Is SEO on Steemit worth your time?

SEO is standard on the web. But what about Steemit? Read the pros and cons then join the debate.

The Internet is a busy, noisy place. To get your website or blog noticed, most people rely on search engine optimization or SEO for short. That’s a set of activities you do to help search engines find your content. It’s time consuming to do and constantly changing, but also a necessary part of online marketing.But what about Steemit? Should we all be trying to write our blogs using SEO?The answer isn’t simple, or maybe it is. I think it depends on your perspective. To help you decide whether to use it on your posts, I’m looking at the topic from an unbiased, objective point of view.What do many people do when trying to decide on something? They create a pros and cons list. That’s what I’ve done for using SEO on Steemit. The questions I asked myself were, "What benefits do I get from using SEO?" (the pros) and "What are the downsides for me if I use SEO?" (the cons).But since interacting with posts here requires someone to be a member, I’ve separated the pro list into three categories:

When existing Steemit members find your blogs
When non-Steemit members find your blogs
When it doesn't matter if they are a member or not

Take note that when I'm talking about searching and SEO, I'm referring to external search engines and not the internal Steemit search engine.

In this category, the benefits are in essence the same as any other social network when someone finds you and likes you.

You can still get followers from older content:

When searchers find your older blog posts and they like them, they can follow you.

You can engage in comments on older posts too:

If someone comments on an older post, you can still see that and interact with them.You might wonder about the odds of a Steemit member finding your blog here using a search engine. I'm not sure about the others, but Google is pretty smart (scarily so sometimes). From my experience, I’m seeing more Steemit posts in the results over time. I've found quite a lot of content and people I didn’t know existed here.I'm not saying every result is a steemit.com post, but it happens more than you might think.

The pros for non-Steemit members

If your blog is the best result for a certain search term, it will appear in someone's results.

They can read your content and find what they need/want:

Just like any blog content on the Internet, it can help people solve a problem they have. They could be bored and need entertainment. Perhaps your tutorial on how to iron a shirt saves their upcoming date. Basically, you’re helping people with your content.

They might join Steemit so they can vote on content after reading yours:

It’s hard to say how likely this one is, but it could happen. If they like your blog, they might look around some more, and then join.

Steemit member or not pros

The pros in this category apply to members and non-members alike.

Users searching for content can find it long after you’ve posted:

Content is created so fast on Steemit it appears and disappears within days, sometimes even hours. It’s sad to think of all the beautiful poems and stories that may never be read. Or the instructional how-to posts that still have value long after the seven-day payout passed. There are music and videos worthy of being listened to and watched too. Most of it disappears into the abyss of the blockchain.But if the posts use SEO, then Google (and other search engines) will index them and bring them back for everyone on the Internet to see. The benefit here again is that you're helping someone.

Drive traffic to your website, blog or store:

If you’re in the habit of including a footer with links to your other online content or businesses, then an SEO ranked Steemit post can drive traffic to it. This makes blogging here better than free traffic, because you are getting some payment for your posts via upvotes.Based on my research, this is one of the biggest benefits when you use SEO. The reason why gets into some technical details, but if you want to know, here are two blogs to read on the subject:

@anarcotech's article on using SEO for promotional purposes.
@infobunny's Steemit SEO guide. I highly recommend clicking the website link at the end to learn even more about it.

Now for the cons

There are quite a few benefits to using SEO, but is it all rainbows and butterflies? No, it isn't.

Using SEO takes time and planning:

Whether you're doing it on your website or Steemit, SEO requires planning. Entire companies are dedicated to performing SEO for businesses. Bloggers can do their own if they know what they're doing. Even if you know what to do, it takes time - more than just writing a blog and posting. Which leads to the next con.

No tools:

As I mentioned in the previous con, there's an entire industry built around SEO. That means there are many tools you can use to help optimize your website or blog. But not on Steemit. Many of the most common tasks are not available. For example, you want to have short, keyword focused URLs. You can create these here, but there's a trick to it that is a bit awkward (in my opinion). Both articles I linked above describe how to do it.The point I want to make is that it isn't easy given the current setup on Steemit. And there are some things you just can't do.

Doesn’t necessarily lead to upvotes, followers, or comments:

So you spend a lot of time and effort to help your post rank on Google, but you don't receive any immediate benefit. There's no guarantee of financial gain, new followers or comments. Have you wasted all your time? That, again, will depend on your perspective and long-term goals.To SEO or not to SEO, that is the question. Was my pros and cons list complete? Let me know in the comments if I missed anything. And I'd love to know if you use it, or if you plan to.

“We have loved the stars too fondly to be afraid of the night.” - the old astronomer