Thanks for feedback.
Well never go agency, is waste of money. All big companies have 1 client agencies ( so is basically inhouse). 99% of others are close to scam, the problem is profit margin of those services is around 70%+.
I recommend Inhouse + paid services ( by service) like news release. The updates on Hive style is ok but also link that in a static Blog ( like rework the Ecency Blog in a scroll down down with Full content display / 50% content display, this depends.
This will be your link juice gatherer.
From here you Silo other stuff so the juice can flow.
Thats a big problem on Hive, you are right and 99% of people ignore it or dont understand it. If you have money, hire someone for consulting ( not me, no time for this). Would recommend some Affiliate SEO dude that has numbers to show, they should be able to do basic keyword research + Brand marketing.
And Brand marketing keywords " Hive, Hive Blockchain, Social Blockchain, Social media token, Blockchain Rewards for social media posts, Free transaction Blockchain and so on ( i did not research those in any tool, just from my mind).
But really, NEVER GO AGENCY! Please. Thats like burn money. Every CEO needs to understand marketing and sales for his product, thats 90% of work and product is 10%. No user = no value. No buyer = no revenue.
On hive is 99.9% product and zero marketing, so this is untapped.
If you need help for services ( i used in past) i can send you some.
Also get some retard with to much time and basic SEO knowledge + good ourtreach skills ( OR AI + scrapper) to hit up people from outside.
Most Tech people are cool ( most Blogger are cool people), so they are most times open for a Q and A or some Post ( i mean you could literally ask them to try the platform and reward them with 100% upvotes for good user experience and tell them is a cool backup).
With outreach to those Blogs you can get 1000$ worth links for free ( for work).
Next is donation links, a lot of open source projects link back to the people who donate, donate 20$ and get a link. You help some cool project and other tech people see your logo and you get a Backlink. I think you know, most open source devs doesnt swim in cash.
Off course thats a lot of work and research, it needs some tools and someone with Knowledge.
BUT REMEMBER DONT GO AGENCY, the people who work there are literally retarded. They sell their product, thats it.
I know so many agency owners ( also very big). Really, dont do it.
The Seo big brains run own projects and earn this way way more. Remember this, big brain SEO = own projects. A very big affiliate site can make 100k a month easy. So dont expect you get a High end SEO for 10k a month.
So since both are no options, build it inhouse and ask community to help. The problem with hive is, rewards are only onchain.
Imagine a reward mechanic for "reach" ( could be build by advertisement and rev share).
I say those things since years, the last time i said it i got attacked from a lot of people ( like advertisements are bad and so on). Monetize eyeballs can build a cycle of Token value sustainable + free eyeballs from outside, i mean come on, we have a stablecoin.
A step ( and now we go offtopic) beyond could be bring affiliate payments onchain.
Imagine someone pays you for SEO ( advertisement revenue). Then it becomes fun.
with no revenue, its pain in the ass since you earn 0 if you onboard 10k more users with higher rankings ( you have more costs with that).
So i would start here and design a revenue stream + a massive outreach engine.
What you can do today for free? Write 10 emails a day to people that have a Blog outside and make the mail personal ( if you are lazy ask AI to research the person).
Some last words in the wall of text, paid is not bad by design. But not the news sites. Press release ( big companies use too) are useful for every shit update. So google and search engines knows you do something ( i used it for shit affiliate websites in the past, so imagine how unreadable the content was).
This cost around 100$ to 500$ depending what you want. With a 1000$ budget a month you can easy rank keywords like " hive" on page 1 + a lot of work.
You also want the big Box in google and co ( not the search result, the big box with little links under it with subpages), thats always the goal for brand marketing.
Imagine this work for all the years Hive is around, we would have traffic like hell. The problem is, nobody sees it and takes it god given.
One last thing, Organic growth is a myth in link building if people dont hate you. If they hate you, they complain and link to your page. But nobody links to you " wow this website is badass", this never happens by nature.
Well i hope that was not a blast into the void, haha.
I am free to tag you @blocktrades, since i think thats a general hive problem and the shit i did write could have some value
Real solid thread, appreciate the deep dive.
