White Hat SEO includes strategies and tactics of optimization, which necessarily respect the rules of the search engines. Its aim is to improve your ranking on a search engine results page.
As opposed to White Hat SEO, there is Black Hat SEO. They use illegitimate and sometimes illegal actions and techniques to boost your website. If you are not sure what is SEO, you can check our Types of SEO article first.
There is a variety of white hat SEO techniques, but some of them are as follows:
- Working on quality content
- Applying descriptive meta tags rich with keywords
- Enabling mobile-friendliness
- Link building and social media networks
- Making a navigation-friendly website
What is White Hat SEO?
Google, along with other search engines, approves White Hat SEO techniques. Search engines will not normally penalize good SEO techniques. They primarily focus on people rather than on search engines, and it takes a long-term approach to optimization. We sometimes call it Ethical SEO.
On the other hand, black hat SEO techniques focus on search bots. And these strategies are likely to be penalized. What do they do?
They usually try to hack the search engines and take advantage of any weaknesses in the algorithms.
That is why Google constantly updates its algorithms. The most common Google search algorithm updates are:
- Panda (prevented content farms)
- Florida (prevented keyword stuffing)
- Penguin (prevented linking practices)
The importance of White Hat search engine optimization
Now, let’s go back to good SEO practices. If you avoid using White Hat SEO techniques and rely on black hat SEO services, Google may easily ban your website. We all know that millions of people visit Google every day, and there is a constant chance for your website to be visited.
Don’t take a risk! Being away from the search engines will result in a significant decrease in your website traffic, which will have tremendous consequences on your business.
If you use White Hat SEO services, you can be calm!
What services do White Hat SEO professionals offer?
Quality content and services
SEO experts apply SEO keyword research tools to identify the list of the most relevant keywords for your website. These keywords should be used intensively, such as by creating articles, posts, and videos. These forms of content will match the purpose of the keyword and your visitor. In addition to keywords, writers use synonyms (words with similar meaning) in the text.
Additionally, your website should have multimedia content, not only written text.
Descriptive language and keyword-rich meta tags
Meta description summarizes the intent and content of your website. It should be well-written with carefully used keywords, which will make users and search engines find your website.
However, SEO professionals will choose only relevant keywords because they want to avoid so-called keyword stuffing.
Mobile-friendly website
Today, more and more people use the Internet on their phones. Your page must be mobile-friendly if you want to be successful. If you want to check if your website meets the necessary criteria for mobile phone users, log in to the Search Console account and take a look at the Mobile Usability Report.
Also, remember that searches on the mobile phone are mainly local in nature. Namely, one in five searches have local intent – people are interested in the location where they are staying at the moment and what it offers (hotels, restaurants, museums, etc).
Link building
Links (or backlinks) are important. Actually, they are very important! If there are no links between your website and other websites or social networks, you may not see the SEO results you expect.
Backlinks are links on one website, and when the user clicks on the anchor text, it takes them to another website. You probably won’t see a website with a high ranking that has zero backlinks.
Link building is not easy in SEO. Unfortunately, a lot of people would prefer to buy links, but don’t do that! Buying backlinks from unknown sources can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you are doing. Also, it is not cheap, and you risk getting a penalty if you end up buying PBN links. If you are not sure if your website is suffering a Google Penalty, you can check our Google Penalty checker tools and see it for yourself.
Easy-to-navigate website
The architecture of your website should be planned and created in a user-friendly way. People avoid too complicated websites, which results in worse organic traffic for these sites.
Conclusion
White-hat SEO is people-oriented – these techniques promote the fair concept and the right mindset. They refer to users, and they do not spam people around. White-hat SEO never promises an overnight sensation, but everything is about planning and long-term goals. If you play legit, this will pay off.
FAQ About White Hat SEO
Do I really need White Hat SEO?
It depends on what you want. If you have set long-term goals and you definitely decided to have a real and successful business, the white hat can help you a lot. However, if you intend to get rich quickly and promote a business that belongs to a spammy, murky niche, then you will probably turn to black or grey hat SEO services. In other words, the answer lies in the intentions, goals, and legality of your business.
How to recognize White-Hat SEO strategies?
First of all, there is relevant content for end-users. The images on the page are clear and well-labeled. The page contains relevant links and references.
The usage of language with a lot of mistakes is a typical sign of poor quality. White hat SEO will make complete sentences with good spelling and grammar. Next, you will see an accurate choice of vocabulary, and there will be no punctuation mistakes in the text.
Also, white-hat strategies include using standards-compliant HTML and relevant and unique page titles.
What if my White Hat SEO fails?
Don’t give up! Actually, white hat SEO cannot fail, but it may take more time and effort to achieve the desired results.
Sometimes there are a lot of competitors, and it is not easy to optimize your keywords. Namely, there are highly competitive keywords, and your content should be rewritten and refreshed more than once before it finally begins to rank.
