Steemit SEO Guide and Checklist
I was going to start off the day spending some time creating a Steemit SEO Guide to give you all some tips on how to get your Steemit posts seen on Google. My keyword was to be Steemit SEO Guide. On searching my keyword on Google I found that 6 months or so ago I had created a post called Steemit SEO Guide - How to rank on Google and if you google the keyword phrase Steemit SEO Guide you will find my article ranks a very respectable no2 on page 1. So I have clearly already covered it very very.
Well yes I have but there are a few updates to report.
Steemit SEO Guide Updates
I would normally update the original post when I have updates to give on a specific article that I have written but as we knowSteemit has a 7 day window where you can edit your posts and my original Steemit SEO Guide is way, way past that window. I will however add the updates as a long comment on the original guide.
So the Updates
The first important change to note is that outbound links within your articles post body are now nofollow. Meaning that when Google visits your articles and finds the nofollow links, it listens to the request and doesn't follow the path of the link to it's destination. Now I understand why this change has been made because no doubt members abused their use of linking out by linking out everywhere and to anyone.
Google loves you to link out. But it loves you to link out to quality valuable content. And it doesn't want you creating content and linking out just for SEO juice. Now Google can't stop you doing this but it can penalize the domain your linking from and it can discount those links and even penalize your site.
So the nofollow rule is really just Steemit protecting the domain. And let's make it clear, nofollow links are not a bad thing, they still provide clickthrough and so although Google may not pass on juice or crawl the link and count it in your favour they will notice the flow of click through traffic.
Another very positive reason why nofollow links are good is that by default dofollow links are much more difficult to comeby organically and authenticly and that is why they are hugely prized by Google and help you rank so well. Because they are so much harder to get it makes sense that you would have a much larger total of nofollow links that dofollow. A large number of doffolow links would scream SEO foul play and get you pemalized. So you need lots and lots of nofollow links to bring balance to the SEO Force.
What is interesting is that old posts seem to carry dofollow links still. Whereas all new posts carry nofollow links.
It has become harder to rank posts now
I have written about this many times. Google loves you linking out to quality content because Google is all about providing the best user experience. Linking out to quality content works in your benefit in 2 ways
1/ It qualifiess what you are saying and offers possible alternatives
2/ It provides the user a way to find content that may well answer their search inquiry better than you have.
Google loves it when you help Google do its job.
It is much harder to help Google now because Google no longer recognizes that you are helping them because they have been told to discount the links when nofollowed.
Basically, dofollow links provide a ranking factor if used correctly and we no longer have that ranking factor.
However...
Links within comments remain dofollow so you can still get some link juice from the page. You could set up a
"My recent Post link" at the end of a comment to cover this.
Links to other Steemit pages remain dofollow so its still a great idea to internal link between your posts, so work out which articles are your Cornerstone content and link to those posts...
it is at this point I would link out to a top article with a do follow link that explains what Cornerstone content is to help Google but we will have to make do with a nofollow.
Cornerstone content is the content that you consider to be your best content. The content that you are most proud of that you want everyone to see. You link to it to send as many internal signals as you can to tell Google this is your best work.
Wrapping Up
That is all the updates covered. If you have any questions or comments then please leave them below. Do make sure you read through the comments, you may well find some useful links to related content