Occasionally, discussions arise in our Hive ecosystem about improving search engine optimization (SEO).
The questions we have to ask ourselves are:
- what are we trying to optimize?
- what do we try to achieve through these optimizations?
- is it feasible?
- is it worth it?
- etc.
What Are We Trying to Optimize?
There are a few possibilities:
- rank up Hive on search engines
- alternatively, rank up a more specific expression containing Hive (i.e. Hive Ecosystem, Hive.io, Hive Proof of Brain Mechanism, Hive Web 3, Hive Account Ownership, Web 3 Social Media, Hive Web 3 Censorship Resistance, Hive Blockchain Games, Hive Play2Earn, etc.)
- particular applications on Hive
- loading speed, particularly for home pages
- duplication - canonical links (question: if a post is created by one app and updated by another, canonical link changes to the latter?)
- SEO on frontends
- SEO on content
What Are We Trying to Achieve through These Optimizations?
Optimizations need to be focused on something. You can't concentrate on both ranking up an app on search engines and Hive or expressions containing Hive.
Splinterlands focuses on growing its brand both for humans and on search engines. Hive is mentioned, but they don't do SEO for Hive. They do it for Splinterlands.
Hive.io does SEO for Hive and related keywords and expressions.
Frontends that show user-generated content are somewhere in the middle. They are optimized (or not, which would be worse) for their own brand, while content written on them is all over the place, especially in the case of general-purpose interfaces.
Is It Feasible?
When you want to achieve something you gotta ask yourself if it's feasible. For example, it would be quite difficult to rank our ".io" domain above ".com", or even above the second-ranked result.
Is It Worth It?
Lately, there was a discussion about rebranding Leofinance as Threads or LeoThreads.
Threads can be a strong brand for short-form content. However, Leofinance is more than Threads, and even on the same interface it also includes long-form content too. For SEO purposes, it is very likely that long-form content is what will matter orders of magnitude more.
At the same time, there are 2+ years' worth of content and time working in favor of the Leofinance brand for SEO. That's why I believe Khal is right not to lean toward changing the branding for Leofinance.
Should Threads become more prominent visually? As in "Threads by Leofinance team"?
I don't know. Maybe it makes sense for short-form content. But once you hit the "Post" button or the Explore menu (probably Curated too, once it is added) a change of the name from "Leofinance" to "Threads by Leofinance" doesn't work. Unless this remains "Leofinance". See what I mean?
Conclusion
Users can have some influence regarding SEO. For example, What Is Splinterlands? from SplinterGlossary is ranking right below the splinterlands account on Leofinance.
But it doesn't rank well when searching "What is Splinterlands Hive" or just "What is Splinterlands?".
The highest influence remains in the hands of the devs and SEO experts tweaking websites. Plus in branding and choosing the right name that is easy to optimize.