Cryptocurrency SEO
Cryptocurrency SEO or blockchain SEO is the process of increasing sales by getting your blockchain project website on the first page of search engines. SEO stands for search engine optimisation.
Out of the most popular search engines people use, Google has 90.4% of the market share, Yahoo has 3.07%, and Bing 2.64% in April 20221
There are 102,112 Google searches per second (as of 11th May 2022 7:45 pm GMT Internet live stats2) and on average 1.2 trillion searches per year3.
According to research by Hubspot, 75 % of people never go past the first page of search engines4.
And the first position on Google has a click through rate (CTR) of 31.7%5.
SEO is the process of optimising your website to appear higher in searches and is very important in getting customers online.
With the explosion of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based projects, it’s important to make sure your crypto business website appears on the first page of search engines.
This will ensure you get relevant organic traffic to your website to increase sales.
1: https://www.similarweb.com/engines/
2: Internet Live Stats: https://www.internetlivestats.com/one-second/#google-band
3: Smart Insights: https://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-marketing/search-engine-statistics/
4: https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/inbound-marketing-stats
5: https://backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats
Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn banned paid cryptocurrency advertising in 2018.
However, Google later that year allowed adverts for regulated exchanges and wallets in the United States registered with FinCEN and updated6 it in 2021.
Facebook also allowed some adverts later in 2018 as did Twitter.
Tiktok banned cryptocurrency adverts in 20217 and has banned8 influencers promoting cryptocurrencies9. However, they are going to allow some adverts shortly and currently testing the idea according to some sources10.
similarly, advertising is only available in the Microsoft advertising search network.
It is not available in the Microsoft audience network display and network advertising.
Also, advertising is limited to only pre-approved exchanges.
Similarly, only brand owners can advertise.
The ban is still in place for companies that are promoting ICOs and cryptocurrency wallets.
Likewise, websites that offer financial incentives for subscriptions or try to monetise advice are still banned
Spain targets crypto influencers on Twitter
On the 18th January 2022, Spain made Crypto influencers with 100,000 followers or more submit tweets promotions 10 days in advance (A. Zilber, 202212).
This is a big blow for cryptocurrencies because ads get your company at the top of search engine results pages above organic searches and higher in social media posts.
Paid ads give websites higher visibility and that’s why they can be expensive.
How has the crypto ads ban affected Cryptocurrencies?
You cant advertise Coins and tokens, and decentralised finance (Defi) services on Google Microsoft, Meta, Twitter TikTok and other platforms.
This means that many blockchain and cryptocurrency companies (except a few, and only on permitted channels) selling digital currency or crypto products are unable to advertise online.
Also, some nations and platforms discourage non-paid marketing of Crypto content.
Although it is possible to get huge audiences without ads, it does mean your project will have fewer ways to get visibility online.
You can use cryptocurrency SEO to get on the first page of search engines, and in the top 3 to get more visibility and organic traffic to your website.
6 Google: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/10688110
7 Bitcoinist: https://bitcoinist.com/tiktok-is-banning-influencers-from-promoting-cryptocurrencies/
8 Coin Journal: https://coinjournal.net/news/tiktok-bans-paid-crypto-promotion-on-the-platform/
9 TikTok: https://support.tiktok.com/en/business-and-creator/creator-and-business-accounts/branded-content-policy
10 Marketing Brew: https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2022/03/10/tiktok-is-beta-testing-a-program-to-allow-crypto-ads
11 Microsoft: https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/post/may-2022/cryptocurrency-exchanges-now-allowed-in-the-us-with-pre-approval
12 NewYork Post: https://nypost.com/2022/01/18/spain-starts-cracking-down-on-crypto-ads/
Cryptocurrency SEO
One of the most important ways to get relevant traffic to your site is to optimise your website for users.
Google uses many algorithms to understand user search intent (what the customer is looking for) to select SERPs to display.
Search engines then use metrics to score different pages for relevancy to a user’s search and select the highest scoring pages (unless culled).
This is usually a list of usually 10 pages but may vary and may include rich snippets and ads.
You can create and optimise high-quality content around relevant keywords and topics to get a higher SEO score.
Cryptocurrency SEO Ranking Factors
Latest on SEO
September 2023 helpful content update
Google improved its classification system to better identify high-quality, helpful content that directly answers user queries. Pages with thin, low-value content created primarily for monetization purposes saw declines.
The update targets sites hosting large amounts of third-party content unrelated to their purpose without close supervision. Google recommends blocking this content from indexing to avoid negative effects.
Changes to wording around “content written by people” indicate human-generated text is not strictly required. However, expertise and depth are still rewarded, especially for YMYL topics.
Adding or removing content primarily to manipulate freshness signals is ineffective and risks penalty. Focus should be on useful info for users, not search engines. Sites making major content changes should evaluate motivations.
August 2023 core update:
No update from Google.
May 2023 Topic Authority Update 12A:
Google introduced a new topic authority system that evaluates a site’s expertise and authoritativeness on specific topics.
Sites that show depth of knowledge, expertise, and reputation in a topic may see a rankings boost for queries related to that vertical.
This relies on machine learning models to determine topical authority.
