Crypto SEO, web3 SEO, blockchain SEO: one job, different products
The three names describe the same work. What changes is the product, because each kind of product is chosen through different searches and needs different pages to win them.
| Product | What users search before they choose | The pages that have to exist |
|---|---|---|
| Exchange | Fees, “is it safe”, head-to-head comparisons, how to buy a given coin | A fee page with worked examples, a security page, honest comparison pages, asset pages |
| Wallet | Best wallet lists, one wallet against another, “is it safe”, how to recover | Security and custody pages, setup and recovery guides, a comparison you would be willing to have checked |
| DeFi protocol | What it is, whether it is safe, how to use it, its risks | Docs, a risk page with audits and their limits, how-to guides, live data a page can cite |
| Token or project | What the token is for, how to buy it, its supply and unlocks | A token page with the contract addresses and supply, the docs, and coverage that explains the project |
| Chain, infrastructure, developer tools | How to build on it, comparisons with other chains, documentation | Developer docs on an indexable domain, tutorials, comparison pages for technical buyers |
For the commercial side of each, see the crypto marketing agency, web3 marketing agency, DeFi marketing agency and blockchain marketing agency pages.
How Google treats crypto sites
Google has no separate ranking system for crypto, and its spam policies do not name it. What it has is a quality standard that asks most of pages that could affect someone’s money. Google’s search quality rater guidelines put investing under “Your Money or Your Life” topics, and pages on those topics get the most scrutiny: who wrote the page, what experience it shows, what it rests on. The raters do not rank pages themselves; their ratings are how Google checks that its systems reward pages like that.
Paid search is a different policy and a different team. Google Ads bans ads for initial coin offerings and DeFi trading protocols in every country, and lets exchanges and wallets advertise only with a licence and a certification for each country they target. None of that decides organic rankings, but it explains why organic matters more to a crypto company than to most: for many products it is the one large channel left.
Crypto sites do not rank badly because they are crypto. They rank badly when the page does not say who is behind it, what it charges and what can go wrong.
What crypto users search before they choose
Five shapes of search come before a deposit, and each is won by a different kind of page. Most crypto sites have the product page and none of the others.
| Search shape | Examples, monthly US searches | The page that wins it |
|---|---|---|
| A ranked list | best crypto wallet 6,600 · best crypto exchange 2,900 · best crypto app 2,400 | Review and comparison sites; yours too, if it is fair to competitors |
| Is it safe | is coinbase safe 4,400 · is kraken safe 1,000 · is crypto.com safe 720 | A security page on the brand’s own site: custody, audits, licences, incidents |
| Fees | coinbase fees 2,400 · kraken fees 880 · crypto exchange fees 260 | A fee page that states every fee with an example |
| Head to head | coinbase vs robinhood 1,000 · ledger vs trezor 880 · coinbase vs kraken 590 | An honest comparison, on your domain or on a site that ranks |
| How to and what is | how to buy crypto 3,600 · what is defi 2,400 · what is a stablecoin 2,400 | Guides that answer in the first sentence, written by someone who uses the product |
Google Ads search volume, US, monthly average, pulled 23 October 2026. These are the largest brands; the same shapes exist for every exchange and wallet at a smaller scale. Google returns no volume for some crypto searches, such as “how to buy bitcoin”, so they are left out rather than guessed.
Technical work that matters on a crypto site
- Keep the public site outside the app. Google does not connect a wallet or log in. Whatever sits behind the connect button, it cannot read. Docs, learn pages, fee and security pages and token information belong on server-rendered or static pages, with the app on its own subdomain.
- Check what geo-blocking does to Google. Many exchanges block visitors from the United States. Google says its crawler’s default IP addresses appear to be based in the USA, so a block at the edge can block Googlebot too. Block sign-up and trading, not the pages Google needs to read, and test it.
- Make the docs part of the site. Developer docs on a separate hosted tool often sit on a subdomain with no links into the main site, duplicate titles and no sitemap. They are frequently the most linked pages a project has; connect them.
- One page per asset, chain or pair that earns it. Thousands of near-identical asset or pair pages made from one template to catch every search variation can fall under Google’s scaled content abuse policy; Google’s own guide to its AI features says so of pages built for fan-out queries. Build the ones users search for, with something on each that only you can show.
