If you want potential customers to find your website, it is important to plan Search Engine Optimization (SEO). However, to prevent your site from being penalized or even banned from search results, it is necessary to operate what are known as white hat SEO tactics and practices. This article will explain white hat SEO. Then, we will provide you with a list of the best white hat SEO techniques and discuss why they work.
What is White Hat SEO?
In SEO terminology , the White Hat SEO term refers to the use of optimization strategies and techniques that are in line with the conditions and algorithms of the major search engines, such as Google.
Generally, white hat SEO refers to any practice that enhances your search rankings on a search engine results page (SERP). In other words, white hat SEO is a term that covers all the techniques that operate according to the rules of search engines and their users’ expectations.
White Hat SEO is most often used by those who want to make a long-term investment in their website.
White Hat SEO or Ethical SEO
Contrary to Black Hat SEO, white hat SEO is also called ethical SEO. To do white hat SEO, high quality content and services must be offered, expressive and frequent keywords must be used, and the website must be easy to navigate.
A website that is optimized for search engines and yet focuses on relevance and organic ranking, is considered to be white hat SEO.
Importance of White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO is vital for a website, because if you do not follow the rules, your site could be penalized or even banned by Google and other search engines. Google is visited by millions of people every day and it is undoubtedly a powerful source of traffic for a website. Being banned from search results can lead in a drastic drop in website visits, plumet sales, and even jeopardize business success.
Take into the account all the work that has been put into building a website, from coding, to content creation to sales platforms. Now, think about what would result if your site were banned from the most used search engine on the internet. A longtime suspension of Google would have enormous irrecoverable consequences for a business.
White hat SEO techniques
There are many white hat SEO techniques that enhance a site’s authority and ranking without getting websites in trouble. Here are some of the most important ones:
1. Publish unique, relevant, and high-quality content
At the core of white hat SEO is to consistently produce high-quality content. However, it is also essential that your articles are original.
For creating content, the best thing you can do is solving a problem for your users. What questions and concerns do they have that your content and services can address? They are searching for a reason, so you need to be the one that provides that knowledge.
Consider that your word count is important. While Google does not recommend a specific post length, the search engine favors lengthy content versus shorter posts. As a general rule, it is best to aim for at least 1,000 words for a blog post.
Also, to make optimizing your website content easier, consider installing a plugin such as Yoast SEO. The Yoast SEO WordPress plugin can help with white hat SEO.
2. Use keyword tools and choose keywords strategically and organically
Keywords are critical for SEO. Moreover, it is essential to use these phrases strategically. You can use keyword tools such as Google Keyword Planner.
Conducting keyword analysis can help you stay away from competitive keywords. Research can also identify both short and long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords tend to be more specific. This specificity can make it easier to match user intent.
3. Consider User Intent
Conducting keyword analysis can help you build a list of phrases to optimize your site. However, it is important to choose keywords and create content that satisfies user intent. User intent refers to a users’ goal when they type a specific word or phrase into a search engine.
You can use proper and smart strategies to satisfy user intent. One is to make sure that your page titles accurately reflect your content. SEO page titles can help Google index your site, understand its content, and display it in relevant search results.
This approach can make your pages more engaging. It can increase the value of your content and your SEO. If the content is easier for a person to read and scan through, it is easier for a search engine crawler to navigate, too.
4. Provide a Positive User Experience (UX)
Your website’s UX is one of Google’s ranking factors. Role of providing a positive UX is ensuring you have a speedy site.
Slow loading times can increase bounce rates and cause negative impressions of your site and business. You can assess the current page speed and performance of your WordPress site using a tool such as Google PageSpeed Insights.
After entering your URL, the tool will analyze your site and score it on a scale from 1 to 100. It will also provide a list of specific recommendations for improvement.
5. Optimize Your Links
Link building is another crucial feature of white hat SEO. Generating high-quality backlinks, optimizing your permalinks, and using high quality anchor text can increase your rankings.
Some link-building services can help create and manage your site’s URLs. However, it is important to choose a reputable and credible service. You should avoid any platform that consists of selling or farming links, which are black hat SEO tactics.
6. Familiarize Yourself with Webmaster Guidelines
To ensure you are adhering to white hat SEO tactics, we recommend reading Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
These guidelines detail how Google finds, indexes, and ranks your site. Learning about them can help you better understand which methods can optimize your site in a safe, approved way.
You might also consider conducting an SEO audit of your website. This process can help you better understand the effectiveness of your current SEO strategy and give you a baseline.
What is SEO and how does it help your business?
Tools that help you with White Hat SEO
There are some tools to help websites optimization with white hat SEO techniques. These tools include:
1. Wordtracker – Keyword Research
An easy way to increase web visibility and traffic is to use high-value keywords. Wordtracker can help you accomplish this effortlessly.
Its Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) feature identifies high volume words or phrases rarely used by the competition thereby giving your site an SEO advantage. Another feature is its ability to assess the size and potential of your target audience.
2. Grammarly – Content
One of the easiest ways to improve the quality of your content is to ensure that it is free of grammatical errors. Grammarly is a writing assistant that reviews spelling, vocabulary, punctuation, and grammar in real-time. It uses an algorithm that detects clarity, plagiarism, and style.
This tool is available as a browser extension or an app and is accessible to iOS or Android users. Although this service is free, there is a premium plan which tracks piracy, tone and offers a variety of peppy sentences for a fee.
3. Hunter – Link Building
Having your content shared on various websites is a great way to come off as an authority on a certain subject and boost your search rankings.
What better way to reach out to websites in your industry than by promoting your content via email. Hunter is an email finder that detects the contact information of your target market and prevents your messages from being listed as spam.
Hunter offers a free version and can be used as an add-on or integrated with other CRM tools.
4. Netpeak Spider – Technical SEO
There are many reasons why a website may not be highly ranked by search engines regardless of how good the content is. At times web crawlers may regard it as “low quality” because it contains broken URLs, duplicated pages, texts, titles, meta description, etc.
Problems like these can prevent a page from being indexed thus causing low web traffic. Netpeak Spider is a user-friendly SEO crawler that identifies web optimization issues, categorizes them as errors, warnings or notices, and proffers possible solutions.
Conclusion
SEO is critical for achieving search engine visibility and high placement in SERPs. However, you will want to adhere to white hat SEO tactics to prevent your site from getting blacklisted. Using approved optimization techniques and methods can increase your rankings in organic search engine results.
We at Lyla are here to help you. Contact us and we will connect you with a great marketing team that can help you achieve your goals!
Do you have any questions about white hat SEO techniques? Let us know in the comments section below!