April 2023 Review Update:
Originally referred to as the “product reviews system” but was changed to “reviews system” indicating this update targets all review content not just product reviews.
Looks at reviews of services, businesses, destinations, media, and other entities in addition to physical products.
March 2023 Core Update:
No update from Google.
February 2023 Product Review Update:
On February 23rd, Google expanded the update to include 10 more languages – French, German, Italian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Indonesian.
The international rollout completed on March 7, 2023 after a 14 day process.
On May the 25th 2022, Google introduced a new broad core update to its main algorithm (). There is not a lot of information about it from Google as of yet.
Also, Ahrefs’ has recently released a search engine called Yep, which shares 90% of profits with content creators and is privacy-focused. They use machine learning algorithms and rich results.
Apple is rumoured to be launching a new search engine (Spotlight) at the WWDC event in 2023.
Hummingbird
Neural Matching
Universal Search
Another algorithm involved in SERP selection in Google is Universal search.
This algorithm helps select featured snippets or rich elements.
This means you can optimise your pages using structured data to feature in SERPS().
There are several different types of rich snippets including news and image section.
Bing also uses its own Universal Search which is also used by yahoo and Qwant. Rich snippets go through a similar process of selection as organic links.
12A Search Engine Land: https://searchengineland.com/library/platforms/google/google-algorithm-updates
13 Danny Sullivan: https://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816
14 M. Ragu, 2021: https://www.shorturl.at/dlsC9
15 Danny Sullivan 2018: https://www.shorturl.at/jST28
16 Ben Gomez 2018: https://www.shorturl.at/byUV7
Page Rank Algorithm
Google uses AI and ML to understand and rate the quality of content.
AI is not as smart as human beings at understanding semantic language. They use Signals instead.
For example, they are not able to recognise as efficiently nuisances in language like exaggerations.
Page Rank was a precursor to Google, I.e Google was built based on the Page Rank algorithm (1999).
Page Rank is an essential signal that judges the quality of content. It ranks website pages for quality based on links from other websites.
Page Rank measures the score based on two factors; quality and quantity and assumes that pages with more links are of higher quality and are assigned a higher Page Rank score.
In other words, the more backlinks you have, the higher your Page Rank17.
Page Rank measures the importance of web pages in the knowledge graph and world wide web using a ranking system out of 10 where 10 is the highest score.
It is not possible to view your Page Rank score as the score was removed from public access some time ago.
However, the rating score is still in place.
Page Rank calculation takes around 5 hours but it does not crawl website pages with /cgi-bin/(1999).
Improve Page Rank
Use links from authoritative trusted sites.
Links from authoritative sites suggest your content is trustworthy and reliable in your niche.
For example, there are thousands of links to Uniswap Exchange (assumed by page Rank to be popular and authoritative because of that).
Links to Uniswap exchange include links from many sites with a lot of links themselves (authoritative).
Page Rank, therefore, assumes Uniswap to be a trustworthy source in its niche and hence scored higher.
Although we can’t see the page rank score for Uniswap, we assume that page rank scores Uniswap with a high Page Rank score.
Therefore, it may appear higher in search results and potentially get more customers for this reason. Provided other SEO factors are also optimised.
A new decentralised exchange that has been released recently and that has no links pointing to it will not have a high Page Rank score.
And will have a lower overall SEO score.
See how SEO calculations work.
So it is worth increasing your Page Rank score as it is one SEO factor (amongst many) that can help you appear higher in SERPs
Although Uniswap might not be a better product than the new dex, Page rank ranks pages with more links higher and, in its eyes, is an authoritative and trustworthy source in its niche.
Pages with a higher Page Rank score pass on more SEO juice to pages that they link to compared to pages with a lower Page Rank score.
So getting a link from a site with a high Page Rank score (a lot of backlinks) increases your own SEO score and Page Rank.
However, the higher the quality of the link e.g. from Uniswap, the more SEO juice your page gets compared to a link from a source with a lower Page Rank score (fewer backlinks) like a newly released DEX in 2022 (which will be considered as being a lower quality link).
Since Page Rank score cannot be viewed, people use scores that try to replicate Page Rank like Moz domain authority, Semrush score and Ahrefs scores although they are not the same as Page Rank.
The logic behind this is that more authoritative sites are less likely to give out misinformation or lies as their reputation is on the line. They have a lot more to lose and so are more likely to link to quality content.
Unknown entities may be linked to poor content
follow Links are a type of endorsement and so having many backlinks indicates your site is important in your niche.
You want to improve your Page Rank score as it will help you appear higher in SERPs.
If you have a new website or you are relatively established online, the process to increase Page Rank is the same.
If your Page Rank score is already really high then it becomes increasingly difficult to increase.
Then you may see progress slow down and you have to get links from sources with very high Page rank score to see small improvements.
Although, you may want to get links from Pages with lower Page Rank scores for other benefits such as more traffic, more sales and brand recognition.
Increase the number of Backlinks.
Get backlinks from pages with a lot of backlinks (high quality and authoritative) as they pass on more SEO juice than those with fewer backlinks ().
When creating backlinks from content, make sure your content is of high quality and is in long-form format (+1000 words).
Also, consider other factors with Page Rank.
