Introduction
In the previous two parts of this series on "Steemit SEO", we talked about planning your infrastructure and publish high quality content. Today, I am going to touch on how to use headers, styles and anchor texts in the context of a reader's experience and SEO. If you enjoy the content of this series, I suggest that you follow me as I am trying to publish daily on the topic of SEO.
The Search Engines Wants it's Users to Have a Good Experience
Google, Bing and others wants the people who use them to have a good experience. They want them to find exactly what they want. For that, the search engine is becoming increasingly capable of predicting what users like and what an article is about as well as spotting those who try to manipulate the SERP(Search Engine Ranking Page) for their own benefit.
In the good old days, in was simple to rank. We just stuffed pages with anchor text, headers and style with our target keywords and create at a push of a button 25000 backlinks to websites and directories around the internet. Not anymore.
Using Headers, Styles and Formatting for SEO
It's For Better Reading And SEO
On steemit you can use markdown or html tags for headers, styles and formatting. Using them helps both the search engine and your readers to understand your article better and create a more enjoyable experience.
How to Use Headers
Headers are the building block of your article. They help the readers know what is most important about it and jump to the part of your article that is most relevant to them. H1, H2, H3 are hierarchical which mean that they are used by the search engine to understand the major points of your article hierarchically.
For example on steemit.com, the title is by default the H1 of your article. Having multiple H1 may confuse the search engine about what the article is about in the first place. This is why, in the article that you are reading right now, I only use H2, H3 and H4 since the H1 is already taken by the title.
Note: There is no issues at using multiple H2, H3 and H4.
How to Use Styles Properly
Bold and italics can also be used to highlight your particular keyword. But in the context of a fun article to read, I wouldn't overdo it. There are sections of your article that you want to emphasize...and this is what styling is for.
Use Your Keyword(s)...But Not Too Much
If you are looking to rank for a keyword, make sure you are using it in the title of your article as well as in your headings...but be careful of not overdoing it. The search engine despise keyword stuffing.
People don't talk in keywords and it's very easy to overdo it. Instead, try to find related terms and synonyms to help your article feel more natural. The consensus around the keyword density is between 0.5 and 2.5%. If you are curious, you can calculate the keyword density of your article by entering it in this online tool.
Anchor Texts
Anchor texts is the text that you use in a link. Whenever search engine looks at what is the text used to link to an article, it helps it found out what the article or website is about. The mistake people make is to over optimize those. It is good to have the keywords in there but the search engine can recognize when it is overdone.
If you are using Steemit.com to rank your personal or business website use:
- Your Brand Name
- Use Your Keywords
- Use Synonyms of Those Keywords
- Use a variety of "click here", "read more", etc.
Conclusion
Tomorrow, I am going to cover other aspects of SEO. Most likely, we will go over the first steps you can take to start building backlinks to your website. If you enjoy the content of this series, I suggest that you follow me as I am trying to publish daily on the topic of SEO.
My day job consists of about 80% SEO work on the company website. I have to say @cryptoctopus, this is one of the most succinct and accurate articles I have read on the power of proper formatting for improving rank. Definitely wish I would have found something like this eight years ago when I first started. Thanks for the great work.
I love panda's! Never knew they could type!
Pandas can do anything with the proper tools. I have a special keyboard designed for my less than agile paws that allows me to type like the wind. Not sure if you already knew this, but we pandas are able to run at 20 mph. So you can imagine how fast we can type.
You are hilarious. I love your sense of homor.
The more you Upvote me @bigpanda, The more I will be singing panda panda panda by Desiigner!
I wish you would do this on video and then post it, it would be spectacular!
good joke bigpanda.
you have only 5 vote and you earn 2.59$, how???
The people that upvoted his comment have a lot of SteemPower!!!
any news on the do follow threshold? :)
thanks for the reminder. Here is the ticket: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/issues/1592
closed by roadscape, without a definite answer...
What do you recommend that people do ? This was really the most informative article I've read since being on steemit @cryptoctopus
I still have difficulty, some of my articles are alright and some fail to get even any attention. 700 followers and still no hype on my account
@journey I have the same problem.
Keep publishing good content. People will put you on their "auto-vote" on you when they see that you are a consistent producer of good content. If you are being here for two months, its too early to quit :-)
@cryptoctopus how do I add you to my auto-vote list... what bot do you use?
Yes that's true , even on bad days , I try to tell myself it's alright and that I'll eventually work my way up (:
This guide is amazing, I would love to have some feature in steemit to save posts! But I guess I can always come back here^^
Thank you for sharing @cryptoctupus, I will applying these tips and looking forward for the next ones :)
which tips are you using? can you tell me ?
Thanks, cryptoctopus ! As a translator and copywriter I write everyday and I've learned quickly that formatting is as important as the content, especially when writing a marketing article.
i m new here please guide me.
Well, you learn something every day. I've been guilty of using h1 in the body of the text. I won't make that mistake again.
Done the Steemit Holy Trinity
Follow
Upvote
Resteem
:-)
The styling and formatting helps users find information quickly if they want to skip across the article.
Formatting also helps with making an article look "like quality" and the user will think the author has spent some extra time to make the article very presentable. This in turn helps with keeping bounce rates low as the user is more inclined to stay and read the article.
