Hello Steemians! Recently 
It was unfortunate that I wasn't able to provide my SteemBlast Day entry on time. However, I think this is a very good initiative and should be a continuous effort. Hence, in this article I am going to write about why every business should use the Steem platform. Below is my pitch to all business owners on how the Steem platform can help improve their digital presence.
The Steem platform is a decentralized content creation platform. As a business owner, there are a few ways you can leverage it to enhance your online presence.
Key Concepts for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If you are a small business owner, you might be wondering why there isn't much traffic going to your website. In addition, you might be thinking about how to have your website ranked higher in searches.
All search engines rely on algorithms to rank websites for certain keywords. As the leader of searches, the main objective for Google is to ensure users get to find what they want based on specified keywords. Over the years, they have been evolving their search algorithm and now they believe that there are three main factors,
- Content
- RankBrain
- Links
Content is King
Google found that users like fresh and regular content. Hence, one of their key factors in ranking websites is to make sure that the site updates their content regularly. That is why many companies added blogs to their corporate site.
Another advantage of running a blog is that good articles has the potential of being shared over social networks. This will thereby improve the businesses' presence.
RankBrain - User Experience
Another key factor, which Google believes in, is user experience. A site might have the best content, but if the site doesn't even load or display the content properly, then users will not stay on the site. Hence, Google tracks key metrics such as site loading speed, mobile friendliness, content formatting, broken links and etc to determine a user experience score they termed as RankBrain.
Quality Backlinks
Finally, the last key factor in Google algorithm is the number and quality of external links back to your corporate site. In the past, backlinks used to be the primary factor for Google to rank your site. Now, it is less important but still it is among the top 3 factors.
Two Ways Using Steem Platform Helps Your Business
In my opinion, there are 2 ways to leverage the Steem platform to improve your businesses' online presence. First, crowdsource content for your corporate blog on the Steem platform. Second, using the platform to generate quality links back to your corporate website.
Content Crowdsourcing on Steem
Being a decentralized social-blogging platform, there are plenty of content and good authors on Steem. The Steem platform is designed to reward authors who produce good content with the STEEM cryptocurrency. At the point of writing, there are about 55,000 active users on this platform. This makes it an ideal platform for content crowdsourcing.
Here are some examples of successful crowdsourcing events:
These examples speak volume as to how businesses can make use of Steem platform to source for content which they need in a cost-effective manner. For many businesses (especially small ones), creating content isn't their core expertise. In order to keep their blog updated, much effort is required. Furthermore, since content creation isn't their strength, the articles they write may not be up to standard. Hence, I view the Steem platform as a viable solution to these business owners.
Building Links to Your Website
As a business owner whose website is not getting the traffic you want, creating a blog on the same website isn't going to help much. What you really need are links from quality sites that already have a relatively high Domain Authority.
Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.
Hence, I recommend that business owners start using the Steem platform for your corporate blogs instead. For a new website, you can expect your domain authority to be close to zero and considerable effort is required to even bring it up to ten. In addition, by posting on Steem, one single article will appear in at least 4 other websites,
- Steemit
- Steemkr
- Busy
- Steempeak
Let's take a look at their domain authority,
Steemit has a domain authority above 80, and it will take ages for you to build your blog to that level. There is also an added advantage to earn some STEEM just by posting your blog on the Steem platform. So, it is really a question of "why not?"
Summing It Up
The Steem platform is able to provide any business with two of the three key factors in Google SEO. This will help improve your businesses' digital presence greatly. There is seriously not much downside in trying it out and it might turn out to be a competitive edge over your competitors who have yet to do so.
As more businesses start to use Steem as their primary blogging platform, more value will be generated to audiences outside the Steem ecosystem. As a result of this, I expect STEEM price to reflect this increase in value.
Thanks for reading and I hope I managed to shed some light on how the Steem platform can help grow your business presence.
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