I've said it before and I'll say it again.
Hive's SEO is garbage and it hasn't improved much since I first wrote about it back in April 2020. Being a digital construct in the age of information where attention is one of the most valuable metrics, not being able to capture it will Myspace even the most revolutionary platfroms/projects/games/businesses. As wonderful as Hive is, it will never reach its full potential without getting the necessary amount of eyeballs.
Without a constant stream of new visitors, all other efforts will be futile.
No matter how many dapps, games, interfaces, second layers we build, none of this will matter if Hive itself isn't pulling in the right amount of clicks and capturing that attention.
If we can't get organic views and we aren't paying for ad-space across the interwebs, how are people going to find out about this place?
We want Hive to reach the masses but they literally can barely find it while direct searching for "Hive" or "Hive blockchain". Instead of being the first result, Hive is ranked at the bottom of the first page of Google search engine result page (SERP) when searching for "Hive". This is definitely not a good place to be if we want to be pulling in a substantial amount of organic views.
Even worse, when searching "Hive blockchain", Hive.io shows up at the 3rd page which only an estimated 10% of people visit.
"Hive crypto" is our only glimmer of hope but not even with this specific keyword can Hive manage to rank 1st.
This is beyond humiliating.
Leaking organic traffic directly searching for Hive could postpone it gaining traction for years one end.
Before this issue is tackled and resolved, Hive is going to have major issues in acquiring new users.
If we don't fix it, this hole will sink our leaky ship.
Instead of being the most used blockchain out there, Hive is quickly falling off the leaderboards being replaced by new, shiny, attention-grabbing, projects.
When most attention is concentrated on the first 3 results of the 1st page, not ranking at the top can lead to the demise of any attempt of success in the age of 3s average attention span.
Losing eyeballs to other websites ranking for the same keywords is evidently causing Hive to stall behind in progress (user acquisition-wise) and if continued, this is going to siphon a lot of value from Hive's native token.
Especially now during a raging bull market when crazy amounts of new people are rushing into crypto every day. Imagine how many of them would find Hive to be a great kickstart of their crypto journey as it's literally the single best place to learn about crypto and even earn it. The best thing about Hive is that users don't even need to invest anything but their time and intellectual energy, making it ideal even for those still skeptical about crypto.
While the entire crypto sector is booming and the views every major project gets keep skyrocketing, Hive is stagnating.
Why?
Well, mostly because of how poorly it ranks on search engines.
Why does it rank so poorly though?
Because its SEO is out of whack.
Can we do something about it?
Of course, we can!
In fact, every single content creator can make a huge difference.
The good thing about SEO is that we can fix it for free.
The bad thing about SEO it's not easy, it requires a lot of effort and entails content creators to adopt a certain set of principles to go by when writing articles. It takes a lot of time to build up trust and credibility with search engines so this isn't a process that happens overnight. If we want to make a difference we will have to change the way we style/write our articles forever.
Every single one of our posts can make a world of difference (if properly pimped by the SEO guidelines) when all of our creations are added up as each one helps Hive rank a little better. That's why Steemit ranks so highly. Years of valuable content which end users actually search for and find on Steemy, greatly boosted it's ranking and credibility with search engines.
Steemy SEO is the single most valuable thing Sun stole from our community when he acquired and destroyed Steemy.
Years of our collective effort to produce captivating content that brings in the views which translate into strong rankings and a wealth of FREE, organic traffic. Years of building backlinks in hundreds of articles written about Steem and posted on other trustworthy websites. Years of trust, credibility, and rapport with browsers STOLEN by a disturbed manchild.
Years of effort taken away from us which we will never get back.
We were forced to start fresh.
And like all beginnings, we are starting from the bottom.
New website, 0 credibility, 0 trust, 0 content, 0 backlinks, 0 SEO.
One big fat 0 across all metrics used to determine site positioning on SERP's.
Like trying to find a 2 cent post on the trending page, Hive is hidden in a sea of other websites ranking for the same exact keywords.
Devastating position to be in after spending so many years to get to the top.
Although this issue could have easily been avoided by picking a less crowded keyword to rank for than Hive, what is done is done. We won't change our branding now. We have to make it work with what we got and we need to start immediately! The bull run is in full swing and the amount of attention the entire crypto space is getting is exploding.
We need to do something about this straight away if we want to capture any amount of value (new users) this bull market is naturally going to throw our way.
Handing over views to other websites will turn out to be as expensive as lighting cigarettes with dollar bills while smoking a hundred packs a day.
I'm no SEO expert but from what I've skimmed through on it, there is a lot we can do as content creators to help rank Hive a lot better.
As a matter of fact, if we get enough users to participate in the effort to make their content more SEO-friendly, this entire hardship might turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
If we collectively work on this, start pumping out specific content which search engines love and end-users actually search for, I bet we can make a huge impact on how well Hive ranks.
I have not yet devised a plan on how to actually go about achieving this as I've still got a lot of reading up to do to fill up my SEO knowledge-gap but I'm working on this as you are reading this article.
What I can already tell you is that we are definitely going to have ourselves a contest and we need to make it a big one in order to have a noteworthy impact.
What I need from you though is to help me find some Hive SEO experts to connect with. I need their insight to come up with a bulletproof plan to achieve this. If you know someone that fits the description, please let him know my DM's are always open.
I'll take some time now to research the topic, connect with the right people and figure out how to go about this.
To be continued...