Page Speed and trust are all major signals. Improve all SEO areas like choosing backlinks from sites that are trustworthy and relevant to your niche to maximise your SEO score.
RankBrain
Google also uses the machine learning system Rankbrain to try to understand user intent.
It is a deep learning AI system that helps Google understand the relationship between words and concepts; ideas behind words or the context().
For example, if you search “Buy Akita Inu” Akita Inu is a token you can buy, however there is also a dog species called, Akita Inu.
In Google, the first page SERPs show the Akita token. In Bing and Presearch, there is a mixed display with SERPs showing both Akita puppies and Akita tokens.
How does the search engine know what Akita I am referring to? Google seems to associate my search with the token and Bing and Presearch show both the token and the dog species in the results.
There is a lot of information in the knowledge graph and Rankbrains job is to understand the concept of the search and use the information available on different pages across the web to identify user intent.
So in the search “buy Akita Inu”, I was referring to cryptocurrency and not a puppy Akita, and in the search, it brought up pages related to the Akita Inu token only.
For the Akita dog, I searched just “Akita Inu” and the puppy was prominent across the first page SERPs with no token links in the SERPs.
Rankbrain is not a direct ranking factor but is involved in how search engine result pages (SERP’s) are chosen.
Rankbrain uses search text or voice search information and information it has on databases about the search term (entity) to try and understand what a user is searching for. Also, Google uses past search information and any other personal information that users may disclose to try and understand search intent.
Entities
Entities are unique identifiable concepts such as words, common nouns, places, words, names, numbers, temperature, places etc with unique ID’s stored in a database; the Knowledge Graph.
For example, John is an entity, Smith is an entity, and John Smith is an Entity.
There are several John Smiths and they are all entities each with a unique ID.
Search engines compile all information about entities like John Smith; such as age, location, etc and store them in the Knowledge Graph.
A lot of information is stored by Google including personal information.
Search engines like Google and Bing gather information about searched entities and their relationships to try and understand a user’s search intent.
For example in the search “where can I buy Shiba Inu”, search engines will know that Shiba Inu is a token traded on exchanges (the two entities are related) like Coinbase and Binance or decentralised exchanges like Uniswap and will bring up a list of exchanges in the SERPs.
Similarly, other entities such as information about the searcher like time and location are used, if available and if it proves to be useful, in identifying a user’s intent.
For example, if you search “buy Bitcoin”, your location may matter as in some places certain exchanges may be banned. This can affect SERP selection.
The location of the user can provide search engines with information which they may use to find the most relevant SERP’s.
Rankbrain Ranking Factors
- Relatedness: Entities that are closely associated or frequently occur together are related: Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are related. Also, Bitcoin, money, and technology are related; Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. The relationship between search entities is considered when assessing user intent and analysing which SERP to bring up.
- Notability: a score calculated by a formula which divides the contribution you have made; the number of links, reviews and prizes you have won, by the size of your sector. It could be described as authoritativeness in your niche (how much of a specialist you are). The more contributions like links, and good reviews you have and the smaller your niche, the more notable you are. Also, the more weight (SEO score) you are assigned for that particular factor.
- Contribution: Backlinks, off-page work, reviews brand mentions.
- Prizes: any awards you have won.
Depending on the content of the search, Rank Brain assigns different weights to individual factors to come up with the most relevant SERPs (those scored the highest) that best fit the user’s intent.
For example, in the search “what is the best Blockchain network”? the factor prizes, and contribution may be assigned more weight in search results.
Alternatively, the search for “what is the cheapest blockchain network for fees?”, Google tries to understand the relatedness of the entities and may look at the prices for gas fees across all SERPs.
For example, if there are a lot of articles suggesting one blockchain has significantly lower gas fees and is the cheapest then that information can be used to bring up that blockchain network in the SERPs.
Google may assign more weight to cheaper blockchain networks to bring up the most relevant results.
Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and TRUST (EEAT) Algorithm
The EEAT algorithm focuses on expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trust (Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SEG), P19)18.
It is not a direct ranking factor (more of an indirect ranking factor) but it is a guideline for how to rank well and it looks like it is a guideline on how to rank using the Page Rank algorithm; which focuses on high-quality links and high quality relevant content.
The factors expertise, experience, trust and authority affect how your page is rated. The more of EEAT your website has, the higher it is rated (back to reading about Page Rank).
EEAT also looks at the role of individuals in an organisation.
The algorithm mostly affects websites that are your money or your life I.e. whose advice or services can affect your money or your life; health wellbeing (SEG, p10)18.
For example, a doctor’s or psychiatrist’s advice can affect your life.
Similarly, sites that deal with money like e-stores, NFTs, DEXs, and exchanges that offer advice or services that can affect your finances are also YMYL.
The EEAT algorithm will affect these websites.
EEAT affects not only businesses, and websites, it also affects authors.
Content from expert sources or authors is scored higher for expertise.
Likewise, content from authoritative places; like Coinmarketcap or Coindesk for crypto-related news, is scored higher for authoritativeness.
Trustworthy sites like the New York Times18a are scored higher for trust authoritativeness.
