If you're just here to get the travel and food gist, skip to where you find travel and food as a bold heading but I'd still want you to read everything.
As much as everyone is big on "getting more hive users," I am big on getting more content from the current users, not just content but search-engine-optimized content.
Many here believe in investing in one thing or the other to bring users to hive but I honestly think we do not realize that all we need to do is invest in the current user base, not go looking for more.
Around here, it is believed that 3 contents a day are spamming and farming, two offenses my friends, but would that be the case if we did understand the value of content?
For example, I could wake up and decide that I should write about "making money online" and then I draft out 3 posts with the first saying "Making money online: 12 ways to earn extra income online" and the second saying "17 ways to make money online from home" and the third one saying "24 top ways to making money online in Nigeria"
What are the chances anyone will value any of this content? The current users honestly won't, neither will the whales with the most influence to reward writers but having these three pieces drop the same day has pretty high search value and notice that the last topic there is "localized".
How?
I've been studying SEO for at least a year now and one of the things I've noticed is that to rank for a certain keyword, you must have had a series of other content on the same topic(or similar keywords), sometimes, this builds your site's authority on the subject.
So publishing in this way for a month straight will at the very least bring in hundreds to thousands of search traffic, it is a rather tested concept. But you see, the problem is, given the current nature of the rewards pool, few will value this, and that few won't compensate the writers for the hours it would take to create such content, that's a full day's job, Ask any serious blogger.
But the reality is, that ranking for these keywords would bring users that want to earn money online, A couple will want to leave a comment even if the post said nothing about potentially earning money if one comments, so we can more easily earn new users every step of the way.
I guarantee if we performed better on search for such keywords we'd have 10s of thousands of sign-ups each month, Sure, some would be coming with the mindset of getting rich quickly, but it doesn't matter, just having that traffic adds to our brand value, gives room to turn visitors into buyers via ads and all, but none of these things exists.
As I've always pointed out, I am patiently waiting to see what Leo has in store for us, if it leans towards content, I will take a bite, if not, well, the search continues.
Ahh, food and travel bloggers, that was supposed to be the focus of the post right? My apologies, the above was needed to add more context to what we will discuss below.
Travel and Food Bloggers - Hive should invest in making these gems do a little SEO.
To all the travel and food bloggers out there, I want to take the time to say that you all are awesome.
Judging myself, a couple of times in my life I've had to read a food blog to cook up some meal or a travel page to learn more about a place. I have every reason to give you all your flowers - you're awesome.
Now, you can be more awesome and help hive while at the same time, giving yourself more publicity and reward.
The reason I am calling this community out is that they are amongst the most rewarded set of content creators on Hive, also, unlike finance and health for example, the food and travel community is not widely competitive, so it should be easiest for us to make a mark on search for numerous keywords.
To start with, this is a community where content is mostly fresh, that is, most things said are often unique to the writers, It isn't like finance where I could read a few pages from what's already online and ditch out an article, food and travel content are mostly personalized because to start with, one has to cook most of the time to make a food post and one has to travel to make a travel post, so, each content is unique.
So we have a community that is already heavily rewarded here - so there's the compensation for the work and then it's a low competition niche - in a lot of ways. There are diverse dishes in the world and diverse places to travel to, each content you make will have at least 1-10 people asking Google one thing or the other about it, so why not apply a little SEO to your beautiful works?
You're probably thinking "How?" Don't worry, I'll tell you.
Did you know, that a lot of people make food posts like "how to make a minimalistic wedding cake" but fail to tackle a lot of "long-tail keywords" related to the dish?
Well if cake seems too celebratory to be a common dish, let's talk about soup.
Usually, when someone searches how to make a particular soup, YouTube videos don't often expressively give the audience what they want when it comes to the ingredients, where to find them, how much of them to use in what size of soup, health benefits of the dish, and so on.
I believe I'm not the only one who would agree that when it comes to cooking, there are always a lot of questions and so many out there are looking for answers and few are giving them.
So a typical food post on hive should have bold headings with keywords like "How many maggi cubes should you put in Afang soup" (Note: Afang is a Nigerian soup, a very good one).
Underneath these headings, you first give a concise response like "You should use 3 cubes of maggi in your Afang soup."
Then continue to explain why and how to check if it is enough. How much to put in the meats you'd use in the soup is also to be considered here as they all end up together.
This is a basic example of how a food post can be optimized to answer search questions and bring more traffic to hive websites.
With a travel post, oh boy! There's just so much here too. If I were to visit the US right now, maybe Los Angeles specifically, then I'd want to know if I'm making the right choice first.
This curiosity would typically be fed with a travel post answering the questions
"Should you visit Los Angeles?"
That said, depending on my budget and what I wish to do when I get there, I would seek to know how a lot of things work there. How much does a cab in Los Angeles cost?" for example, or "What's the best and cheapest hotel in Los Angeles?"
"Where can I visit to be entertained in Los Angeles?"
"How much do basic things cost in Los Angeles?"
"How safe is Los Angeles?"
"Where should I not go to in Los Angeles?"
These are typically a few examples of common questions one could be asking right now about the City of Los Angeles on search, so when a writer on Hive is putting up a travel post, being able to add these questions and answer them within his/her content would grow our authority.
How would this benefit hive? I believe that is already obvious - more traffic means more ad revenue if there are ads and more brand authority coupled with the potential of having these visitors turn into users.
How would it benefit the writer? The first way is that hive curators should prioritize such content and reward them more, Also, if a system of ad revenue share is in place then they'd directly earn from their traffic from search too.
Also, writers who understand the value of having an audience could convert their traffic to buyers, maybe by recommending an airline or other transport company and earning commissions, partnering with different businesses to publicize their products and services via their content, likewise food bloggers, some ingredients can't be found in most local stores but online stores may have them. Become an affiliate for these stores and send through buyers to them and earn commissions, there are just numerous ways.
That said, the important thing is that the hive community already heavily supports these niches, and that support is crucial to get people to want to be involved in things like this.
With more content falling through with this level of optimization, not to mention the number of backlinks that will be created over time, the travel and food blog on Hive could really thrive on search.
What do you think?
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