Cryptocurrency SEO 101: Getting Started + Top Tips

What Is Cryptocurrency SEO?

Cryptocurrency SEO refers to search engine optimization of websites publishing content on cryptocurrency. 

In general, SEO refers to the practice of improving a website’s visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo. Cryptocurrency SEO, then, refers to improving the visibility of cryptocurrency websites in search engines. 

Do You Need SEO For Crypto Websites?

Websites in general need to invest in SEO if they want to be found via search engines and get organic traffic. Additionally, with link building and off-page SEO, websites can also get referral traffic. 

However, crypto websites in particular tend to have an even higher need for SEO. This is due to three main reasons: 

• Crypto websites are YMYL (“Your Money Your Life”) websites. YMYL websites publish content that could significantly impact the well-being of readers, such as content about finances. That’s why search engines like Google hold them to a higher standard — i.e., require them to fulfill more advanced “criteria” to rank.
• Finance is a highly competitive niche, and crypto is no exception. Other cryptocurrency websites are likely investing in SEO, so you need to do the same. 
• Quality requirements are also stricter. This makes sense since, again, you’re dealing with YMYL topics. You need to ensure that your content is high-quality and that the technical aspects of your website are optimized as well. 

Cryptocurrency SEO: The Basics

There are three main types of SEO that cryptocurrency websites need to focus on: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to everything you do on a page — or on your website in general — in order to improve your visibility in search engines. This can include: 

• Writing high-quality content
• Adding target keywords to your content
• Optimizing your images
• Including internal and external links, and more. 

Off-Page SEO

As the name suggests, off-page SEO refers to the actions you take outside your website to improve your search engine visibility. This can include: 

• Buying backlinks
• Promoting your content on forums
• Promoting your content to bloggers, and more.

Keep in mind that your off-page SEO efforts need to reflect your on-page SEO efforts. 

For example, if you’re in the cryptocurrency niche, you want to build links on finance- and crypto-related websites since they’re highly relevant to your content.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to improving your website health to improve your rankings in search engines. 

This specifically pertains to your website architecture and backend elements, and can include: 

• Removing broken links from your website
• Removing duplicate content or adding a rel=”canonical” tag
• Improving page load speed, and more.

How To Get Started With Cryptocurrency SEO

1. Do Crypto-Related Keyword Research

Firstly, you need to know which keywords to target with your content. Otherwise, you’ll be investing time and effort into something that rarely or never gets found. 

Keywords are the words, phrases, or sentences that people search for in search engines. 

The goal is to find keywords that meet three basic requirements:

• ✅ Site relevance. Keywords that are relevant to your site will pertain to crypto. For example, “how to mine cryptocurrency,” “how to trade cryptocurrency and make profit,” or “why cryptocurrency is the future.”
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• ✅ Optimal keyword difficulty. For example, if your site doesn’t have a ton of backlinks or a high authority, you can’t expect to rank for keywords with high difficulty.

• ✅ Optimal search volume. Finally, people should actually search for your target keywords, so that you get traffic from them.

Keep in mind, however, that you may need to do some trade-offs. 

For example, keywords with lower keyword difficulty typically have lower search volumes, too. However, getting less traffic is better than getting none — a likely scenario if you’re targeting keywords that are “out of your league.”

To check keyword metrics, use SEO tools like Ahrefs:

2. Create Optimized Content On Crypto

Once you have a list of keywords you’d like to rank for, it’s time to create content that targets them. 

• Start by researching the SERPs. 

See what the SERPs currently look like for your target keyword — i.e., research your competitors. 

• What type of content is ranking for your keyword; blog posts, product pages, or something else? 
• What (sub)topics do your competitors discuss in their content? 
• What’s the average word count?
• Do competitors’ pages include videos or images?

Take note of all of these crucial details.

• Create something similar, but better.

The content that already ranks well for a specific keyword shows you what search engines like. So, your content should be fairly similar to what’s already ranking — but better. 

For example, you can make your content better by: 

• Adding downloadable templates
• Adding more examples
• Creating more images and videos
• Giving more actionable steps
• Discussing your personal experience with [topic], etc.

And, finally...

• Add SEO-related elements.

Finally, don’t forget that your content needs to contain your target keywords. Use them in headings, throughout your content, in your URL, and in image captions and alt text.

Also, add internal and external links to your content.

3. Build Crypto-Relevant Backlinks

As mentioned, SEO for crypto websites isn’t easy. So, besides investing in high-quality content (i.e., on-page SEO), the chances are you’ll need to invest in backlinks, too.

Backlinks will help your crypto-related content rank and get in front of the right people.