If you are an author of YMYL content and you have little expertise i.e., qualifications, or authoritativeness (publications) and trust (publications or qualifications from trusted sources) which can be found in the knowledge graph or world wide web, then you will score lower for EEAT.
So if you are new to the market this may make it a bit more difficult for you to rank compared to established organisations or people (with a reputation) in the market.
Similarly, content from authoritative sources such as Yahoo News, or Bitcoinist is scored higher for EEAT compared to non-athoritative sources.
Other factors like, for example, links from a site with a low spam score (Spam is punished by giving your site a poor score by Pigeon algorithm) or citing scientific information also improve page quality rating and also trust score().
also, having mentions in authoritative places or by authorities in the industry can increase your EEAT score ().
Likewise, having good reviews increases EEAT and having bad reviews decrease EEAT.
How to improve EEAT SEO score
you can improve EEAT by increasing your authoritativeness in your niche.
For example, if you are an author then write many publications in authoritative and trustworthy places to increase EEAT.
Study and become qualified or accredited in your niche
18: https://www.shorturl.at/wDJLV
18a: https://www.mariehaynes.com/eat/
Bing Whole Page Algorithms – Darwin
Bing uses the whole page algorithms which use machine learning to choose which SERPs to show searchers.
Darwin is a part of the whole page algorithm that is responsible for choosing the rich elements in SERPs.
There are several whole page algorithms all with their own Darwin.
The SERP list is either going to be organic search results (blue links) or contain featured snippets (rich elements) and ads19a.
Like Rankbrain, the whole page algorithm tries to understand user intent so it can find the best links to show users.
Factors that effect SERP selection
In Bing, Darwin makes decisions based on relevance and also non-relevance factors like page format and monetisation.
for example, if the chosen SERPs have long URLs, the SERPs list may change to feature a cleaner more aesthetic SERP or get the right number of URLs on the page.
Also, factors like if user intent is clear or unclear effect which SERPS are displayed.
For example, according to Charmers from Bing, the more a search query’s meaning is understood, the shorter the SERPs will be and the richer.
Also, the more unclear the searcher’s intent, the richer and longer the SERPs will be.
Other factors could be prioritising paid ads when they are able to respond to users’ needs efficiently.
Rankbrain’s Relatedness, notability, prizes and contribution award system are closely related to the expertise, authoritativeness and trust (EEAT) algorithm which focuses on rewarding the most reliable, trustworthy and authoritative content with more visibility.
It is also closely associated with Page Rank algorithm.
Freshness Algorithm
The freshness algorithm is used to search for the latest information on a topic and used in the selection process where relevant.
It mostly affects information like prices, weather, and news. It also affects other content.
If you were to search what is the price of Bitcoin? the results show different information on search results at diffent times of the day and on different days as the newer information displaces the older information.
On the other hand, “what is the best APY for a stable coin?” UST had the highest yield for a stable coin up until May 2022.
However, on the 9th of May 2022 the UST coin was de-pegged from its $1 price. To get UST back to $1, users were incentivised to mint Luna tokens which increased the total supply and crashed its price.
The anchor project was generally considered one of the safest projects to invest in by the crypto community. Anchor Protocol was considered one of the best projects to invest in offering up to 20% returns on UST. $1,05 Billion in collateral (including Luna tokens) were liquidated in the anchor protocol according to the Block Crypto19.
The incident went viral on social media.
As of the 27th of May, 2022 Luna have launched a new blockchain. However much of the applications have migrated to Polygon.
The Freshness algorithm takes insights from the latest events and is a factor that can influence which SERP’s to display.
In the example search query “what is the highest APY for stable coin?” the freshness algorithm may add more weight to results that do not include the UST and the Anchor project. (Although thee site may score for other factors and SERPs which contain UST and Anchor).
However, the changes to SERPs may not be evident for these queries right away. Maybe in the future, the effect will be more noticeable. It seems that less weight is given to these searches for freshness compared to prices, and weather results.
Privacy decentralisation.
Google, Yahoo and Bing are centralised search engines and own user data.
Decentralised search engines like, Presearch and Cyber allow users to own their data.
This means no one else can have access to your information including third party corporations or even governments.
19: https://www.shorturl.at/bqsuv
Multitask Unified Model (MUM)
Another algorithm that tries to understand user intent better to determine which SERP’s to show is (MUM).
The AI enables multimodal searches; searching combined media like pictures and text at the same time in a multisearch.
Multisearch is available in the Google app.
You can use Google lens to take a picture (e.g. off shoes) and add text to the picture like where can I buy these “shoes” in a search.
MUM is an upgrade of BERT that is 1000 faster.
MUM has the capability to understand over 75 languages and also can understand different media types like text and images and later will be able to understand videos and audio.
So MUM can recognise information from a video like that it is a tutorial on buying tokens.
Soon you will be able to do a multi-search with videos and audio.
In cryptocurrency SEO, if you optimise media (video, audio, and images) with schema, your URL can come up in multisearches of multimedia.
E.g. if a user is searching a bitcoin logo and “where can I buy this” using the Google app, your URL may show up in multisearch results.
MUM uses machine learning to identify user intent, it is not a direct ranking factor but implementing some schema to markup the multimedia will be picked up by MUM.
Also using podcasts, videos will be looked at by MUM when the update is released.
