Did Steemit.Com and Steempress Help my Google Rankings?

in #steem6 years ago

In November 18, after a year’s break, I started blogging again on my own website. The break meant I had lost momentum and traffic to the site needed to be rebuilt. I did a complete clean down of my email list that I had not used in a year and I felt the state of play was rather disastrous.

When I restarted the weekly blogs, I used my traditional routes to get the post noticed, Facebook, Linkedin, Udemy, Email list, and my Google+ Community.  Unfortunately in April Google+  closed down and leading up to this I was concerned about the traffic I would lose, as it did generate good traffic for me.

  

I was rather surprised by the increase in traffic when I started to blog again. Obviously sending an email list to a weekly post helps.  But what I found was that it was older posts that started to gain more traction and have continued to gain traction.  Some of my long tail keywords now rank in the top 5 on Google, which is rather amazing and seeing some posts rank 1 in Google search is, for me, a fantastic achievement.

I have been trying to figure out why and how I am doing so much better with Google search and Rankings.  A 65% increase in organic traffic on the same period last year is rather good growth, don’t you think?

 

When it comes to SEO and Google rankings and all that kinda stuff, it was never my strong point.  I didn’t change the content in the older posts that are now doing so well.  Something must have happened when I started blogging again to make Google start paying attention to me. 

Regular new content helps with SEO.  Direct traffic, (which I get via my email list) helps with SEO and strong backlinks help. 

And then it clicked. When I started blogging again, I did so using Steempress.  That means the content shared on my own website is also shared here on the steem blockchain and on steemit.com.  I was concerned when I started to do this as Google tends to penalize for duplicate content.  Steempress does, however, have ways to overcome this.  I have my options set so that only part of the post is shared on the blockchain with a link back to the full post on my website.  I think it is these linkbacks that have pushed me up in Google.

You see linkbacks from a website as strong as Steemit.com are weighted way above linkbacks from other blogs.  The Ahref Domain Rank for Steemit.com is 84.  I only have linkbacks from two other domains with a higher ranking and they were in place before I even took the break.

Obviously, I have no way to prove this is the case and I wonder if there are other steempress bloggers that have experienced something similar?  If others have experienced something similar, we should be using this as a key selling point to attract blogger to steempress.

Maybe you know about Google rankings and SEO and might be able to give me some insights???

Pinging some people that I think might know. @gmuxx @simplymike @fredrikaa @howo @inquiringtimes


Sort:  

There are many factors that determine the ranking of a blog on a search engine. A well-optimized blog, on-page SEO (on-site optimization) and off-page SEO (off-site optimization) will improve results in search engines.

On page SEO includes placement of heading tags, keyword selection, and complete content: there are images, infographics, videos. Off page SEO means strengthening backlinks to boost blog rankings, and share to social media.

Quality backlinks help to increase blog rankings in search engines. Quality backlinks for example come from large sites that have high DA / PA, Wikipedia, Medium, Quora or .edu sites, .gov and so on.

Then, what about Steemit and Stressress? In my experience, backlinks from Steemit helped boost the blog. The condition is that blogs that use Steempress to publish content to Steemit need to set a pause, for example 30 minutes after airing on a new WordPress blog appears in Steemit. Otherwise it will be considered duplicate content by Google and it will drop the rank of our blog in the search engine.

I think my on page SEO is good ( although I know it can be improved), but your experience is also that steemit helps boost the blog then I think it must be playing an important factor so.

I have been doing the same thing but with a website that is starting from scratch so I have nothing to compare with and do not have an extensive email list yet either... But i will take the part posting into consideration. I have always assumed that having backlinks from steem was a good thing for SEO and will continue to do so until indeed someone proves me wrong. Your post more confirmed it for me then anything else.

I think you shared a link with me before, can you share it again ( and grab that back link too lol)
I too am thinking these back links are worth more than I thought and the fear of duplicate content is not causing me a problem

yea, its cryptogoodies.com
I am slowly improving but I guess I am going to need some help on the layout as its all quite basic so far...

Your site looks fantastic. I will take a better look later on my laptop later. I see u have a free course, are you getting much traction?

Posted using Partiko Android

I have the link to the course but have had no traction so far, only prepared one lesson to be completely honest. Might be better to remove for the time being

Very promising website you have there!

thanks a lot, needs a lot of work but its a kind of hobby project for now and hopefully it can help some people with a little insight

I'm sure you will 👍

Well, you've received 8 new backlinks during that time from different domains 3 of which have a higher domain authority than your site. Steemit might also help since your posts are published across other dapps adding to your link profile but it won't do much going forward as the diversity of links is a very important factor.

In addition domain age also carries weight and over time your competiting pages bounce rates and time on site is evaluated and compared and you can move up the rankings.

If you ever wanted to guest post on our blog we'd be more than happy to have you submit a post, will do your domain a world of good :)

Some of the other dapps have a much lower ranking too, so these seem to offset each other. Gis a link to your blog ( and grab that steem back link now lol) I would love to take a look

I knew you could help cause you are into SEO full time.

As far as I know we don't have any option to add canonical links in our Steemit posts. If we could then we can easily repost the whole article from our website without worrying about getting penalized from Google. @paulag

Posted using Partiko Android

now that would be good :-)

I’m pretty sure the back links steem press is creating are doing the business for you, quality back links from a high ranking domain always lift content. Of course the quality and relevance of the content to the search term are important as well.

Posted using Partiko iOS

@revisesociology might have some answers on this too, or insight at least.

All I knew is I keep finding a number of my game reviews on the first page of google. So it’s got some amazing power either way. All Steemit urls blast! So no idea on the numbers :(

Thank you so much for participating in the Partiko Delegation Plan Round 1! We really appreciate your support! As part of the delegation benefits, we just gave you a 3.00% upvote! Together, let’s change the world!

Someone asked me earlier this week if using Steempress was bad for Google ranking, because of the fact that you have duplicate content. I honestly didn't know, and I had to go to the Steempress plugin description to find out that it doesn't affect your rank in Google if you use the delay-feature: if you set it to post on SteemIt 7 days after you have published the post on your blog, the article on your site is indexed first.

I didn't even think of posting only part of the content and using backlinks. It does make sense, though, since backlinks are a very important factor. I see @checkohler is an expert on the matter, so he has already answered your question.

I really need to start posting through Steempress again... :0)

Hi @paulag!

Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 8.095 which ranks you at #18 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has not changed in the last three days.

In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 208 contributions, your post is ranked at #1. Congratulations!

Evaluation of your UA score:
  • Your follower network is great!
  • The readers appreciate your great work!
  • Great user engagement! You rock!

Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.28
TRX 0.26
JST 0.039
BTC 94401.09
ETH 3366.31
USDT 1.00
SBD 3.37