SEO And PPC For Cryptocurrency Platforms

Cryptocurrency exchanges bring significant daily revenues to the industry and are believed to be one of the most successful. Progressive platforms, such as NFT marketplaces, are now emerging that are changing the way business is conducted. Look at some of the aspects of this market niche.


Coins and Tokens are the two types of cryptocurrencies, which are differentiated by the method of creation. The first kind depends on independent blockchains, while the second relies on ready-made platforms. Tokens can be issued in various ways, including centrally, while coins are generated decentrally by miners employing powerful equipment and Proof of Work and Proof of Stake protocols. ICO (like IPO) are usually held to raise funds for development. It is possible to create your own token, using a special blockchain, if you know the specifics.

For goods and services, as well as to make transfers, coins are accepted as virtual currency. They are typically used alongside fiat currency in most countries.

The token can be used for payments, but its primary purpose is to provide access to services and the right to use a particular product. As part of checks conducted by banks and other organizations, tokens can be used to verify transactions.

NFT is a recognized token that gives the owner access to a unique digital art object. The most well-known coin is Bitcoin.

Here are the areas of crypto-business you can consider:

• Investment,
• Trading,
• Token sales,
• NFT marketplaces,
• Airdrop of tokens,
• Collaboration with Discord to get to Whitelist and earn money by buying NFT,
• Nodes (to ensure the security of the blockchain) and crypto mining,
• Teaching.

A lot of search engines are closely monitoring crypto-currency and NFT sites as part of the Your Money Your Life (YMYL) program. A ban on advertising wallets, exchanges and cryptocurrency exchanges in 2018 has been partially lifted for certified companies in the US and Japan. By 2021, companies in the cryptosphere were advancing solely through organic growth, sometimes using media advertising.

Currently, cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets targeting the United States are actively promoting their products and services. Google displays ads on search, YouTube, and other resources if the company is certified by the Financial Crimes Agency (FinCEN). Also, it's critical to follow all Google's policies designed specifically to promote financial products. Advertising for ICOs and DeFi (decentralized funding) is still banned today.

Google ads are permitted for businesses not related to the purchase, storage, or exchange of cryptocurrencies (businesses accepting cryptocurrency payments, selling mining equipment, providing consulting services, offering cyber security, teaching maverick trading and investing). In Canada, it is legal to advertise cryptocurrency exchanges, and in the United States, Japan, and Israel, it is legal to advertise wallets and exchanges.

Landing pages with a comparative analysis of cryptocurrency-related products (cryptocurrency investment advice, aggregator sites or partner platforms with similar materials, broker reviews) are completely prohibited.

Despite its limitations in the advertising methods, Google showcases a lot of cryptocurrency information at the top and provides traders with a convenient platform — Google Finance with a section on cryptocurrencies, summary analytics, and breaking news from the aggregator Google News.

Promotion of websites in the cryptocurrency niche includes standard stages:

Take a look at them in detail, using examples from Serpstat.

To begin, let's define competitors in SEO and PPC.

The most relevant competitors on the keywords "NFT marketplace", as well as, for paid promotion, for "cryptocurrency exchange", in Google US:

To search for competitors by domain, use the appropriate report, and create your template if needed:

As a measure of niche competition, you can look at metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty for SEO, competition for PPC, and cost-per-click, which is what advertisers bid for each keyword click.

In any case, such an estimate will provide some insight into the niche demand, as well as the amount of traffic to be expected when promoting projects in the crypto business.

Enter a query in the form below and analyze search volume, KD, CPC, and other essential metrics.

Discover the top-performing domains for your tag queries to collect additional competitors. Identify competitors in organic and paid results separately.

If you plan to create and promote NFT-marketplace, you need to work on the structure of the site and its content. Semantics can be the basis for developing a clear hierarchy of pages. Let's start with keyword research through competitor analysis.

