How to Improve SEO on Your Steem Posts? (#3)

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(Edited)

Previously, the SEO Tips series for Steem authors (and to some degree for DApp devs), included:
https://steempeak.com/seo-tips/@gadrian/seo-tips-steemians-optimize-content
https://steempeak.com/@gadrian/13-on-page-optimizations-authors-can-use-on-steem-seo-tips-2

I followed my own advice, and instead of creating a new post, I updated my previous post to elaborate on some tips. Briefly, here they are:

  1. thanks to a comment by @steemchiller here, I realized a better explanation on the use of the title and sections/subsections is necessary, and I included it in subsection 4.2
    (note to devs: looks like the name parameter of the <a> tag is stripped. I know most likely all name parameters are stripped within the editor, but couldn't we make an exception for the <a> tag? Internal links can be very useful -- as you can see above -- and not harmful to the integrity of the interface, as far as I'm aware of).

  2. I described an easier way to add the alt parameter to images in subsection 4.4 and expanded a bit on that.

How to Improve SEO on Your Steem Posts? - https://steempeak.com/@gadrian/howto-improve-steem-seo

Today I'd like to talk more at large about three more elements with impact on SEO.

1. Engagement Improves Ranking

Let's say you write a 1000 words post. Do you think 100 comments to it helps with your search engine ranking or not? How about zero?

Short answer: yes.

Now the longer answer.

Have you heard about some comments and replies that they add value to the post? That's perfectly true. Sometimes the comments can be more interesting than the post itself.

I don't know if search engine content scrapers literally count comments (I highly doubt it's that simple), but they can find keywords and key phrases to index on in the comments and replies, which add more strength to the article or post itself.

That's why, yes, comments or better yet discussions on posts increase their value to the reader and the ranking score of the page.

2. Using Steem to Leverage Your Own Website's Ranking

I know some prefer that steemians write Steem-exclusive content.

I also don't want the platform that I'm so fond of to be second tier to others.

So yes, we need to appreciate original and exclusive content on Steem.

At the same time, we need not live in a bubble. There are other places out there.

People have their own blogs. Wordpress blogs. We can't force them to become Steem-only content producers. Nor should we.

Or they have a strong audience on other centralized social media platforms.

That is normal in my eyes. As long as Steem is one of them and ranks high in their priorities. Or if it ranks low, we need to know why it does, so we can improve.

If you have a Wordpress blog, I'm pretty sure you use the well-known already "sharing is caring" buttons to add your posts to social media channels.

The same thing and much more you can do with Steem.

Steemit.com and a few other Steem interfaces have better domain authority than many personal websites. As a Wordpress blog owner, you benefit of an excellent plugin called Steempress, which can help publish your post on the Steem blockchain, with a backlink to your website and after enough (changeable) time to allow your Wordpress post to be indexed by search engines first.

You can also have a one or two-ways widget activated on your blog, which allows both your existing and Steem audiences to interact and to receive Steem monetary rewards. You can learn more about it here.

3. Is Duplicate Content a Problem on Steem, In Google's Eyes?

That's a good question. Google doesn't "see" Steem, which is the backbone on which our interfaces and tools are built.

It only "sees" interfaces. More exactly, domain names, subdomains, pages...

The problem is that when Google crawls the website of any interface on Steem, unless given clear instructions, it considers the same post found through all the different interfaces as duplicate content.

The "clear instructions" come under the form of canonical links. The website / page with the canonical links is considered the root content, and everything else is duplicate.

There is one big caveat to this: having two or more conflicting canonical links will make Google ignore them altogether and consider all pages duplicates.

@andrarchy mentioned this a while ago

Settled on a canonical URL standard, got it deployed, and worked with other DAPPS to also support the same standard

This is really helpful in resolving the issue. I hope they considered all the aspects.

For example, if a post is created with interface X and edited with interface Y, which one has the canonical link to the post? The dapp on which the post was created? Or the dapp on which the edits were made?

SteemPress posts seem to have received a pass regarding canonical links, with good reason, since setting the canonical links to steemit.com or any other Steem interface had an adverse effect on the ranking of the source blog.


In our last post from the SEO Tips series, we'll have a look at the influence of trending status on Google rankings.

https://steempeak.com/trending-seo-benefits/@gadrian/google-loves-trending-posts



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11 comments
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It's actually the duplicate content I'm most worried about. SteemIt used to have a great advantage in the past by not allowing duplicate content at all. Still need to figure out if the option to set the permlink Steempeak provides solves anything regarding this...

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If the "canonical URL standard" Andrew was talking about is sound and it will be applied throughout the entire ecosystem, I don't see this being an issue in the future.

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What do you think about the comments that SteemPress pull from Steem and publish on your personal blog? Can that "add value" to your blog post?

I find it very interesting as the original blog post is on my own website, published later on Steem through SteemPress, but comments are vice-versa... :) Commented od Steem, but published also on my website... :)

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(Edited)

Good question!

No, they add value to Steem, and not directly to the Wordpress blog, because the comment widget is included in a <iframe> block, and that kind of content isn't crawled well by Google's bot.

However, if we leave SEO aside, from a human point of view, if your readers see interaction on your Wordpress blog (especially where it was not before), and even more - rewards -, that will probably count.

By the way, there are FB comment plugins doing the same thing for FB.

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Thanks for the answer! Yeah, I know about FB comment, but I don't like FB too much.. :)

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Yeah, I know about FB comment, but I don't like FB too much.. :)

Who does? Certainly not me...

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Thanks a lot for your great tips to improve SEO on Steem and it's interfaces @gadrian, I did not really use that advanced tab on Steempeak before, but now I do use some of it, and what you said about engagement is really important, if not the most important, it's awesome.


This post is AWESOME!

It has therefore got a manual 100% upvote from @thisisawesome, for the Awesome Daily Upvotes in category CTPtalk, I give out 1 such vote in that category per day, plus 3 more in other categories, and your post will also be featured in todays Awesome Daily report for more visibility.

The goal of this project is to "highlight Awesome Content, and growing the Steem ecosystem by rewarding it".

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I'm glad you found the information about the advanced options on SteemPeak useful. They have plenty of advanced options, from different categories, which can make your post stand out.

And yes, engagement is paramount on our blogs. Thank you for dropping by, for your comment and for curating this post!

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