White Hat SEO: How To Play By The Rules of Search Engines And Win?
There are three basic types of SEO, White Hat, Black Hat and Grey Hat. Most of the SEO people use the first type because it is better than the two. It is safe and based on legal as well as ethical methods. People doing SEO with White Hat are always safe and have no issues like suspension, spam, penalties etc.
White Hat SEO is all about playing with Google approved standard rules to optimize your sites for the users. In this type of SEO, focus is the user and not the search engine. When the site, keywords and content is really optimized and user based, search engine also ranks it.
Is White Hat SEO the Best Option?
When it comes to what is the best SEO practice, it depends on what you want to achieve. As said earlier, the three types are different. Let me explain it in brief. White Hat is all about using legitimate methods for optimization, Black Hat focuses on using the illegal ways while Grey Hat has the similar strategies as does Black Hat.
So apparently, White Hat is safe because it is legitimate. But when you start a business and work on White Hat, you get tremendous results. However, there is a lot of competition and the competitors use wrong tactics playing with Black Hat SEO. They can even make better profits and sales. But that is temporary.
You will see them getting banned because Google will sooner or later track it and penalize them. You should only continue with the legal practices of White Hat SEO. It is slow in results but really a safe option and good for the people who want to build a long-term brand or business.
There are a number of other reasons why White Hat SEO is always the best option.
Black Hat is really expensive. Google and other search engines have become really smart and they can detect cheaper tactics.
Black Hat needs technical knowledge. You are supposed to know better than most of the SEO guys. You are going to dodge Google so you got to be really smart.
Lastly, Black Hat has risks and you can get penalized any time. Even people do their best to avoid getting caught but Google can track such techniques and it may happen any time.
We see so many stories and post on social sites with attractive and catchy headlines. These stories carry sensation in titles and headlines but they have something else inside. This is done to get more clicks and increase traffic. This can work for news sites but not for businesses or brands. Google hates clickbait and marks such sites as spam.
Rules of White Hat SEO
The base of the White Hat SEO lies on a number of rules and principles. These rules are actually what make White Hat SEO successful, more dominant and always the best practice. We will talk about the best practices here in this section.
1. Creating a Responsive Website
Have you ever wondered what is a responsive web design? If you don’t know, you are going to learn about it here. This is the first step of White Hat SEO. All you need is a one beautiful website with a responsive design and a great look. It is not necessarily to actually have a well-decorated site.
What a website for White Hat SEO needs is a user-friendly design, instant loading of images, fast page loading, better user experience and maximum facilitation to the users. Moreover, a great and responsive web design also makes SEO easier in the later stages.
2. Keyword Research
This is the stage where the real game starts. There are literally hundreds of brands and websites with same keywords but one will get ranked on top. You have two options, either choose the most competitive keywords and struggle really hard or choose relatively low competitive keywords and get most out of it.
For example, if you have weight loss products, there will be many other brands with same products. The keyword “weight loss” is the target of every brand and they create a tough competition. The short tail keywords are more competitive than long tail keywords. Even Google now suggests long tail keywords.
Finding the best and right keywords needs a lot of research and hard work. You can use online tools, websites, apps, Google search console, online communities and even steal competitors’ keywords.
3. Creating Unique Content
Content is everything when we talk about White Hat SEO. Whole of your game relies on the content. You should brainstorm for content creation ideas, strategies, and how you can make your content interesting as well as informative. Regular blog posts and guest blogging are the essential parts of content creation and strategy.
You must be very unique in content ideas and writing it. Update your website blog three to four times a week, means you need 3-4 new posts in a week for the blog to keep visitors engaged. Secondly, you have to find out relevant niche websites with high domain authority and huge traffic to get backlinks.
The primary and only focus of the content strategy should be the users, not the search engines. User satisfaction, customer engagement, increased readability, and compelling meta descriptions are the traits of great blog as well as guest post content. Use tools, software, websites and help from the experts to create best quality content.
4. Link Building
This is one of the integral parts of White Hat SEO. If you are serious about ranking your site in top search results, you need backlinks. There are a number of methods of link building that really work for White Hat SEO. The Skyscraper technique, broken link building and guest posting are the best methods.
Guest blogging is the primary factor that provides quality backlinks from high authority websites. All you need is to find out the best websites that match your niche. Make sure these sites have good authority and a huge traffic. Get original backlinks to your site or pages with quality content.
What next you can do is to spot all the broken links you did in the past. This is somehow difficult for most of the people. But you can find extensions, apps, and tools that track all of your broken links and help you fix them.
5. Technical SEO
Here you will need some serious effort. It is more about the website design, look, how it performs, its responsive nature, how it facilitates White Hat SEO practices and mobile-first index. These qualities of White Hat SEO make a site really effective and user-friendly.
Mobile-first indexing is the target of most people now. Google also priorities such sites that target mobile-first indexing. For this you need a beautiful and responsive website that is mobile-friendly. Other factors are the speed of the site. You can improve and make your site super-fast.
Never forget to make your site architecture smart. This actually helps in SEO of the site. Your site should treat the customers well and lets them perform every action easily. Lastly make sure there are no bugs or errors. Few pages don’t work and this can be fixed when you keep a regular check on the site.
6. Customer Reviews
Nowadays, no one can underestimate the power of customer reviews. A study found out that 92% customers read customer reviews before making any purchase while 72 customers believe online reviews influence their shopping behavior. You have to invest in customer reviews.
Make your site user-friendly where every customer manages to leave a review. Encourage your visitors and clients to write down reviews so that it can help next customers. However, don’t go after paid reviews. They can never make you retain customers or get more clients for more sales.
What to Avoid in White Hat SEO?
Everything that is a part of Black Hat SEO or even Grey Hat SEO should not be on your cards when you are working on White Hat SEO. We have listed some of the most important factors that are dangerous and can harm your site.
1. Cloaking
This is a trick used by people for quick and instant results. In cloaking the search engine is deceived. The content shown to search engine is different than the content presented to users. This is totally illegal and unethical. Google penalizes such sites and it can track down cloaking easily.
2. Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is to use certain keywords in a post or page beyond the limits specified. This was a common practice in the past but now it has been banned. Still many people opt keyword stuffing for instant and better results.
3. Duplicate Content
We have seen that White Hat SEO is all about unique and best quality content. While Black Hat SEO uses copied and plagiarized content. Such people never care about the content. They use others’ content and share on their sites. Google has gone really strict for this action and it doesn’t compromise on content quality.
4. Paid Backlinks
What many do is to buy paid backlinks. They work and offer amazing results. But Google doesn’t like this. It discourages paid backlinks. You are allowed to create natural backlinks through guest blogging otherwise you will be punished with penalties.
5. Clickbait
We see so many stories and post on social sites with attractive and catchy headlines. These stories carry sensation in titles and headlines but they have something else inside. This is done to get more clicks and increase traffic. This can work for news sites but not for businesses or brands. Google hates clickbait and marks such sites as spam.
Originally Posted In: https://freelancers-hub.com/white-hat-seo-how-to-play-by-the-rules-and-win/
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