- Say who you are. The legal entity, licences and registrations by market, the team, the authors and reviewers, the date each figure was checked. These are what the YMYL standard looks for, and what users check before a deposit.
Links and PR: what still counts
Crypto has a large paid-media market: sponsored articles and press releases on crypto news sites, sold by the placement. Google’s spam policies name links in paid articles, guest posts and press releases that pass ranking credit as link spam; the same links are fine when they carry nofollow or sponsored. So a paid placement can still put your name in front of readers, and in the pages AI answers cite, but it should not be bought as a ranking link.
- What earns links. Research and data others cite, docs and integration guides that developers and partners link to, security audits and the auditors’ write-ups, and news that a journalist chooses to cover.
- What to check in any offer. Whether the placement is labelled, whether the link carries sponsored, whether the site has readers of its own, and whether it already appears in the answers your users read.
More on both in crypto link building and crypto PR.
The promotion rules that reach your pages
Some crypto content is a financial promotion in the regulator’s eyes, including pages on your own site and posts by people you pay. The rules below change what a page may say and who must approve it.
| Where | The rule | What it changes for content |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | Since 8 October 2023 any promotion of a cryptoasset to UK consumers, from any country, must be made or approved by an FCA-authorised firm or made by an FCA-registered crypto firm, carry the FCA risk warning, and offer no incentive to invest | Pages aimed at UK users carry the prescribed warning, have no refer-a-friend or sign-up bonus, and go through the approver. The FCA says unapproved promotion by influencers and affiliates may be a criminal offence |
| European Union | MiCA Article 7: marketing must be identifiable as marketing, fair, clear and not misleading, and consistent with the white paper; none may go out before the white paper is published | Launch pages and campaigns wait for the white paper; claims are checked against it |
| United States | Securities Act section 17(b): anyone paid to promote a security must disclose the payment and its amount; the SEC applied it to a celebrity token promotion in 2022 | Paid promotion of a token that may be a security names the payment |
| Google Ads | ICOs and DeFi trading protocols banned; exchanges and wallets need a licence and certification per country | Organic carries the searches paid cannot reach |
Read at the FCA’s, the EU’s, the SEC’s and Google’s own pages on 23 October 2026. How the rules shape SEO work, not legal advice: whether a promotion is approved is your compliance team’s or your approver’s decision.
What AI answers cite about crypto
On 23 October 2026 we put 36 questions a crypto user asks before choosing to Perplexity: which exchange, wallet, DeFi protocol, staking platform, stablecoin, new token, crypto card or tax tool to use, in the US, the UK and the EU. Its answers cited 358 pages. Most were not the projects’ own sites.
| What we measured | Result | What it means for a project |
|---|---|---|
| Cited pages that are ranked lists or comparisons | 246 of 358 (69%) | The answer is built from “best X” pages. Being fairly listed on the ones that are cited matters as much as your own page |
| Citations of the own site of a project the answer recommends | 22 of 348 (6%) | Your site is rarely the source even when you are the answer; the third-party pages are |
| Of those 22, the project’s own “best X” or comparison page | 15 | When a project page is cited, it is usually a comparison that ranks the project among its competitors |
| Answers citing at least one crypto media page | 27 of 36 | 32 of the 50 crypto media citations were the outlet’s own ranked lists, not its news |
Method: Perplexity sonar through the API, 36 prompts in 8 categories, one answer each, 23 October 2026; US unless the prompt is about the UK or the EU. A first-party sample read as a direction, not a market statistic.
How Perplexity picks its sources, and what that means for your pages, is in our Perplexity SEO guide.
How to measure crypto SEO
- Users, not visits. Sign-ups that pass verification, funded accounts or first deposits for an exchange; wallets created and used for a wallet; depositors who stay for a protocol. Report them by page type and market.
- Non-branded search. Search Console clicks with your brand filtered out show whether new users find you, rather than existing users finding the login page.
- The brand results. What the first page shows next to your name with “safe”, “review”, “fees” and “scam”: that is what a user reads in the minute before a deposit.
- The AI answers. A fixed set of the questions your users ask, run on a schedule, recording who is named and which pages are cited.