There's a new Hive community to spread awareness of SEO, and help posts rank on search engines!

Introduced here by @pitboy, the new Hive SEO Community aims to be a place to learn and talk about the best ways to get your Hive posts ranked on search engines like Google.

This is definitely something I can get behind! I've been freelance copywriting for a few years now, and SEO is something I have to think about a lot. I won't pretend I'm an SEO expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel I have a pretty good grasp on many recent best practices.

I have held a Hubspot certification for Content Marketing for about 4 years now, taking often updated courses and renewing every couple years. This certainly isn't the most prestigious of certifications, but it definitely helps show at least a base level of knowledge when speaking with potential clients.

I will admit though that I'm not always the most diligent when I'm writing my own content here on Hive. I'm excited to see a community pop up that might help me keep SEO in the forefront of my mind before I press that 'Publish' button...

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What is Search Engine Optimization?

Put simply, SEO is the practice of writing and formatting web content in a way that gets it recognized by search engines.

When Google and other search engines send out their "spiders" to crawl the internet in response to a user's query, they follow a number of rules that determine what content the user might be looking for, and what links they should bring back and sort.

The spiders can only know a piece of content is relevant to a given search if it can read them according to the parameters given by the search algorithm. The URL of your page, the title of your post, and the words you use in your headers, sub headers, and paragraphs all play a part in the rank it's given by the spiders.

The closer you can follow the "rules", the sooner search engines will display your content when a user searches for what you're writing about.

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How does using SEO in your posts help you?

Let's say you write a post about the history of bananas. You're very proud of your banana post. You've spent lots of time researching their long and rich history, and it covers every aspect that a reader would want to know about the subject.

You might receive hundreds of upvotes and earn a few dozen HIVE for your efforts, which is definitely an accomplishment.

Unless you're using the "correct" heading structure and keywords, though, the spiders won't know that your post is the best one to show someone who's researching 'how old are bananas?' using Google or another search engine.

If you want people outside of the Hive to find your content, you'll need SEO to rank on search engines!

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How does SEO help Hive?

We need new people seeing Hive's potential, and I've always been a firm believer in the idea that organic growth is always the best growth.

If people start seeing Hive posts on the first page of Google, they're almost certainly going to take notice. Even if they're not someone who'd come and write their own content, they may quickly realize they can earn just for commenting on the posts they read here.

That's not something one can do on Facebook or Twitter... I truly feel once people realize how easy this all is, we'll see a mass influx of not only new content creators, but new content consumers to spread upvotes, and new investors in the underlying crypto, bolstering the net worth of everyone who's already put faith into this amazing platform.

If we want to be found, we'll need to put ourselves where people are looking!

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Why an SEO-centric Community deserves a prominent place in the Hive

This could be huge. A place for people to learn from and teach each other the best ways to produce our content for maximum exposure is a profound idea in my opinion.

If we can get the everyday Hive blogger thinking about how high they can get their post to rank, we could attract a massive amount of organic attention without shoving Hive in someone's face with flashing lights and empty promises.

I know there are more than a few writers here on Hive that are far more educated on this subject than I am, and I'm looking forward to improving my knowledge of SEO, and sharing that with anyone who's interested in learning what I have.

If successful, such an endeavor could create many long-term benefits for the future of Hive as a whole.

There's also a Hive bot you can call for quick SEO help

I just learned about @seo.bot today in the comments of pitboy's Hive SEO introduction and I'm very impressed with my first interactions!

Hosted by @amr008, this bot can be called by commenting "!SEOcheck" on any post. It will then reply with a simple analysis of the post and even provide suggestions on how to improve where needed.

This could be a vital tool for anyone looking to immediately implement SEO into their posts without ever having to leave the blockchain!

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Join me in the Hive SEO Community and let's put Hive at the top of every search engine!

Thanks so much for reading!

Comment below and tell me what you think about SEO, and the idea of a community based around helping rank more Hive posts on search engines!