Improving Stake.link's SEO

[Ari]

Hi everyone,

Following up on discussions like the How to Use stake.Link Initiative, it’s clear that educating and onboarding users is key to driving adoption. However, there’s a critical gap: many users can’t even find stake.link when searching online.

It’s become clear that stake.link’s SEO is holding us back in terms of visibility and accessibility. Currently, our site doesn’t rank prominently for critical search terms, which may be limiting the discovery of our platform by potential users. This issue isn’t just about visibility—it also indirectly opens up risks like phishing sites taking advantage of our low rankings.

This discussion aims to:

1. Highlight the current state of our SEO and its challenges.
2. Brainstorm solutions to improve visibility and organic traffic.
3. Gather ideas from the community to prioritize efforts and create a roadmap.

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Current Issues

• Low Search Rankings: Keywords like “Chainlink staking”, “stake LINK” or “stLINK crypto” don’t lead users directly to stake.link.
• Traffic Leaks to Aggregators: Third-party sites like CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, and Coinbase dominate rankings for these terms, redirecting users who could otherwise land on our platform.
• Technical Barriers: Our current framework relies heavily on JavaScript, which impacts how search engines crawl and index the site.
• Potential User Risks: Phishing sites could exploit low visibility, putting users searching for stake.link at risk.

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Proposed Solutions

1. Technical Upgrades:

• Migrate to a framework like Next.js to enable Server-Side Rendering (SSR) for improved indexing and load speed.
• Implement essential files like robots.txt and sitemap.xml to guide search engines in crawling our site effectively.

2. Content Creation:

• Build out a stake.link/blog section and publish SEO-focused articles on topics like:
  • “How to Stake LINK Tokens with stake.link”
  • “Benefits of Staking Chainlink (LINK)”
  • “Step-by-Step Guide to stLINK Rewards”
• Use targeted keywords to optimize content for search queries that align with user intent.

3. Keyword Strategy:

• Focus on medium-difficulty, high-value keywords like “Chainlink staking” (1,300 monthly U.S. searches, moderate competition).
• Include long-tail keywords like “How to stake Chainlink tokens” to capture highly specific searches.

4. Backlink Building:

• Partner with reputable crypto sites, blogs, and influencers to acquire backlinks to stake.link.
• Create educational content that is naturally shareable and linkable (e.g., a staking rewards calculator or detailed staking guides).

5. User Safety:

• Improving our rankings helps reduce the risk of phishing sites gaining visibility.

6. Monitoring and Analytics:

• Use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to track traffic, conversions, and keyword performance.
• Regularly audit SEO performance to refine strategies.

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Why This Matters

• Increased Visibility: Improved rankings ensure users searching for staking solutions find us easily.
• Higher Credibility: Ranking high in search results boosts trust and authority.
• Traffic Ownership: Less reliance on third-party platforms like CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap.
• Organic Growth: More traffic and visibility ultimately lead to higher participation in staking.

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Open Questions

1. What ideas or strategies do you think would be most effective to improve our SEO?
2. Can this be a community-driven effort?
3. How much can the core team, as the unique and official UI host, contribute to SEO improvements?
4. What budget or resources should we consider for these improvements?

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Next Steps

If there’s consensus that this is worth pursuing, we could:

1. Develop a roadmap prioritizing high-impact actions (e.g., content creation, framework migration).
2. Establish a small budget allocation for technical improvements and content generation.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions on how we can collectively tackle this issue!

[resdl.eth]

I volunteer to help write the articles for this! Everything here sounds like a good idea, will gather some thoughts to improve the seo ranking as well

[Asymmetric]

Happy to produce needed graphics etc. for the content. Will also think about general UX improvements at stake.link in this context. Great push @Ari

[Bartosz]

Great initiative! As a SDL front-end dev i would be more than happy to improve our app SEO. At the moment we don’t have any plans to move our stack to Next.js but any other changes are within our reach.

[PRynne]

Hi there Patrick here. I am a 61 year old who believes passionately in the chainlink project but I am not technical. So although I appreciate that you want to talk about Search Engine optimisation ( I am assuming that is what SEO means), I really think you need to simplify the experience of the none technical person once they find your site.
I have staked Link on the official chainlink staking site and it is a lot easier to use and understand. I simply connect my wallet and collect my rewards any time of day and transfer them to my wallet, leaving the original stake in tact. As soon as I download my rewards, the site goes on to show me how many link I have been awarded since my last download.
When I go on Stake.link, I am left guessing what to do. I recently staked 10k link on Stake.Link and was awarded circa 10052 StLink which I downloaded. (I am assuming the 52 st link was the reward/interest) I then converted the STLink to Link and put the 52 in my wallet. But, I dont know what time frame this is for or when I am going to get my next reward. It is all a bit scary and not very transparent. You start wondering if it is a scam.
People like me have been fed a lot of negativity about crypto and are not very confident in the process. I would like someone to explain the whole process (like Im 7 years old) and for the site to become super easy to use and fully transparent with regard to the rewards.
Among my friends and family, I am unique in that I have invested in crypto for many years. Most will not even contemplate investing in crypto and think that I will be scammed.
I do think Stake.link is genuine and I appreciate all the work that goes into the process but, if you are to engage more people like me, you need to communicate to my 7 year old intellect. You need simple clear instructions (no TLA`s) (three letter abbreviations and you need to repeat until you are tired of repeating. Only then will you get through as the misinformation and fear are very high and will take a lot to break down.
I genuinely hope this helps you but my greatest concern is for my staking rewards. I have done my research and believe that Link staking will make me money, I just want to know how much and when
Best
Patrick

[Tokenized2027]

Hey Patrick, thank you for providing this valuable feedback.