To score your page better optimise your content with the right multimedia to get a better chance of feat in SERPs.
E.G, including images with the right schema.
Pathways and LIMoE
20: https://www.shorturl.at/iHJW6
21: https://www.shorturl.at/rsCU7
Mobile First
With the Mobile-First algorithm, mobile sites are scanned by Google to index and rank website content instead of the desktop version. Mobile websites are used to determine if they are relevant to a user’s search.
This is because most users use a mobile device to search.
In the past desktop, versions were used in indexing.
Making your website mobile friendly is an important part of creating a good user experience; make sure your site is responsive and fast.
Some of the ways to optimise for mobile websites are:
Content
The content on the mobile page should be the same as the content on the desktop page (titles, text, file names and captions).
use the same headings in content.
Use the same metadata for your desktop and mobile sites.
Use the same metadata on both your sites e.g. headers titles alts.
Lazy Loading
Ads
Avoid using ads at the top of mobile pages as they can be bad for user experience.
Images and semantic markup
Images should be of high quality and in a supported format (Google recommends serving images in next-gen format.
Also note, Google23 doesn’t index .jpg images in tags in SVG files.
Make sure images are clear and sharp. You should include image descriptions, titles, captions, file names and alt texts in your images.
Also, use image sitemaps.
Use semantic markup which is a lot more descriptive.
For example, use HTML like instead of
Avoid CSS in images as they are not indexed by Google.
Make sure your videos are in a supported format and the URLS do not constantly change.
Also, use the same descriptions and titles on bot versions of your site.
22 https://www.shorturl.at/tCLSU
23 https://www.shorturl.at/dwyJV
Separate URLs for Mobile sites (m-dot)
If you use a different URL for mobile and desktop sites, here are some best practice guidelines from Google23.
- The error status for your mobile site should be the same as for your desktop site: If there is an error on the mobile site while the desktop version is fine, this page will NOT be indexed.
- You should not have fragment URLs on your mobile site.
- URLs with fragments (end of the URL starting with #) are not usually indexable and the page will not be indexed according to Google.
- Content on the desktop version should have a mobile version equivalent.
- Any missing mobile pages will not be indexed even if you have a desktop version.
- Redirects are not enough to get your mobile page indexed.
- Make sure to Have both sites indexed on Search Console
- Hreflang URLs should be different for desktop and mobile.
- The mobile site should be able to meet the demands of increased traffic by having sufficient server capacity.
- Have the robots.txt files on your sites functioning as you would like them to: Usually the same for both website versions.
- Make sure you use the right rel-canonical and rel-alternate for the different URLs of the desktop and mobile versions of the same page.
59% of shoppers said using a mobile phone to shop was important when choosing a brand or retailer 23.1 (Google Ipsos)
23: https://www.shorturl.at/akqJ8
23.1: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-trends/mobile-shopping-brand-decision-statistics/
HOW GOOGLE CALCULATES SEO SCORE
Google assigns weight to factors that contribute to SEO score and multiply them to produce a final result (bid).
Topicality | Quality | Speed | Entities | Struct-Data | Rankbrain | Freshness | MUM | Pagerank | Bid | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 750000 |
|---|
For example Page Rank, EEAT, Freshness and multiply them producing a final score25.
The higher score. (click to go back to reading about Page Rank)
Since the scores are multiplied, If one score is 0 then the final score is 0.
Topicality | Quality | Speed | Entities | Struct-Data | Rankbrain | Freshness | MUM | Pagerank | Bid | 3 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 |
|---|
It is important to score well in all the areas of SEO. This demonstrates the importance of optimising all elements of SEO.
Topicality | Quality | Speed | Entities | Struct-Data | Rankbrain | Freshness | MUM | Pagerank | Bid | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 750000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 300000 |
3 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 150000 |
3 | 4 | 0.2 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 30000 |
Rich elements also compete with blue links to get on the first page. if they are considered more suitable in meeting the users needs then they are selected in place of some of the blue links.
Results | Web | News | Images | Featured Snippet | Video | Tweet | Bid | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 750000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 300000 |
3 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 150000 |
3 | 4 | 0.2 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 30000 |
25 Search Engine Journal: https://www.shorturl.at/eFJKW
User Experience Factors
Human Raters
Google uses human raters to give feedback about pages and to rate pages for relevance.
Bing has human judges for each rich element or snippet type.
Google and Bing both say the ratings do not directly impact rankings.
However, Google says that it uses feedback from human raters to check if the algorithm is working as intended and ratings may help shape the future of algorithms26.
Bounce Rates
If your content is not relevant then site visitors may exit or bounce.
One way to tell if your content is relevant is to check bounce / exit rates.
Bounce rate is when site visitors leave your site without clicking a link or visiting another page.
Exit rates are when visitors click on another page and exit without signing up or converting.
If you have a high exit rate it may be because your content was either not relevant or they couldn’t find what they were looking for.
You can try to find out why.
Maybe the visitor was not interested in the information on your website.
Search engines will punish your site for being poorly optimised, and not having relevant, quality information, that meets user intent.
Bounces are not a ranking factor, but they can be a measure of engagement.
The opposite is dwell rates which is how long a person stays on your site.
