value just falls through the cracks and gets forgotten. @samupaha had a good suggestion in his post "What is the ten year vision for Steem blockchain?" Basically he suggested different sidechains for different styles of content. There might be faster or simpler fixes, so I think it's good to have discussion on this.
That's a really interesting approach. It's kind of crazy how fast everything is evolving and growing. The fact that it's growing so fast is especially remarkable considering how technically confusing it all is. I imagine that this problem, and all the other problems we've seen, will be addressed over the coming months.
I just got to this article from google.
But I think something was changed sice the original article was posted. I copy-paste some parts of other articles from steemit to google and and google doesn't show results from steemit... And it was hot article here, 250$+.
Do you know some other ways to optimize SEO for post? I be grateful for some effective tricks. 🙏
Just found this post seconds after posting one that kind of continues that discussion, which I'm tagging #the30daydeath :) As a freelance content writer, SEO's been the name of the game for the past decade (even though the particulars of best practices are constantly changing) - it's hard to even wrap my mind around a platform that doesn't somehow hinge on searchability. It'll be interesting to watch as Steemit grows and shifts throughout its beta days.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitpatina/is-steemit-the-new-youtube-are-you-the-next-pewdiepie-what-about-the30daydeath
You are not the only person who got paid for their first articles because I was astonished too when I first saw this coming and it was mind blowing.
I really like the fact that I see new content every time I visit the site. Although it's unfortunate that quality content often goes unnoticed.
I do too. I would never want that aspect of the site to go away. But I feel like maybe there is some way to increase the long term visibility of a post.
There is the trending 30 days tab. It keeps good posts around for longer.
Very interesting post. In my humble opinion, you need to crank it up a few notches and continue to write in depth guides about Steemit. That info us desperately needed to offset the significant amount of misleading and false information that some people are posting about the platform.
Keep it up you are on your way to bigger and better days!!!
Thanks @roland.haynes I really appreciate it. At the very least I will put out an updated version of the post in question. There are a lot of good how to guides now, but a month ago it was confusing as hell. I must have read 30+ posts in addition to the Steemit White Page before it started to make sense.
Steemit handles content and "SEO" very well. There's no longer access to search hacks, it really depends on your content and structure. Your article did well because it was useful and continues to be. New users will search for a steemit guide and find yours or whoever makes a better one. Thats proper SEO. Articles that don't trend clearly had something missing or weren't meant to. They'll fall to the bottom of search because something else is better.
That's the theory, unfortunately it doesn't always work that way in practice. Steemit is in beta and a lot of current functionality needs at least some rethinking (and Ned and Dan are really actively doing just that). We just need to have active discussion about these things :)
Good points. Though I disagree with your point about articles that don't trend. You're right in most cases, but I've seen so many excellent posts fall through the cracks because of the game like nature of content curation. There is definitely an element of luck and timing, especially for newer members who don't have followers or steem power. The only thing I was trying to call into question was the way content is handled long term. I feel like there should be some sort of way to for popular content to remain visibile longer than 12 or 24 hours, or even 30 days.
It's easy to forget that were still in beta. I know a lot of issues, like this one, will be addressed in some way at some point in the future.
That's crazy cool! Any idea why Google likes you so much?
No idea lol.
The mere fact that I found your article as nr. 1 when doing a search for steemit and SEO speaks volumes on its importance. I am an SEO professional in Norway, and wanted to check out competition. As the platform gains traction and gains a larger audience, those on Steemit will be exposed to your content. Writing posts with SEO in mind will grant you traffic and income for years to come. If Steemit gains enough traction that is. :)
I'm an SEO (as in Search Engines i.e Google) guy myself. It's interesting learning about Steemit SEO though, and how the platform ranks content.
My account has only just been verified and set up. The first thing I noticed is my newbie "trust" score which Steem says will hinder my contents visibility (once I post some).
This makes me think - should I build up my score BEFORE i post some good content? It would be a shame for the algorithm to devalue my content due to my account being brand new...
What do you think?
This a really useful article on how to get the most out of your Steemit Blogs using SEO
I personally think that it would be great if as many as possible steemians would use at least basic on page seo techniques as it would expose the platform to bigger audience through search engines. And of course it would make Steemit more popular and more profitable.
I've been a trader for 8 years but I've been designing websites and optimising for search engines for the last 15 years and actually one of the main reasons I joined Steemit was because of how well structured the website core is.
The platform is setup nicely to rank very well and with plenty of original, high-quality content being published daily - I think there is a good chance that we will see more Steemit posts ranking highly for popular search terms in the future.
However, that being said... there are also many publishers posting content simply for a numbers game - a chance of getting votes and this type of low-quality publishing could prove to be detrimental if it grows with the growing number of publishers. There are ways for Steemit to address this, but that is for another post ;)
Congrats on your #1 Ranking by the way!
Great post @mindover ! I agree that SEO is not the incentive on @steemit but rather a benefit to all in the community to get more people aware and involved in the platform. Without SEO, some people would not have found you or Steemit and that is certainly a net positive.
I have provided some insights into the technical on-page SEO errors I came across that would further improve some of these things in a post here - https://steemit.com/steemit/@sf2/9-things-steemit-can-do-to-improve-on-page-seo-for-all-users
Take the time to let me know what you think of my first pass and if you have anything to add, perhaps it could be useful to the dev teams in future iterations.