Hive is more than the sum of its users. Anyone who understands how the Hive Blockchain works knows that. Hive is a special technology that breaks with the mantra of normal social media. Normal social media websites are centralized, have advertising and use the data of their users by selling them for profit.
Hive shows that it can be done differently and better. It is decentralized and distributes the generated revenue through the Reward Pool to its users and server operators (Witnesses). This is part of Hive's true value. How you can increase the value of Hive yourself is explained in this post.
Everyone who uses Hive will benefit from having their posts search engine optimized. How to do that is explained in this article. Hive needs good SEO and it is up to us users to make it happen. If we do it well, we will all benefit. First, because more people will discover Hive and second, because more users will also increase the price of Hive Coin.
If you do SEO (search engine optimization) for your posts, you will spend more time on your posts. Maybe even your upvotes will increase over time because your posts will be more readable and structured or will be found more often. In the long run, you will benefit from this because Hive will be found better via Google and co. So much for the "why". Now let's get to the "how".
Side note: I hope the translation fits. I'm afraid some things may not sound the way I thought. I used deepl.com to help me translate the post and tried to correct it. But maybe deepl is better in English than me? 😅
Write articles about Hive
If you write about Hive on Hive, you have a good chance to get more upvotes and you help the whole community. I have already tested this for you. One of my posts, the Hive Beginner Tutorial, even ended up in global trending. I really didn't expect that, but if you think about it, it was only logical that this happened, because a tutorial like that was simply missing on Hive. I put a lot of effort into the post and this was not only reflected in the many positive comments. My contribution was rewarded.
So Hive keeps its promise that good content is rewarded. And because Hive is still so new, it needs a lot of SEO and good contributions about Hive. That's why the Whales like to see good content about Hive.
I know some of you may be fed up with the topic, but when it comes to SEO, we are starting from scratch with Hive and are a clean slate for search engines. So it's no wonder that many hive related topics can be found in trending, as probably many whales have this background knowledge about SEO and therefore reward it with upvotes for a good reason.
Things you could write about
- Hive Tutorials - helpful information about all possible functions
- Hive tools - why and how to use them
- Games on Hive - why they're good and how to get better
- Hive Users - which one you should definitely follow and why
- Hive statistics - analytics and what these values mean or forecasts
- Hive market analysis - how the price could develop
- The future of Hive - what is currently being worked on or what features you would like to see
- Hive compared to other social media
You shouldn't just write about all this if you want to, you should also follow the SEO rules.
And of course you can also apply the SEO rules to all other posts.
How to get good SEO into the text
The texts should be structured. This offers advantages in terms of readability for humans and machines. Ideally, paragraphs should only be a few lines in size and be dedicated to the topic of the respective subheading. Under the current heading, I will only give very general tips on the topic, because the heading also sounds very general and not specific. It is practically the introduction to the topic.
For example, I write that one should pay attention to the density of information and not beat about the bush. People and also search engines recognize it when there is a lot of "blah-blah" in a text. It annoys people when the author doesn't get to the point. The search engine gives a worse evaluation because it can evaluate the density of information.
At the latest after a few paragraphs a subheading like the one below follows:
Formatting of headings for hive
Here the information becomes more specific. Subheadings are always smaller than the H1 heading. H1 is always just the name of your post. So the subheadings are either H2 '###' or smaller, also depending on their importance.
If you write a multilingual article, the section in another language can also have an H1 heading. It should be the name of your post in the other language.
It's best if your headings also contain one of the important keywords now and then.
Keywords in the text
When writing posts about Hive, you should, of course, include Hive relevant keywords (like blockchain, blogging, social media, etc.) in the text. The more often a specific keyword appears, the more impact it has. An important aspect is the keyword density. If you write normally, you don't have to worry about it much. It practically happens by itself.
But you should know that too few but also too many keywords can be bad for the ranking (the search results). Normal texts have about three to five percent keyword density. If there are more, this can be an indicator of spam for search engines.
Since I am writing about SEO in this article, Google assumes that it will also find important keywords on the topic. However, Hive is also an important topic in this article and therefore I naturally have to include keywords and information about it. I did this partly at the beginning of the post. Maybe you will notice it now that you have learned something about it.