It is an indicator of how relevant your content is. Dwell rates are a signal Bing watches to determine the quality of a page27 and can improve your SEO score.
Google say it is not a part of Rank Brain, and that its not a ranking factor.
But it is used to measure if their algorithm is working as intended or going in the right direction through human-rater feedback.
However, in Bing user behaviour like clicks, dwell time and bounces are computed by the machine learning system Darwin which is a part of the whole page algorithm. It decides which organic link (blue link) appears in SERPs or if a rich snippet can displace a blue link27a.
Google uses Universal search to choose which snippets to feature.
It is not clear if stats like click-through rates (CTR) bounce rates, indirectly play a part in Google since Google and Bing are similar.
Also, If you are optimising for Bing, then you are automatically optimising for DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Qwant which are powered by Bing.
27 https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2011/08/02/how-to-build-quality-content
27a: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/bing-whole-page-algorithm/368850/
Keyword Research: Voice search
Voice search is important in keyword research because voice searches are becoming more and more popular.
A study commissioned by Google to North Star Research28 found that “55% of teens and 41% of adults use voice search more than once a day”.
Similarly, an online article29 mentions that 40.2% of the US use voice search.
Similarly, according to Google30, 27% of the globe is using voice search.
In April 2022, global mobile searches were 58% for mobile and 39.5% for desktop, 2.46% was for tablets.
You can find out what people are saying or writing to find the crypto or blockchain products you offer by analysing search data from search engines.
You can generate a list of important keywords and then optimise your site with the keywords list you generated.
If your content is built around the keywords and related keywords and is of high quality content, then it may appear higher in SERPs for those search terms provided your overall SEO is good.
And depending on other factors like how long you have been doing SEO.
Newer websites take some time to increase their SERP position.
This will get you more opportunities to get clicks from people asking specific questions as your page seems to best answer it.
The top three pages have the highest click through rate (CTR)30a.
With position one clicked the most (position 1 CTR of 31.73%, position 2 CTR of 24.71%, and position 3 CTR of 18.66%).
The second page hardly gets any clicks with only 0.78% CTR.
Also, by optimising your title (an SEO ranking factor) and meta descriptions with keywords, users can see exactly what you offer on the search results pages.
That improves users’ ability to understand what your page is about increasing CTR.
28 NorthStar Research 2014: https://blog.google/products/search/omg-mobile-voice-survey-reveals-teens/
29 Orbelo: https://www.oberlo.com/blog/voice-search-statistics
30 Google 2018: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/search/voice-search-mobile-use-statistics/
30a: https://backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats
Content: high-quality relevant content
Search Engines focus on understanding user intent and matching search queries with the most relevant content. Google’s EEAT algorithm affects content. Content must be:
- High quality. Content should be of a high standard.
- Relevant to your project.
- In long-form format.
- Address user intent.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the technical elements of your site that affect search engine optimisation.
For example, meta data, first content paintful (FCP), page speed, duplicate content and thin content.
These elements, and more, affect SEO and often require some technical skill to optimise.
Make sure your site is structured in a way that search engines can easily index and find your content.
This includes the site’s loading speed, mobile-friendliness, and more.
One of your main goals should be to fix all errors on your crypto site for a good SEO strategy.
One poor score like page speed can damage your whole SEO rating as drastically.
Core Vitals
First Content Paintfull
First Content Paintfull (FCP) is the time it takes for the user to see the first meaningful content on the page. It is measured in seconds and is a key factor in gauging user experience.
Speed Index
Speed Index (SI) is a measure of the perceived page load speed and is calculated by measuring how quickly the content of a page is visibly populated.
Largest Content Paintful
Largest Content Paintful (LCP) measures how long it takes for the largest content element on the page to be painted. A good LCP is <=2.5 seconds, needs improving is <=4 seconds and poor is >4 seconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is a metric that measures how much content shifts around on the page. It is calculated by measuring how much unexpected movement occurs during page load.
First Input Delay
First Input Delay (FID) measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page to the time the browser is able to respond to that interaction.
Interactive Next Paint
time to first Byte: (TTFB)
Time to first Byte (TTFB) is the time it takes for the first byte of a response to be received from the web server. It is a key metric in gauging the performance of a website.
Perfomance Ranges
Good | Needs Improvement | Poor | |
|---|---|---|---|
LCP | <=2.5s | <=4s | >4s |
FID | <=100ms | <=300ms | >300ms |
CLS | <=0.1 | <=0.25 | >0.25 |
30b: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en
Other technical areas
CSS & JS rendering
Render blocking resources can cause your page to load slower, which will hurt your SEO rankings. This is because Google takes into account page loading speed when ranking your page. To fix this, you should try to reduce the number of render-blocking resources, such as JavaScript and CSS files. You can do this by combining multiple files into one or by minifying your files. Additionally, you should try to reduce the amount of unused CSS on your page, as this will also help reduce the number of render-blocking resources.
Excessive Dom Size
Excessive DOM (Document Object Model) size can cause your page to load slower, and reduce your SEO rankings. To fix this, you should try to reduce the amount of DOM elements on your page. You can do this by removing any unnecessary elements, such as JavaScript libraries, images, and other elements that are not needed. Additionally, you should try to use cleaner HTML code to reduce the amount of DOM elements.
