What is White Hat SEO and How to Implement It

The term “White Hat SEO“, also called “Ethical SEO” refers to SEO strategies that appeal to real users rather than the search engines. In addition, these strategies are fully compliant with the search engine guidelines.

This means that when a website is optimized using white hat SEO strategies and techniques, the goal is to make it useful for the users but also appeal to the major search engines, especially Google, in order to rank better.

White Hat SEO Vs. Black Hat SEO – What Is the Difference?

As opposed to White Hat SEO techniques, Black Hat SEO is focused on the machines that do the search rather than the real users. These techniques produce results faster but are quite risky. With the evolution of Google’s algorithms, Black Hat SEO is less likely to function. In fact, you can end up being banned from search engines.

And being banned from Google, the largest search engine that gets billions of visits a day, is a big deal. If this happens, the traffic will decrease significantly and your website may never be indexed again. All in all, using Black Hat SEO can do more harm than good for your business in the long run.

Some examples of Black Hat SEO tactics include but are not limited to:

–    Spammed, duplicated, or copied content

–    Content automation

–    Keyword over-stuffing

–    Sneaky redirects

–    Doorway pages

–    Cloaking

–    Guest post networks

–    Buying links

–    Pages with malware

–    Negative campaign against competitors

–    Hacking websites in order to publish your links and content.

White Hat SEO Techniques

White Hat SEO techniques do require more effort and time but are sure to bring long-term results and success. Here are some White Hat SEO tactics and strategies that will ensure you are on the safe side.

Original, High-quality Content

You have probably heard the phrase “content is king”. Whether it is an e-mail campaign, social media campaign, blog, or e-book, quality content is the key to attracting organic traffic.

What does high-quality content mean?

–    Originality is of utmost importance. Copying other people’s content or spinning existing posts is absolutely forbidden. If you do use someone else’s content, make sure to credit the author.

–    Relevance. You must make sure your content is relevant to your audience and industry.

–    Frequency. Posting once a month is not enough. If you want your readers to come back, you need to be consistent.

–    Excellent language skills. Even the most interesting and fun article will fail to produce results if it’s poorly written. Pay attention to grammar, vocabulary, and spelling.

–    Variety. Having great written content is not enough. Post images, videos, infographics, etc. For videos and images, always include a title and ALT description.

Use of Keywords

When it comes to keywords, be sure they are relevant. In addition, the selected keywords must have high search volume in order to attract traffic. However, there’s a catch. The use of high-volume keywords that are also often used by your main competitors can also have an adverse effect.

The ideal keyword is the one that has high volume and low competition. For this purpose, you should do keyword research by using tools like the Chrome Extension called Keywords Everywhere or the Google Keyword Planner.

According to the latest research, the keyword density in an article should be up to 7%. Keyword over-stuffing often results in lesser quality or even complete illegibility.

Updated White Hat SEO techniques require using the main keyword along with similar words, as well as key phrases throughout the whole text. It is also very important to include these in the title and the sub-headers.

Good Site Architecture

Simply put, websites that are user-friendly, i.e. well organized and easy to navigate, will get better results in organic search. A well-organized site also makes it easier for search engines to crawl it. For search engines, information is of utmost importance; that means you need to ensure your selected keywords are in the page titles, header tags, metadata, and site’s markup.

Another important factor is your website’s fast loading times and its capability of being used across all platforms – desktop, mobile, and tablet.

Link Building

Link building is the process of swapping links with other websites. Getting other sites to link to your website is a great way to drive traffic, but also increase your site’s authority. Search engines use links to determine which keywords your site ranks for. Links also mean that your site is high-quality and will result in better rankings.

However, not all links are equal. Black hat SEO techniques often include buying links or using automated link building processes that get a large number of low-quality links in a short period of time. As mentioned before, such tactics can get you banned from search engines. That is why the best approach is to focus on natural link building. Like most White Hat SEO strategies, building links naturally takes time but is absolutely worth it.

One of the best ways to get links is guest blogging, as long as the approach remains natural. That means publishing guest posts on websites that have similar domain authority to yours.

Conclusion

All of these White Hat SEO tactics can help you increase organic traffic to your website. For more advanced approaches, you can reach out to SEO professionals or, for SMEs, you can use specialist SEO software.