For those of you who don't know what SEO is, it means 'Search Engine Optimization'. Basically, when people search a term in Google or another search engine, the results are ranked by the search engine's algorithm and ordered by factors such as relevancy, authority/reputation, and site speed, among others.
Being ranked highly in search engine results is a crucial part of getting exposure to the world, no matter if the website is for business, blogging, or social media - and it is harder than ever to get found today.
The internet has been around for quite a while now, which means it is filled with all kinds of competition on any and every topic. We all know how easy it is to find information with Google.
Who hasn't heard someone say, "just Google it!"
As nice as it would be if we could just have a website, post something on it, and people would actually find it - that just isn't the way it works anymore. This may have been possible 20 years ago because the internet wasn't saturated with so much information (good and bad) - but it simply isn't the existent world of 2020.
If you had a website and you tried to rank an article for the word 'basketball', your article is going to be buried beneath hundreds of thousands of articles and content about basketball.
Because the topic of basketball is so broad, your competition will be everything from Michael Jordan, to shoe companies, to companies that actually sell basketballs, to sports betting sites, to who's on what roster (college and NBA)....
...the list is long and the competition thick...
Even if the post you created was on a site with a good reputation and high-authority (and the post contained a ton of relevancy to basketball) you still aren't going to outperform the backlinks of other articles that have been written on the web.
Backlinks? You ask... maybe...
Backlinking is one of the most important criteria when it comes to ranking in search results. Basically, it means that the content produced has been linked to by other websites on the internet.
The higher the authority of the websites that linked to your page, the more of an impact that it has on the way your page is ranked in the results. If you have a ton of backlinks from high-authority websites to a single page, your ranking will be much higher than other websites that don't have the same backlink profile.
...the NAME...
Hive is an incredibly broad topic. When someone searches 'Hive' they are going to get everything from business and social platforms that have been around for years, to articles about bumblebees, and maybe even skin conditions or something from the CDC.
My point is... Hive is not an easy keyword to rank for.
The topic of a single non-unique word buries our wonderful platform beneath a ton of search results that are already outranking it.
If people don't know our website is actually called Hive.blog (which is a strange suffix for a URL) then they will have a hard time finding the right site.
Steemit had an edge with its name because it is unique. Steem is not spelled 'Steam' and it has the added 'it' to the end, allowing it to be easily found in search results as the community developed massive amounts of content together.
Granted, in time the Hive platform will rise in the ranks simply because of the sheer volume of content being produce by its community 24/7, but what if we could utilize some of our abilities together to speed up the process and get Hive that exposure and online presence more quickly?
I think that we can, and I have an idea for how to do it.
Hint: It has to do with the contests run by communities.
While I'm not claiming that what I'm about to present to you is going to solve all of our problems in this area, I think it might help.
First, let's give a tangible example of how this works in blogging for businesses, and then follow it to how we can use it for Hive.
Are you still with me?
Here we go:
Let's imagine that you have created a new kind of basketball that pumps itself up, automatically, to the perfect pressure. Pretty awesome gadget that would be, huh?
You already created the design, got the patent, received the necessary attention from investors, found a factory to produce it, and produced it. Now, you need to market your product on multiple fronts - one of them being, online, of course.
You create a website about your basketball, consisting of a few pages. The site looks great! But no one seems to be finding it and you aren't getting enough traffic to make your sales.
This is where businesses start blogging to get traffic to their website. They can't rank for the term basketball automatically (even with their awesome innovative design). So, they have to create a 'funnel' to generate that traffic.
How do they create that funnel?
By using long-tailed keywords that are easier to rank for in Google. They start blogging about topics like, "What if my old basketball won't pump up right?" Or "Life hacks for pumping up your basketball."
While these topics aren't directly about a basketball that pumps itself up, they will be easier to rank for, and they can use it to get exposure to their product. If they rank for any of those 'long-tailed' keywords, then people will start finding out about their ball that pumps itself up to the perfect pressure.
Hive can do the same thing - with the help of its community contests.
Since Hive is such a broad topic to rank for, we can do the same thing businesses do and create a 'funnel' for Hive - to get more exposure.
All that must be done is to find 'long-tailed' keywords for questions that people are asking online. The trick is, to find questions that are not very well answered and don't have much SEO competition to overcome.
The reason I say that community contest can help to generate this content, is they are capable of influencing Hive posters to create content that is actually TITLED with those keywords we are using to develop the funnel.
If a community contest says, "Join our contest! Answer the question: 'Can A Wet Bird Fly?' *Make sure to name your post, 'Can A Wet Bird Fly' Contest or your entry will not be considered!" What happens?
A bunch of people post articles that are titled 'Can A Wet Bird Fly', that answer the question. Now, Hive has generated a slough of content answering a question that it is likely to rank for.
If a number of these contests were run, over time, people would link back to the answers (even if only a couple of them were high-quality posts) and the backlink profile of Hive would grow.
This would result in the 'authority' of Hive.blog (the website) growing, and our community's website rising in the search results more quickly than it otherwise would.
The higher we rank, the more exposure we get, and the closer to that dream of mass-adoption we become.
Basically, we would be using inbound marketing to generate traffic to ourselves by building a funnel from well-chosen, long-tailed keywords.
Essentially, being effective at marketing ourselves, just like any other blog or business does.
These are just some ideas, and I wanted to share them with the community and ask you...
Much LOVE!
@badseedalchemist