However, if you’re serious about cryptocurrency SEO, you shouldn’t just get any backlinks. Just like keywords, backlinks should meet three requirements: 

• ✅ Site relevance. Your backlinks should ideally be placed on sites that tackle topics relevant to yours, such as cryptocurrency and finance sites. For example, Yahoo Finance could be a good choice. Either way, remember to build crypto-relevant backlinks.
  
  
• ✅ Quality. Your links should come from sites with quality content and not spammy sites or PBNs.
  
  
• ✅ Context relevance. Finally, the best backlinks will also be relevant to the context they’re placed in. For example, here is a backlink from our site to a blog post on natural link building:

Since the entire article discusses link building, the context is highly relevant. The anchor phrase is relevant as well, as it reflects the keyword that the post we’ve linked to targets. 

4. Optimize Your Website

This step pertains to improving your technical SEO, i.e., the health of the technical elements of your website. 

We’ve already touched upon some things you can and should do, but here are more details: 

• Regularly check your site for broken links and remove them when needed. 
• Implement structured data if needed. For example, if you have product listings or user reviews on your website, consider implementing relevant schema markup.
• Improve your site and page load speed. For example, consider compressing your images.
• Regularly check Google Search Console for potential indexing issues and remove errors if needed.

For example, we used a Google Chrome Extension called Check My Links to detect this broken link on our website: 

5. Monitor Your Analytics

The last step is to monitor your analytics in order to track the results of your cryptocurrency SEO efforts. 

To do so, you can use two free tools with extremely accurate data — Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA4). 

However, note that these tools only track your results from Google.

If you want to track results in other search engines, you can use their native tools, like Bing’s Webmaster Tools, or specialized SEO tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and others that track data across search engines.

Here are the most important metrics to keep an eye on: 

• Your position or rankings — where you rank in the SERPs 
• Clicks
• Impressions
• Users / traffic 

Well-done SEO will increase all these metrics.

Top Tips To Nail SEO For Cryptocurrency Websites

With the basics out of the way, let’s look at some bonus tips for improving SEO for crypto sites.

1. Research Your Competitors

Track what your competitive crypto websites are doing. Here are some key things to consider:

• What type of content do they publish? For example, do they publish blog posts? How about case studies, or whitepapers?
• Which topics do they cover?
• What keywords do they rank for? 
• How many backlinks do they have? 
• What’s their authority score / domain rating / domain authority? (depending on the SEO tool you use)
• How much traffic do they get? Are they getting paid traffic, too?

This information can help you understand your competitors’ strategies and eventually outperform them.

For example: 

• By knowing which keywords they rank for, you can write content that targets the same keywords and outranks them. (Note: You should only do this if the keywords are relevant to you.)
• By knowing how many backlinks your competitors have, you’ll know how many backlinks you need to buy or build to compete on equal footing.
• By knowing your competitors’ authority score, domain rating, and/or domain authority, you’ll be able to determine if you can realistically outrank and outperform them.

To sum up: use competitor intel to inform an SEO strategy for your own crypto website.

2. Use SEO Tools

SEO for crypto sites requires a lot of data and insights — and you’ll need specialized SEO tools to get them.

We’ve already mentioned some, but let’s reiterate:

• Google Search Console — GSC (free)
• Google Analytics — GA4 (free)
• Ahrefs (paid)
• Semrush (paid)
• Moz Pro (paid) 

Note that GSC and GA4 should ideally be used alongside paid tools as they give you limited insights. 

For example, there’s no way to run a competitive analysis, do keyword research, or extensively analyze backlinks using either GSC or GA4. 

Depending on your strategy, you may also need specialized link building tools or blogger outreach tools.

3. Entice Users To Stay Longer

User behavior very likely influences your SEO cryptocurrency results. Here are some key metrics that pertain to user behavior and indicate user satisfaction: 

• Time on site / Session duration — the average time users spend on your website per visit
• Bounce rate — the percentage of users who only visit one page on your website before “bouncing”
• Pages per session — the number of pages users view during a visit 
• Click-through rate (CTR) — the number of people who see your result in the SERPs / divided by the number of people who actually click 
• Engagement rate — the number of total sessions divided by the number of engaged sessions on your website (e.g., conversions count toward engagement)

Your goal is to increase all of these metrics, except the bounce rate. Bounce rates work in the opposite way; the lower they are, the better. 

Here are a few things you can try to achieve that goal: 

• Create content that matches user intent. For example, don’t create product pages if you’re targeting informational keywords. Do target them with blog posts.
• Add visual interest to your content. Think high-quality infographics, videos, and charts.
• Make your content easy to read. Unless your customer data indicates otherwise, you should probably keep your sentences and paragraphs short, use simple language, and use formatting that make your pages easy-to-scan.
• Optimize the technical aspects of your website. Ensure your pages load fast, your navigation is easy to use, and your design adjusts to the device being used.
• Add internal links and CTAs to your content. This will entice users to visit other pages before they exit your website.