Thin Content
Thin content can hurt your SEO rankings as it is not seen as valuable by search engines. To fix this, you should try to add more valuable content to your page. This could include adding more detailed descriptions, adding more images or videos, or adding more relevant links.
Duplicate Content
Headers
Meta Data
Meta data is a key part of SEO, as it helps search engine crawlers and people understand what the page is about. If the meta data is not properly configured or optimised, it can lead to poor click through rates as people may not understand what your page s about. Also Google search engine uses relevance is a ranking factor to determine which pages to show.
XML Site Map
An XML sitemap is a file that helps search engines find and index pages on the website. You should make sure that you have an XML sitemap that is up-to-date and contains all of the relevant pages on your website. Additionally, you should submit your sitemap to Google Search Console so that it can be indexed by Google.
Page Speed
Page speed is an important ranking factor in SEO.
Here are some stats to demonstrate how critical having good page speed is to your business.
- A one second delay in mobile page speed can drop conversion rates by 20% 33b(back to reading about page rank).
- As elements used in mobile sites increase from “400 to 6,000 the probability of conversion drops by 95% 34(Google, 2017).
Optimise your blockchain technology website speed. If you use Next JS front end for your Decentralized application (Dapp) then you might want to use server-side rendering to make sure your page loads fast.
The website loading time will impact the user experience of your site. The faster it loads, the less likely people are to leave and the higher it is ranked.
Page speed is a vital feature of SEO.
Also, Poor site speed leads to high bounce rates. High bounce rates could affect your ability to feature on SERPs in Bing although in Google it may not.
33: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/large-site-managing-crawl-budget
33.1: https://yoast.com/how-to-use-headings-on-your-site/
33a: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/
33b https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/mobile-site-speed-tools-improve-conversions/
33c https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks-elements-reduce-conversion/
Image optimisation
- Compress images. You can use a lazy loader or other compressing tools. But beware to maintain good image quality31.
- Google recommends using WebP, JEPG XR and Jpeg 2000 and other next-generation32 image types as they save space and increase site speed. Some formats are not compatible across browsers so two copies of images may be required on your server.
31 https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/google-images#good-quality-photos
32 https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/42193911/serve-images-in-next-gen-formats?hl=en
Rich Elements
Rich Elements are sections from web pages that are selected by Google to answer a user’s search query. Search engines provide these snippets to help users find information on a topic. In the snippet, the search engine links to the web page that answers the search.
By getting on featured snippets, your page can appear at the top of search results referred to as position 0 right above page 1. More people can find your page in a search query getting you more traffic and more sales.
Different Types of Rich Elements
- Featured Snippet
- Image Pack
- In-Depth Articles
- Local Pack
- Local Teaser
- Top Stories
- Reviews
- Site Links
- Videos
- Featured Tweet
- Google Ads Top
- Google Ads Bottom
- Knowledge card
- Knowledge panel
- Related Question
- Shopping Results
How to Feautre In Rich Elements
To get on featured snippets you must meet some criteria.
Use schema markup
- Have high-quality content
- Use relevant crypto keywords and voice search phrases in text
- Structured Data
The content structured should also be in the visible data or it may be considered as spam by Google. Json-ld is preferred by Google.
Structured Data - Schema markup
Bingbot has a big influence on how content is rated by algorithms. Content with schema markup have a advantage and are more likely to appear in SERPs in riche elements.
Overall the use of HTML tags, schema, (structured data) throughout the page (like blocks) is important.
Schema markup is a way to enhance the functionality of web pages by the use of structured data. Structured data can be seen in the form of microformats, RDFa, and JSON-LD.
JSON-LD is preferred. Although Microdata maybe useful to future proof changes you make like prices.
you want to use schema markup so that the purpose and content of your website is clear to search engines.
This allows search engines to find out more information about your website and bring up your content in special sections at the top of result pages.
Google uses Rank Brain to rank pages and also decide if Snippets should be shown instead of blue links.
And Bing uses Darwin to select features snippets.
LINKS
There are two different types of links; follow and no-follow links.
Follow links pass on SEO authority to the linked page.
No-follow links hint to search engines you do not endorse the third-party website and search engines may choose to pass on SEO authority.
Similarly, there are two types of no-follow links; a sponsored link and user-generated comments (UGC) link.
Sponsored links tell search engines the link is sponsored, e.g. an affiliate link, or a paid link like a guest post. UGC links are used to tell search engines that links in comments for example in a forum or a blog are not endorsed by the website.
Internal Links
Internal links help improve site usability. People should be able to navigate your website and find what they are looking for easily and in the shortest possible number of steps.
Internal linking is a link to a page from one of the site’s pages.
Linking to a page from a page on the same site helps to improve site usability because it allows users to find what they are looking for easier.
Internal links pass on SEO authority to the linked pages.
having too many internal links dilute the amount of SEO authority passed on to each individual page.
It is recommended to have no more than 100 followed internal links per page.
Outbound Links - External Links
Outbound links are links from your page to an external website.
You can use a follow link to a page you trust as a follow link signifies trust.
