A Definitive Guide on the Impact of Blockchain on SEO and Digital Marketing

The technology behind Blockchain offers website users a number of possibilities, mainly thanks to its ability to ensure greater transparency and security. And because it can be used in almost every industry, it’s no surprise that it’s considered a game-changing technology.

Gaining momentum because of the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency boom that happened during 2017, Blockchain is now showing the world that it is not limited to just online transactions – instead, it can also impact a number of other industries, including ridesharing applications, online shopping, elections, and even self-driving cars. For example, there’s always a concern about polls being rigged during elections/voting, which would result in false outcomes. With Blockchain, voter registration and verification can be done at high speeds, ensuring that every vote is tamper-free and transparent.

The fraud-busting ability of Blockchain technology can be just the solution many industries need, including the online marketing industry, which suffers from numerous issues related to fraud and bot traffic (over 30-40 percent of the traffic online is from bots and is non-human). Many cases have been brought to light recently where people have deployed specially designed bots to execute Pay per Click (PPC) scams. Through such bots, competitors can farm clicks and obliterate your online marketing budget, just by using a few strands of code. This is where Blockchain can change the whole landscape of online marketing.

How will Blockchain manipulate SEO and digital marketing?

Before jumping into Blockchain and digital marketing, it is vital to understand that the way it works is by providing a comprehensive ledger system, collated in a system authenticated by multiple users. When it comes to digital marketing, this provides a way to grow the reach of the brand through the avenue of paid marketing. By getting your brand on top of search results, you can increase its exposure considerably and gain additional traffic, which might convert into additional sales.

While many search engines provide advertisement services, there’s still a gap in the reporting of the actual reach of the advertising, giving rise to the need for more transparency in the system. With Blockchain coming into effect, the dependency on Facebook or Google to know the amount of valid and invalid clicks will decrease. With increased transparency, reduced online fraud and higher personal security, brands can focus more on building a strong relationship with customers through e-commerce and PPC marketing, which is the key factor for any successful business.

As for SEO, Blockchain starts having an effect when it is implemented to reduce click fraud. Click fraud is probably the leading problem faced by ad specialists and SEO experts. Click fraud occurs when the majority of clicks on your advertisement are done by bots instead of by ‘real people’. Blockchain registers ‘real’ users, maximizing your reach and ensuring that your advertising budget is used efficiently, leading to more sales and more profit. More importantly, Blockchain helps you understand precisely who is clicking on your advertisement and what you are paying for.

Blockchain will also impact the keyword domain of SEO, which is the sole breadwinner for many companies. Done well, SEO can have effective results, but identifying, assessing and implementing the right keywords in your website content is a challenging and time-consuming task.

Blockchain, on the other hand, has the ability to track the position of an average keyword using a number of different factors to garner a range of results, thus helping the business add the keyword as per their requirement. This will incentivize participation and result in a huge number of results, swiftly.

The implementation

Before we go on and on about Blockchain and its features, it is important to understand that rather than being an upgrade to the current infrastructure, it is an update, which makes its implementation as necessary as its features. Instead of an instant transformation of the present infrastructure, we will witness a steady and maybe even slow implementation of selective principles of Blockchain. This also makes understanding blockchain extremely important.

This is one of the reasons we’re seeing a lot of blockchain tutorials, forum discussions, and groups being created every day as the demand of blockchain is surging. One of the noteworthy areas where Blockchain will likely be implemented is ad-fraud, which has been the key focus of this article. It will also be used in customer identification for better ad placement, resulting in higher leads and sales.

But is the integration of this technology that easy? As more and more ventures decide to use Blockchain, they are sure to face one challenge: integrating the technology with their current websites. This can be both a technical nightmare and a wonderful opportunity for these companies, which will require the brains of both web-developers and SEO experts to work in tandem. Their area of focus will be the current incompatibility of Blockchain with various CMS and website platforms. On the other hand, companies that face issues making the leap will have to partner up with more experienced organizations that have already transitioned to Blockchain.

Endnote

As we have heard, ‘man fears what he does not understand’, and that can be true for Blockchain technology as well. While many businesses cannot grasp the concept of Blockchain technology, it can have a dramatic impact on SEO and digital marketing domain. That said, technology might change the very equation behind data exchange that happens over the internet, probably for good. Hence, it is important for every business to keep their eyes and ears open to stay focused on the development of this technology in the coming years so they can allow their business to grow with it.