SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic. The purpose of any SEO campaign is to get more visibility and build a website presence.
Based on the practices, SEO can be divided into different types. It includes white hat SEO, grey hat SEO, and black hat SEO. Among these three SEO types, black hat and grey hat SEO should be avoided. Black hat SEO techniques are the ones that go against Google’s guidelines.
Google has set guidelines for webmasters to avoid confusion. Working on black hat SEO techniques and going against Google’s guidelines is risky. By doing that, you will be risking your website for any big penalty. This happens when Google comes to know that you are using the wrong practices to search engine presence.
Talking about grey hat SEO, it is somewhere between white hat SEO and black hat SEO. It is something that you would prevent Google from knowing and it is also something that you won’t be penalized automatically.
What is White Hat SEO?
White hat SEO means optimization techniques that come under Google’s guidelines. By doing white hat SEO, you are following ethical tactics and rules set by search engines. An experienced and knowledgeable digital marketer would always recommend you to work on white hat SEO methods and prevent the black hat and grey hat SEO methods.
The reason is following black hat and grey hat techniques can result in penalties. These methods might help your website get higher rankings for a short time period, but it would be difficult for you to sustain the rankings for the long term.
The main focus of search engines is to satisfy users’ queries and provide the best experience. Through white hat SEO tactics, search engines get ensured your website would deliver a quality user experience.
To make sure whatever SEO methods or tactics you follow come under white hat SEO, we recommend you to read “Quality Guidelines” set by Google. Reading it would help you understand what kind of practices can lead to troubles if discovered by search engines.
Also, Check – Know About On Page SEO Techniques
White Hat SEO Techniques
To help you out, here I have talked about various white hat SEO techniques, tactics, and methods:
High-quality content
When it comes to ranking high on Google and other major search engines, this is something you can’t neglect. Working on high-quality content is so important. Don’t expect your website to rank high on the search engine results page (SERP) through poor-quality or mediocre quality content. Giant search engines like Google and Bing are concerned so much about user experience. Google continuously works on algorithmic updates so that it can rank those websites that actually satisfy users’ search queries.
Using relevant keywords
Ranking just with high-quality content without using keywords can be quite difficult. This is when the importance of keyword research comes in. Keyword research is when you would come to know about various keywords. Make sure to select and use relevant keywords. The mistake many webmasters make is they start stuffing random keywords in their content. Doing so won’t rank your web pages higher on the search engine, but in fact, it can even decline the existing rankings of your website.
Easy navigation
This is another white hat practice. You need to make sure your website is easy to navigate by your visitors. There are different things you can do to improve your site’s navigation easy. First of all, make sure to keep the navigation consistent on all the pages. When the navigation changes from one page to another, it delivers a poor user experience. The purpose is to improve the website’s accessibility in such a manner that your visitors won’t have difficulty accessing any page or section of your website.
Also, Check – How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy
Link Building
Link building is and will be the important ranking factor. When it comes to link building, quality matters more than quantity. However, the important thing is getting links from relevant and authoritative websites. Link building becomes grey hat/black hat SEO when you use PBNs (private blog networks) and low authority websites for backlinks. In short, whatever backlinks your website gets seems to be natural and relevant. Many people make the mistake of buying links from marketplaces like Fiverr. Well, this will do more harm than good to your SEO campaign. In the long run, such backlinks are not worth it. The best way to get links from high-quality websites is by compiling helpful, in-depth content. It would attract other websites to link to your website.
Keyword Research
When it comes to search engine optimization, keyword research is something you can’t neglect. Keyword research is still very important. Keywords are the search phrases people type in search engines to look for any information. Before you proceed with other SEO tasks like publishing content, creating backlinks, etc., you need to be very clear about keywords you want to target. When doing keyword research, you need to consider three things to find the best keywords – search volume, competition, and keyword intent. There are so many free and paid SEO tools in the market. Some of the popular ones are Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and SEMrush.
Focus on User Experience
White hat SEO methods are concerned mainly about delivering the best user experience. As a website owner, your primary focus needs to be providing quality user experience. This ultimately will help your website drive more and more traffic. There are so many ways you can enhance your website’s user experience. Some of them are: optimizing website’s speed, adding more visuals (images & videos), keeping website pages consistent, adding key information with bullet points, using attractive call to action, and adding easy to read fonts & colours.
Final Thoughts
White hat SEO methods are those practices that come under Google’s webmaster guidelines. Don’t run behind short term gains with grey hat or black hat SEO. To avoid penalties and keep your website growing its organic visibility in the long run, always focus on white hat optimization techniques. To help you, here we have listed some important white hat SEO methods.