4. Optimize Your Image-Related Content

Image SEO plays a big role in your site’s overall SEO. Here are a few image SEO best practices for cryptocurrency websites: 

• Optimize image file names. 

For example, avoid naming your image files something like “1028427.” 

Instead, use descriptive names that, ideally, leverage your target keywords — such as “Four-Cryptocurrency-Trading-Strategies.” 

Note that you should separate individual words with hyphens.

• Resize image files before uploading them. 

Smaller sizes load faster and, in turn, help your pages load faster, too. And, as we’ve already mentioned, this can directly impact your crypto site’s SEO.

•  Add relevant alt text. 

‍Alternative text is a textual substitute for non-textual content on your website (such as images). 

It is meant to help people with visual and cognitive abilities understand non-textual content. But it also gets shown to users when a piece of content fails to load on your website:

Alt text should primarily describe what your image shows. However, if you can enrich it with some of your keywords, by all means — do that!

5. Demonstrate E-E-A-T

As we’ve already mentioned, cryptocurrency websites are considered YMYL websites. Since they can significantly impact users’ well-being, Google wants them to demonstrate so-called E-E-A-T:

• Experience, 
• Expertise, 
• Authoritativeness, and
• Trustworthiness.

To demonstrate E-E-A-T on your website, try the following: 

• Implement author bios to showcase expertise and/or experience in relevant topics.
• Earn or buy backlinks from high-authority websites, especially websites in your or a similar niche. Niche-relevant backlinks lead to a stronger authority and faster results.
• Publish high-quality content, such as guides, survey reports, studies, and whitepapers.
• Showcase your team’s credentials and awards. 
• Create an up-to-date About page that shows your company’s history, milestones, experience, and expertise.

6. Don’t Forget Social Signals

Last but not least, consider the potential role of social signals in cryptocurrency SEO. 

We don’t know for sure whether social signals impact rankings; SEO experts are divided on the topic. However, search engines likely take them into account at least slightly. 

Either way, an active social presence comes with many other benefits. For example, it helps you:

• Build the credibility of your cryptocurrency website and company. This may also consequently improve the E-E-A-T score of your website.
• Improve your brand visibility. 
• Get more referral traffic on your website. 

That’s why we highly recommend investing in your social media presence:

• Be active on platforms that matter the most for the cryptocurrency niche. X and LinkedIn will likely be the most important platforms. 
• Share your website content there to attract new traffic. 
• Regularly engage with other accounts to grow your follower base and increase your reach. 
• Consider joining conversations around cryptocurrency. For example, you could join crypto-dedicated LinkedIn groups and Twitter spaces.
• Connect your website with your social media accounts. Add links to your social accounts from your website and vice versa.

Besides promoting your content yourself, encourage others to do so, too, by adding social share buttons to your content.

How To Track Your SEO Cryptocurrency Success

We’ve already mentioned the importance of monitoring your analytics and tracking relevant SEO metrics. Let us briefly walk you through how to measure the three most important ones.

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is the traffic that comes to your website through search engines.

While third-party tools, like Semrush, can estimate your organic traffic, their data isn’t as accurate as that of native tools. For example:

• If you want to know how many users you get from Google, use Google Search Console or Google Analytics (GA4). 
• If you want to know how many users you get from Bing, use Bing Webmaster Tools. 

In GA4, you can get insights into your organic traffic by opening: 

• Reports > 
• Acquisition (under Life cycle) > 
• Traffic acquisition. 

Here, you’ll see the number of users you get from various sources, including Organic Search.

Search Engine Rankings

Again, third-party tools can give you insights into your positions in search engines, but it’s always best to use the tools “straight from the source.” 

So, for example, to check how your content ranks in Google, use Google Search Console. 

Open the Full Report, then check the box that says “Average position:”

Once you do that, you’ll be able to see your position for different Queries below. If you want to see how your pages rank, simply select Pages instead of Queries:

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

The third most important metric in our opinion is your CTR. You can see it in GSC, as well. 

To see the CTR for every individual page or query, check the CTR box at the top:

Just like in the previous step, simply scroll down to see your CTR for specific queries or open the Pages tab to see the CTR of different pages on your website.

Too Much Work? Partner With Cryptocurrency SEO Agencies

Cryptocurrency SEO is a lot of work. If you don’t have the time or knowledge to handle it on your own, consider partnering with SEO agencies with experience in your niche.

Our link-building agency has helped many cryptocurrency websites improve their off-page SEO with high-quality backlinks. Let us do the same for you!

Contact us for more information, or order backlinks directly from our website.