However, You may not want your domain to endorse some outbound links on your website, for example, if you want to write about a rug pull.
A no-follow link hints to search engines you don’t want to endorse the link.
International SEO
International SEO is the process of optimizing your company’s website so that it ranks higher on search engines around the world.
It can be used to engage with a specific target audience.
One of the important factors in interantional SEO is language.
You can create your content in another language so that users from countries can interact with your content.
You will be able to have a larger audiance and more custom.
One thing to consider is that if you translate text to another language using a translating software, they may make mistakes and may lead to misunderstandings and poor SEO score.
It is best get someone who speaks the language to translate or double check the content.
You need to use hreflang metadata and It’s important that you choose one language per subdirectory.
Also do keyword research for your specific target country, the keywords and search terms used may not be the same internationally.
Keywords may be in another language and may not translate well with translation apps. Or native local dialects maybe in use.
Keyword research can help you find the right keywords. However, you may require a translator.
There are several ways to do International SEO:
Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD)
Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD)
A generic top level domain is for example .com, .biz, .co etc. It should be geo targeted in Bing Webmaster tools and Google search console.
It is Particularly useful when content changes for different countries. For example content changes like pricing and products in Ecommerce where different products are sold for different prices.
Also, content may be in another language.
Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD)
A ccTLD is a domain name that is associated with a particular country. For example, the ccTLD for the United States is dot.us. E.g. https:www.binance.us.
pros of ccTLD Provides a Strong signal to search engines that the website is targeting a specific country like the United States (www.Binance.us). A .us domain will allow your website to show up in US searches. a normal .com domain does not specifically target a country and so wont have extra visibility in the US for example.
cons of ccTLD you have to optimise for each country separately. SEO rank juice is not transferred to a new country domain.
Subfolder Domain
subcategory domains use subcategories instead of a new TLD. For example, you have Kraken.com/en/uk, Kraken.com/es/es. Each subcategory is for a separate country.
You need to use href language metadata for different languages. Or Geo targeting parameters in Bing Websmaster Tools and Google Search Console.
Pros:
Passes on SEO juice so you keep page Rank ad SEO rankings internationally.
Cons:
The signal to search engines like Google is not as strong as a ccTLD.
Subdomain
Subdomains can be used to categorise different countries on the same ccTLD.
For example uk.indeed.com, it.indeed.com.
They act as a separate website on the same ccTLD.
Pros:
Cheaper than ccTLD.
Cons:
The root domain does not pass on SEO juice to subdomains
Video SEO
SEO for videos is similar to normal SEO in that the content should be relevant.
The content of your video should be relevant to the keywords and descriptions you provide.
Some of the ranking factors for video SEO are:
- Keywords in titles
- Optimising for User intent (meta descriptions)
- Engagement level: follows, comments and watch duration.
Conversion Rate Optimisation
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the process of developing a website or a page to be as effective as possible in converting visitors into customers.
CRO can be called the science of turning visitors into customers. This is because It involves studying data, forming hypotheses, and conducting tests to find out what tactics work. It is data-driven.
Some of the key ways to improve conversion rate optimisation (CRO) are:
- call to action in the right areas of your page.
- Use the relevant keywords. Use long-tail keywords (ltk). Remove negative keywords from your list during keyword research.
- Include prices in meta descriptions. If a user clicks on a link with a relevant meta description that includes your prices, they may want to buy. Especially when prices are lower than competition. Conduct A/B test to see if this works.(Google)33
Also, you want to remove anything that gets in the way of conversion.
For example, extra steps at checkout pages.
Conversion rate is the number of people who visit your site and perform a conversion action out of your total traffic.
33 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2404198?hl=en
AB Testing
If your site is well optimised, with metadata and you have relevant content you should have relevant traffic to your website for converting.
You can make a better hypothesis about your conversion rates when only relevant traffic is coming to your site.
This is because you can rule out irrelevancy as another factor. I.E. the customer was looking for different product or service.
You can use data from relevant traffic (people interested in your product) to find out which pages are converting well and which ones not so well.
If you have multiple pages.
If your titles and descriptions are clear, and they click, you can conduct scientific tests to try and find out why they are not converting.
Reasons why people may not convert: price, quality, content(not enough information, unclear), speed, poor SEO, maybe they are not looking to buy now, comparing, reputation (rev, coverage (brand-awareness, reviews trust) in the market (improve EEAT): improve those.
Other factors, maybe you are not targeting right, right locations, people are missing out)
Use email marketing to follow up possible people not looking to buy now. not ready t buy now email subscribe. Ecommerce.
You can make changes to see If this helps.
You can conduct A/B tests to see if your changes improve conversion rates (CTR).
Also, you can make changes to improved pages to see if you can get even better results by making more changes. keep making more changes to continually improve results.
You can focus on improving poor performing pages by using a call to action. You can use sales techniques in your call to action like scarcity or urgency. The more scarce an item is, the more valuable it is perceived (Caldini, 2008)
You can have special offers and discounts to attract customers. making changes to the title, meta description. other elements of your page to find out the problems and
FAQ
Results can be seen between 4 months to 12 months depending on different factors.
Yes we do. Visit blockchain development.
No we don’t have a token.
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