- Market Mix
- Posts
- SEO sharks are coming for that Bitcoin money
SEO sharks are coming for that Bitcoin money
SEO is an interesting thing. Not only can you identify areas to capture new customers, but you can also learn a lot about the priorities of your competition.
If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺
We’re almost at the end of the quarter, which means in a couple weeks we’ll do Volume 3 of Bitcoin SEO updates (Volume 1 and Volume 2 linked here for your convenience). But because we’re still about ten days away from July, let’s discuss some pretty cool preliminary trends emerging around the “Bitcoin” search term.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the pursuit of optimizing and improving your website in order for it to draw in organic search traffic from search engines like Google. There are a lot of elements that go into this channel, including the quality of your website content, the way your website was built, how fast your website loads, and how many relevant topics/keywords/queries your content covers.
That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but I want to draw attention to how much work goes into a world-class SEO strategy. There are people who specialize in every individual variable of SEO. That’s their entire job, just that one thing. It takes a team to make a truly successful SEO play work.
The reason I bring this up is because the SEO landscape for Bitcoin keywords is at an all-time high in terms of competition. Although overall search traffic has started to dip with the current market conditions, We’ve seen some major players start to compete, and win, at drawing in Bitcoin-curious search engine users.
Here are the top 30 results for the “Bitcoin” search term as of June 21, 2021.
Alright, let’s dig in a bit.
The SEO Sites Are Here
That’s right -- and they’re a key driver in this massive increase in organic traffic competition.
What’s an SEO site? Have you ever noticed whenever you Google something about a specific topic -- health, finances, dog training tips -- there’s almost always the same 4-5 sites at the top of the results? That’s because their entire business exists for the purpose of being found on a search engine and having you visit the website. They sell ads, leads, or affiliate links to generate revenue. That’s it.
Every emerging search category enters a stage where the SEO sites enter the field. This only means one thing -- the money is coming.
These websites spend the majority of their time creating content, which is a pretty expensive thing to do. They don’t have time to waste their writers on categories that won’t drive traffic. And obviously the markets over the last half year have become interesting to these sites.
Looking at the top 30 results above, Investopedia has gone heavy in this direction. They currently rank fourth overall for “Bitcoin”. And that’s higher than even Wikipedia.
Huge.
Where these sites go, there’s money. Worth keeping an eye on this category when you’re doing your research.
The News Sites Are Here
Four of the top 10 search results are for non-crypto media publications. In the top thirty, that number jumps to 11.
Another way to frame this is that over one third of the first 30 Google organic search results for “Bitcoin” are publications with mainstream brand appeal.
Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and CNBC make up the mainstream news sites on the first page of results.
CNBC has TWO links ranking on the first page of results -- a general /bitcoin category page and a FUD-y article from earlier this month.
Financial Times, Business Insider, and MarketWatch are on the second page of results
Wired, Wall Street Journal, and Reuters are holding up the third page of results, rounding-off the top 30
Plus, the top featured snippet in my search results was from the BBC.
But it’s worth considering this: news sites are just like SEO sites. In fact, they’re built almost exactly the same way. And that’s because they have nearly identical business models. Crypto audiences are very niche and hard to target. These sites are going for that ad money.
Crypto media isn’t that far behind...
CoinDesk Knows What They’re Doing
The best top level domains for SEO are the ones named after the search term. As a result, you can see that Bitcoin.org (the home of Bitcoin Core) and Bitcoin.com (owned by Roger Ver, the controversial founder of Bitcoin Cash, the first Bitcoin fork).
But what comes next? This is typically a website that has been invested in SEO for a long time and in the subject of your search query. In this case, we’re talking about Coindesk.
Third overall for the “Bitcoin” search term is CD’s Bitcoin price page. According to SEMrush data, this page generates about 2.8 million organic visits per year from the US alone. And to me, that feels like a conservative estimate.
Additionally, it’s worth pointing out that this article not only ranks above the previously mentioned Investopedia article, but it also shows up above the featured snippets. Quite an accomplishment, and a huge revenue-generating asset.
How much money roughly?
Well, let’s look at it through the lens of paid search. This month Coinbase has held the top advertiser for the search term “Bitcoin.” According to SEMrush data, They’ve spend over $200,000 on that keyword alone this month, at an average cost-per-click (CPC) of $2.35. That breaks down to a bit over 81,000 clicks in June.
So if a company is willing to pay those CPCs at that level of volume, imagine what the margins on this category must be for an exchange. And then apply that same logic to a media site.
The next big crypto content sites under this search term are CoinMarketCap (9th) and Cointelegraph (11th). In the top 30, that’s it.
The power of SEO to drive a business cannot be overstated. After the cost of producing your website and content, all your traffic is scalable and free, forever.
As you plan your company’s organic traffic strategy, it’s worth keeping in mind who you’re competing against and whether or not you’re positioning for the same kind of website visitor. Keeping the “who” and “why” in the forefront of your strategy will be the key to your success.
Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?
Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to share Market Mix with your friends. 🔺