I would love to assist you in understanding stake.link better. Feel free to direct message me on Discord (@onetothousand) or Telegram (@Tokenized2027).

[Daevien]

I have to agree with everything Patrick said. I’m very new to stake.link myself (this is my first post even), and consider myself to be a rather knowledgeable power-user in most things, software and hardware related. I hope my feedback can help ya’ll better understand points of pressure from the perspective of a newbie to this space.

I am not entirely unfamiliar with crypto, and have spent a few months really digging into the finer details of how wallets, smart contracts, and the sorts of scams there are in this ecosystem. I’ve been a fan of Chainlink since 2021, but I never really dove deeply into it until late September / early October 2024 when I really realized the potential for chainlink’s technology and the relationship with staking as a whole.

Despite this, I lost a chunk of my LINK at one point (valued around $4k) to a phishing scam because I did not understand the power behind signature authorizations which made me VERY gun-shy around any unfamiliar website requesting that I connect my wallet to it from that point.

When I discovered stake.link, it was by pure accident because I forgot the name of Chainlink’s staking site (staking.chain.link) and typed in stake.link and came upon the website ya’ll have today. I immediately closed out of it thinking I hit another phishing site trying to play off of the similarity to staking.chain.link. The only saving grace was the fact that stake.link did not make any effort to seem like it was directly tied to Chainlink, and instead potrayed itself as a separate entity all together. So points for that, and it was what eventually enabled me to build the courage to return and see what it was about.

Because of my newly developed paranoid nature, I combed through as much information about stake.link as I reasonably had time to do so, and that being said, I have some key points for ya’ll if you wish to consider from my personal experience:

The positives

• Website is not attempting to look like chainlink’s official staking site
• Information is transparent and readily available
• SDL is a great token and I look forward to accruing more in the future

Areas for potential improvement

• Website appearance does not scream professional business at first glance (very subjective personal opinion, even though I personally actually really like it)
• While information is transparent and readily available, it is difficult to discern what matters,
• SDL rewards. Yes, you get stLINK, but how much? It wasn’t obvious to me, even with info provided.

Terms like “Priority Staking Pool” can imply there is a non-priority staking pool to someone who doesn’t understand fundamental concepts of how this DAO works.

Blended interest rates may be confusing to someone who doesn’t understand that their staked link is automatically sent between private oracles and the community pool. In the FAQ it can be as simple as "Oracle Providers have higher interest rates anywhere between 6-8%, the community pool is typically sitting at 4.35%, since we stake your LINK between them automatically, accounting for the best rates, the blended rate is what you earn after fees.

Fees are not in your face. I would have loved to see the “What fees does stake.link take” and chart from the docs.stake.link FAQ page for the sake of transparency somewhere in the front page, rather than having to think to click the little “view full FAQ” at the bottom that I admittedly didn’t even realize existed until I started writing this, and even then the chart is much better and easier to understand than the technical answer under the “Read the full [FAQ]” link on the front page. I’ll be honest. If I’m still getting a noticeably better rate after fees than I would by staking with chainlink, I don’t care what the fees are.

Along with perhaps a little note beside the blended reward rate that states (this value is AFTER fees are charged to your rewards) in addition to the thing that says 7d average value

SDL rewards was particularly difficult to grasp, but again, I’m also stupid. When I saw this image-

My IMMEDIATE first thought was “No way. I’m getting 6.7% back in stLINK for every SDL I stake?” because that was what I was used to dealing with. More people (including myself) are using AI to verify their thoughts, but due to hallucinations and misunderstandings of important details, people can then be further fed misinformation (AI stating that yes, you indeed receive stLINK at a 6.7% rate for SDL you stake), rather than a percentage of the fees accrued from link being staked.

It’s nothing on you guys. Ya’ll put the information there for the world to properly read, but it’s not always digested correctly, and when people end up accidentally misinformed and don’t receive the rewards they expect, they scream scam, which spreads faster than good tidings, further making this platform difficult to gain new users.

Anyways, this was a lot more than I expected to write. I went on a bit of a tangent, and I’m sorry if its formatted terribly, or if this isn’t the spot for it. I currently have around 9k reSDL and I know it’s supposed to let me open topics or something on this site related to SLURPS, but I don’t understand how that’s verified since I can’t even connect my wallet to this site. But again, I’m probably just misunderstanding something somewhere I hope this helps.

*Edit because I can only upload 1 image, understandably so

[EqS]

Terms like “Priority Staking Pool” can imply there is a non-priority staking pool to someone who doesn’t understand fundamental concepts of how this DAO works.

I agree, this could be changed to “Waiting Room” or “Holding Zone” or similar.

I currently have around 9k reSDL and I know it’s supposed to let me open topics or something on this site related to SLURPS, but I don’t understand how that’s verified since I can’t even connect my wallet to this site.

Anyone can post in this forum but community voting through the governance process is weighted by how much reSDL and SDL you hold.