I mostly use H1 or H2 for the most part. H2 mostly for the other sections. The headers after H3 is a bit much for short articles, perhaps better use for long written pieces.
What would you suggest for people who are just looking to engage with everyone and build a community?
Like I am just here to connect with everyone and add value to the community. And maybe talk to a hell lot of entrepreneurs and help them with their business.
And I am also going to post content on various niche, which are in my field of interest. Like marketing, AI, cryptocurrency, business development, motivation, entrepreneurship and self-development.
Would you please suggest what shall I do?
Then I wouldn't bother about SEO so much for now. Write articles and connect on steemit.chat. Once @zappl is out, you can start using steem like a twitter app and connect that way.
Very helpful @cryptooctopus . After almost a month on steemit I continue to pick up new things every day :) Wish the user-interface included a short tutorial for beginners to help raise the level of content from the start.
Any help perfecting the format ir highly appreciated tho :)
This definitely IS NOT newbie tutorial but a professional SEO Tutorial simplified by his author @cryptooctopus :D But I love the idea :)
Hey thanks so much for this! Reading through all 4 parts now.
(I'm on the esteem app and it won't take my upvote right now - will make sure to come back on my laptop and fix that!)
Never knew the headers have an SEO effect. Nice! @cryptoctopus
This was very useful as SEO is the main thing everyone work upon
This will help a lot,Thanks for sharing this with us
Glad to be learning that SEO has an affect on the posts impact through a search engine. I am learning to organize my posts better and deliver the information in an understandable way. I am uploading videos soon and will be doing product reviews for aviation, as well as information and /fun vloging and photography. I am following you to learn better ways to improve my content on Steemit, thanks for your help and support.
I'm here to learn and your post is about exactly I want to know. Thanks! I think there are many who want to read it so I will resteem right now!
As an agency owner I usually work with white list seo services and don't really use there best practices on my own content here. This is awesome to have as a guide. I'm resteeming this so I can always find it on my feed. Thanks for the share.
Thank you @cryptoctopus. This is a great help for the new steem users like me. I always wanted to style my article but I had no idea then. This post helped me alot. Hope for more informative post from you. Thank you.
Great post! @cryptoctopus ! I actually know about SEO but the lag of designing opportunities my post I tend to misuse the headers. Thank you very much for reminding me what they actually for. Hopefully, Steemit will improve soon.
This is awesome post ,thank you and very inyeresting and usefulo thank's
On vacation so havent had a chance to steemit as much but wanted to thank you for the imformation (will read it later) and i think try and start seeing if i can get a niche page to a certain page rank.
It is really nice to see how well you can use SEO on STeemit. I haven't really done much with that yet but I guess it is worth thinking about it. Particularly since we cannot edit old articles anymore.
Formatting is always my fav! That's how you make an odinary post into a marketing tool!
After a long time figuring out how to write a good content on the blog steemit. I finally found and understood with your explanation.
Thank you, this is very helpful to me and my community friends in writing in blog steemit. I will continue to follow your post.
@cryptoctopus - great stuff for Public Masses :) Idealistic way of getting more web developers to the market of Steem! Upvoted and resteemed!
Btw, isn't target keyword density 2-4% ?
Cheers
Lucifer
not according to yoast: https://yoast.com/keyword-density-post-panda/
My bad, as the post said, no more since December 2016 :) We've outsourced SEO since it was completely unprofitable for companies, since there are freelancers and tutorials available literally everywhere :)
One more time, great article. Love to see reaction of public masses to developers work. Reminds me on the 90's and famous web boards and irc chats :)
Awesome article @cryptoctopus that's what exactly i am looking for. You are great
Thank you @Cryptoctopus for providing interesting information here in your post I really like this post because in this post many benefits that you share here, I hope you get a satisfying achievement and always successful in steemit and can share interesting post again
This tips are goldmines to those who care to read it and put it to use. as a writer best believe what you just read. Thanks to @cryptoctopus
Awesome post. I am going to dissect this properly tomorrow when I haven't had a few too many reds. I am still getting used to this markdown and haven't quite figured out how to do a picture on the right or left of text.
Keep posting this stuff man it's invaluable, especially to us noobs.
Great tips you have there ! looking forward to tomorrows article !!
I love this type of article. Thanks for writing it!
Nice article on SEO you mention keyword density upto 0.5 and 2.5% but standard is 2.3% but not more than 4.5% in updated SEO version.
Josssssssss Article @cryptoctopus Great.
You got my vote and a resteem :)
You got my vote and a resteem :)
Nice Information
Followed done & upvoted
@faheemahmad
@cryptoctopus
Thanks you for this wonderful article about SEO. It is very important for me to learn so that all my post can be search engine friendly.
Thanks for the useful info :)
In this post i would have loved to see you go over basic markdown for steemit. Headers are a good point though, dont over do the h1.
Cool..
This is great, thanks for posting. I am brand new to steemit, so I will use your advice for future blogs.
Seo is very important in a blog. A blog will be judged in terms of seo or not.
@cryptoctopus
Great article, @cryptoctopus. I wholeheartedly agree that content should be written for people first and search engines second. Thanks for giving out such great SEO tips generously!
nice information
guide is really amazing , much needed to grow my Steemit .
Thank you .
Thank you for this series!! I think there a few typos in the Anchor text paragraph - can you clarify?
good post.it will help us.thanks