For large-scale projects, a fast algorithm is needed:

Text analytics will help you find more relevant requests from competitors in the TOP 15 of SERP. "Overstuffed" will target keywords used too often in your text under the "Status" column.

Let's consider some types of content that will help to develop the site organically regarding crypto-topics. Examples of interesting subjects for a blog with educational or news content to attract traffic to the site:

• tips for beginners;
• technology news and changes in the crypto market;
• explanation of the principles of blockchain operation;
• interviews with experts on the subject;
• promotions, bonuses, and internal updates.

A reliable source of topics for such pages is Search questions. Gather the topics that interest your readers and create a full FAQ:

For digital currency exchangers, it is also important to optimize pages for the currency pairs you plan to work with, otherwise, a visitor who comes from a search engine will leave the site without finding relevant content. An example of such a keyword is "BTC Ethereum", and in Serpstat reports, you can see many examples of such an approach:

General requests such as "electronic money exchange", and "online exchanger" should not be underestimated. Additionally, you should create separate landing pages for each pair.

Taking into account the hype around cryptocurrencies, I will share a small life hack. With Serpstat, you can "catch the trend" as it emerges. View Keyword trends and filter the queries related to your topic. If you work with the report regularly, you have a chance to run pages and entire sections earlier than your competitors.

 Another life hack, but for classic analysis — Google trend. This is especially important if your niche is characterized by seasonality. Check trends by unique keywords and adapt content to get more traffic "in season".

The results of the search volume, popularity, and trends for NFT show that demand has grown very rapidly, especially since 2021 when there was a lot of news regarding these tokens. This search volume has remained high over the past year.

Another example of a trendy keyword. Nike recently released CryptoKicks, NFT - sneakers that can be modified and updated. This query has already become popular and appears in Google news and trends.

Additionally, the visibility of the marketplace - opensea.io - was exponentially increased:  

In the context of off-page optimization, it is worth mentioning the backlink profile and the importance of using trust web-resources to build backlink volume.

For better promotion in organic search, we recommend using more non-anchor links. When finding trust donors with Serpstat and searching for anchor-lists, use Backlink analysis.

When the site is ready, but its ranking does not bring the expected results even after indexing and strengthening positions on keywords, there is a need for more detailed analysis. Rank Tracker will help at this stage.

The Page report, for example, can help you identify pages that do not match your target queries. Multiple pages on a site cannibalize each other's traffic when they are optimized for the same keyword.

This discrepancy in the pages can be resolved by reviewing the content and meta tags, conducting Text analytics, and determining more relevant queries for the TOP 15, based on the cluster.

Using the Competitors report, you can select multiple similar domains and track their positions for each keyword on an ongoing basis, both in paid and organic search results.

Other ways to stand out on Google are available if you're not in a rush to switch to paid promotion. You can use SERP features. For the NFT marketplace, appearing in Google Images is crucial. In the Keywords report by domain, you can see which queries your competitor is showing with additional Google SERP elements.

If you need the latest information on all your local competitors, the SERP crawling service will be extremely helpful. With this tool, you can find out who advertises for similar keywords, what features appear in the SERP, and what positions hold.

One more useful tool is Search Volume Crawling, which displays popular keywords in the region. Utilizing the API, the results can be retrieved in JSON format and integrated into your internal reports. API queries can be generated in Postman or, for example, Insomnia.

A quick way to increase the semantics by multiple queries is the Google Spreadsheets add-on.

You can check the data on paid promotions, ads examples, landing pages in Serpstat PPC research section, both for keywords and domains.

There was a time not so long ago, advertising for the crypto-sphere was completely banned and business owners used tricks for paid promotion. Such ads flooded the platforms of Meta and Telegram, and were shown on unobvious keywords, so as not to provoke the rules of search engines.

Now, some services can be advertised with certification and Google policies. This factor shapes the specifics of promotion in the niche, allows you to improve websites, and make them more trustworthy to concede with E-A-T principles.