Why Only Following Web3 Trends Can Often Leave your Project Undiscovered.

In the recent years of blockchain development, emerging technology and a utopian, Web3 vision – we are left with a distinct lacking of established Web2 practices in the space.

Whether it’s to your liking, or not, mass adoption is absolutely key to driving any significant change or informing any real change to our current systems. With that in mind, on a smaller, less important scale; having your project being discovered and engaged with is vital.

Uniquely, the majority of Web3 projects and brands seem to follow suit even when it goes in the face of data, insight, function, usability, discoverability, adoption and more. This begs the question – why?

Web3 Projects Chase Hype & Follow Trends

While it’s important to align trends in the market, and to connect your project to hype for visibility, there are some trends that projects tend to follow that can be harmful to their SEO & Organic marketing efforts.

These include, but are not limited technical and content distribution decisions typically informed by other projects in the Web3 space. A leading contender here is a custom CMS.

Why is that an issue?

A custom CMS (content management system) can be bad for SEO because it may not have built-in functionality to optimise content for search engines, such as meta tags, sitemaps, and clean URLs. Additionally, a custom CMS may not be regularly updated to ensure that it is compatible with the latest SEO best practices, which can result in a website’s search engine rankings suffering. However, it depends on the way custom CMS is built and implemented, if it follow SEO best practices and guidelines it can be as good as other popular CMS platforms.

It can also mean requiring hard-coded changes for implementation of simple code such a Schema mark-up, which can help with discoverability, and even verifying Search Console. This usually leads to projects utilising third-party websites for their content.

Enter Medium.

While it’s important to update your end users, Medium is not a platform within which we can track, monitor or convert. It has been adopted as a norm within Web3 that objectively does not grow your organic reach. It has its uses, sharing updates alongside your blog.

However, many projects post valuable content only to Medium, this means that this content can only promote Medium and their organic reach, while weakening your own blog at the same time.

Blog posts are also a means to generate links through promoting exclusive content that encourages shares, driving authority to your content. It’s also a very clear journey that can drive subscribers directly to your CRM and blog posts. With each post on Medium, above a proprietary domain, we dilute our value and ability to rank both in the short and long-term.

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Barriers to Entry

We are are still early. As such, it’s important to minimise barriers to potential new users to your project, ecosystem, dApp, wallet, exchange; whatever it may be.

Frequently, the language used, the difficult UX and the steep learning curve is a barrier to a wider audience.

Language plays a huge role within your content, not just for organic wins, but ultimately for your users. If we want users to adopt new technology, we must educate and enable them whilst providing a means for them to convert and adopt.

Common barriers to entry we see within Web3:

1. Technical knowledge: Understanding how to use and interact with decentralised applications (dApps) and smart contracts can be challenging for those who are not familiar with blockchain technology.

2. Wallet management: To use Web3, you need to have a digital wallet that supports the cryptocurrency or token used by the dApp or smart contract. This can be confusing or intimidating for some users.

3. Accessibility: Some Web3 projects can be difficult to use, especially for those with limited technical know-how or resources.

4. Volatility: The value of cryptocurrency can be highly volatile, which can make it difficult for some users to feel comfortable using it.

5. Security: Storing and managing digital assets securely can be difficult, as users are responsible for their own security.

6. Limited adoption and usage: Some dApps may have a limited user base, which can make it difficult for users to find others to interact with or to find value in using the dApp.

7. Interoperability: Some Web3 projects are built on different blockchain platforms which makes it harder for them to interact and exchange value with other dApps, hence limiting the user’s experience.

8. Privacy: Some Web3 projects may not prioritise user privacy, which can be a concern for some users.

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Content (Was) King

Content (at the time of writing) is still core to any digital properties you wish to drive adoption for. In tandem with the aforementioned issues, having unoptimised content is a frequent crux seen within Web3.

Content has a myriad of functions when it comes to interacting with your (potential) end user. Namely, providing value, helping their to solve their issues, earning traffic and onboarding them to your product(s). In many cases, short, unoptimised content surfaces which it makes it difficult for users and search engines alike to discover your content.

Produced a white-paper that’s no longer at the top of a blog? Useful documentation that cant’ be discovered, educational articles that could have left your product top of mind for a user starting out? These are often not discovered due to a lack of robust, optimised content.

There is typically a hyper-dependance on social media for a project, this has its place though a follower of your account is more-often-than-not, familiar with your project. When it comes to acquisition, SEO/SEM is vital.

Developing unique, valuable and relevant content that is supported by SEO will always improve that content’s chances of being discovered, with the rise of AI-produced content, it is even more imperative that genuine and well-informed content is produced.

EAT (expertise, authority and trust) remain of utmost importance, especially as your project will likely require a financial transaction and therefor falls into a YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) classification by Google. Meaning it will be particularly focused on your project’s credibility and trustworthiness.

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Leading Users

As we enter a period of content likely being produced largely by ChatGPT, backlinks may become more significant than ever. Given the decentralised nature of Web3, this commonly holds true with a dependance on subdomains, third-party domains and generally misaligned backlink/internal link profiles.

Web3 projects often link out from their site to Medium, Github, Discord, Telegram, Twitter, etc. in order for a user to continue a journey. Each new subdomain dilutes your core domain’s value, and an excess of eternal links likely makes it difficult to convert a user via your marketing site.

With the larger projects, it’s clear to see the value coming from referral traffic, the CoinMarketCaps of the World. It’s important to be discoverable across the Web3 spaces your users expect to find you. It’s also important to grow links for an authoritative domain that has a better ability to rank.

In short, why are backlinks specifically important for Web3 projects?

1. Rankings: Backlinks can help improve the search engine ranking of a website or web page. Search engines such as Google use backlinks as a way to determine the popularity and authority of a website. The more high-quality backlinks a website or web page has, the more likely it is to rank well in search results.

2. Referral traffic: Backlinks can also drive referral traffic to a website or web page. When a user clicks on a backlink, they will be taken to the website or web page that the link points to. This can increase the visibility and exposure of the website or web page.

3. Branding & credibility: Backlinks can also help build branding and credibility for a website or web page. When a website or web page has many high-quality backlinks, it can be seen as a credible and trustworthy source of information.

4. Web3 projects are often built on blockchain networks, which are decentralised and not controlled by any central authority. Backlinks help establish trust and credibility among users, which can be beneficial for a web3 project.

5. Web3 projects often use tokens, which can be used to access the web3 platform or to pay for transactions. A high-quality backlinks can help increase the visibility of the web3 project, which can lead to more users and more transactions.

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Blowin’ Smoke

For better or worse, the Web3 space has suffered a lot of ups and downs and inconsistency to the ire of regulators. While this is a macro issue, being consistent, visible and trustworthy goes a long way with your end users. Finding your project’s site down, or socials missing will be a clear red flag to any prospective users.

In summary, a project would do well to avoid these common pitfalls – ensure your content is useful for all, and provides a valuable experience.

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