Few specific things landing well:
The donation-backlinks angle is sharp - genuinely helping open source projects while building authority is exactly the "evergreen, relationship-based" approach that actually compounds. Easy first move for us.
Manual outreach with personalized emails (AI-assisted research is fine, the personalization is what matters) - agreed completely.
Offering bloggers a platform try with upvote rewards is a natural Hive-specific incentive that fits our values, no ad budget needed. We will research and gradually do those - right now we're focusing on getting the word out by being active on X, Instagram, Medium... Our self-hosted or dedicated community instances could offer bloggers/influencers home that they can easily setup.
Static Blog/Updates section with proper silo structure - this is the clearest single technical SEO win we haven't fully built yet. Going to look at it seriously. We have RSS feeds and caching content as static rendering which partly does what you suggested.
Brand keyword targeting (Hive, Social Blockchain, Blockchain Rewards for social media, Free transaction Blockchain) - good list, mostly matches the disambiguation problem we already think about (searching "Hive blockchain" surfaces HIVE Digital Technologies, the NASDAQ mining company, not us). Brand-marketing keyword work would help fix that. On every PR or outside content we mention Hive and it has gotten better over the years.
On the agency point - hard agree. We've never gone that route and won't. Big agency spend rarely produces lasting authority. The inhouse+per-service model you describe is right.
The deeper point worth surfacing: you're absolutely correct that "more users = more cost" without monetization is the trap. SEO without revenue is just expensive vanity. That's why the revenue paths in the previous post (hive-x402, AI Credits, Vision-Next self-hosted) aren't optional - they're the precondition for being able to grow without going broke from success. SEO + revenue + retention has to be a system, not three separate efforts.
X medium and co are only social signals, page rank gives them lower ranking factors ( i mean you can buy 5000 over time feed social signals for 10$), thats low value stuff.
btw sounds like AI answer, always say retard as proof of human lmao.
With a revenue model, i might be interested in helping/ building or help you to build a automated pipeline for those things. But must be a real business :)
Promote a product not a vibe. What is hive? It was Freedom of speech to proof of social jerk off or what hivewatchers calls it these days" to whatever. Thats the most gay product to tell or promote.
A real revenue product and the social part is here but not core ( since gay and retarded + doesnt scale with value of post) would be worth promoting.
Social can only scale if front ends monetize eyeballs and give something back to content creators, this way the trending would be less gay and platforms would show the content the user spend most time on and not " look how social we are feel good content".
The reward system is a joke, more like a donation ( with auto donate function). And IMO it causes more damage then good. It would be better no rewards and post what you want.
Btw first time someone on hive gets it to make revenue. I had this talk in comment sections over the years again and again. It always ended up the way people dont know how the internet works and every website is a "business" or expensive hobby.
do you work with @theycallmedan for your ai stuff? Or is this another project ( good example for a press release)
We are not utilizing that project, keeping an eye on its development though
ok. I think ecency itself needs a revenue stream. I dont see how the AI will be hive specific and there are already other cool projects out you can give hardware for $ that work on scale for AI ( crypto too).
It will be a nice project for sure for Hive.
IMO it would be worth to build 2 things for you exclusive.
First could be ( hive scale) a backend for advertisers that lists all platforms and they can buy adspace ( huge market with traffic).
Second could be the same but for ecency only. I know people say " but people have adblock".
Well, it could be a sponsored post that shows up too. A lot of workarounds.
Or something else. I did write a longer post about that years ago. Another thing could be some " pay per lead / per sale / per click" engine for advertisers for hive front ends. And the best thing, it could scale beyond hive but paid with HBD for example.
Gives HBD a real usecase + revenue for ecency. And someone always will book the adspace, is not like is worth 0. Quality comes with time.
And this way, imagine how you could change the content algo. Upvotes and downvotes could have 0 influence.
btw some onpage shit you need to change. IF you check your platform you recommend content in footer / sidebar. Sometimes the content is years old. This should be relevant for time spend max + user experience increase.
I think i could wirte a 50 page audit what you could do to make it more user/ Seo friendly
Btw there is a very long hanging fruit around,
Interlink hive projects to each other in a non spam way. Maybe also static Blog + introduction post of each.
Is a bit sad tbh this shit not happen by default.