Hashtags are important keywords
Under your posts you can place hashtags. A '#hashtag' is practically one of the main keywords and should appear once in each post. You can do this by using #Hive or #SEO as a hashtag in your post, or by using the bottom input field in the frontend when writing your post.
There are currently only 3 posts in Hive Trending about SEO! Let's change that!
The hashtag SEO must be among the first 5 in your post.
In the PeakD Frontend (highly recommended!) this line says "Add a new Topic". There you can add up to 10 hashtags. The most important one should always appear there first. In this case, it is #hive, because I want this post to be found by the Hive community. If i write my Post in german for instance i would use #deutsch as first tag instead, followed by #hive.
The hashtags are especially important for the internal search functions on social media because you can click on these hashtags and get more posts on the topic. So they work like links to a search for a topic. You can also add your own hashtags to your posts if you have a specific topic.
Of course there are also things that are more important than hashtags and the combination of all these things makes for good optimization.
Why you should have links in your posts
Links and backlinks increase the trustworthiness of a page or post. Hive curators also pay attention to whether your post names good sources and links. This is especially true if you are writing a scientific paper and, for example want to receive @steemstem Upvotes. But other curators also evaluate your contribution based on such details.
The difference between backlinks and links
In SEO we speak of links when we link within the same domain. So if I write a tutorial, I can mention and link other tutorials on Hive here. You should not link randomly, but always have a reference to the topic.
A backlink is a link that leads from outside (in this case) to Hive. So if I post a link to this post on Twitter, it is a backlink for Hive. Such links are especially important for the SEO.
Why you should have backlinks to your posts
If you use other social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Reddit, simply place backlinks to your latest post there. I always link my Hive Tutorials to Twitter and also add a Hive Hashtag to these Tweets.
Many roads lead to Rome. And that's why with every new path that leads to Rome (to Hive), the chances of new future users discovering it also increases. In addition, Hive will slowly but surely rise higher and higher in the Google Ranking the more often it finds links to Hive.
However, make sure that the backlinks are always topic-related and are not seen as spam by other users or search engines. Mass and senseless placement of backlinks seems unnatural and is recognized as such.
It would be even better, of course, if e.g. Wikipedia linked to Hive, since backlinks from large sites are rated higher.
Currently there is no Wiki entry for the Hive Blockchain. So if you want to do SEO for Hive and you are a Wiki author, it would be a good idea to write an informative article about Hive. Surely experienced Hive users or even Witnesses will help you if you ask them.
The language of images
Images are also part of the optimization. Since search engines or even blind people cannot see and understand pictures, a meaningful and informative naming of the graphic or picture is especially important.
So if you upload photos, it is best to name them beforehand so that they describe the scene. A file name like "IMG_23543" is logically not a good choice.
Source: Pixabay - social media network world people
For the description of images one normally uses the 'alt' tag. If and how this works on Hive I don't know either but having a descriptive filename is a good start.
Thank you @runicar for the inspiration!
Through @runicar's article about the importance of Hive SEO I was inspired to write this article.
Of course you can also write your own tutorials on this topic. Maybe you do it better or explain other things I might have missed. You can also link your SEO post here in the comments. I will give a 100% Upvote to everyone who makes an effort, even if my Upvotes may not be that big yet. I will certainly not be the only one who votes for it. ;)
Additional information about this post:
So you have an idea how long it takes to write such a contribution. For this post I spent about 4 hours at the PC. I worked a lot on the sentences and optimized them, did some research to make sure I didn't write any bullshit and read it twice and three times. I hope everything was understandable. Now I'm going to eat a snack. 🥨🍺
Of course, there are probably people who know more about SEO. Write about it yourself if you know more and let me know. I also like to link it here if it is a good contribution.
If you like my tutorials and would like to translate them into other languages, you are welcome to do so. A link to the original would be good. Beneficiaries are not necessary but I would be happy about it. 😘
More of my Hive tutorials:
Practical knowledge for Blockchain Beginners:
ENGL - DE - Principles of the Blockchain - Prinzipien der Blockchain
DE - Die Vor- und Nachteile von Hive - Gute Gründe warum du Hive nutzen solltest
ENGL - The advantages and disadvantages of Hive - Good reasons why you should use Hive