White hat SEO

White Hat SEO refers to the usage of optimization strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience.To be more precise - a website that is optimized for search engines, yet focuses on relevancy and organic ranking is considered to be optimized using White Hat SEO practices. White Hat SEO / Ethical SEO. is more frequently used by those who intend to make a long-term investment on their website. Some examples of White Hat SEO techniques include using keywords and keyword analysis, backlinking, link building to improve link popularity, and writing content for human readers.

These tactics stay within the bounds as defined by Google. Examples include:

• Offering quality content and services
• Using descriptive, keyword-rich meta tags
• Making your site easy to navigate

Implement White Hat SEO Methods

Implementing White Hat SEO practices is the best way to create an ethical, sustainably successful website and business. 

keywords

Keywords still hold value but must be used correctly. Many SEO professionals don’t bother putting keywords in the Meta information as Google doesn’t look at them anymore.  See the video below for Google’s Matt Cutt’s reasoning on why keywords in meta information are more or less ignored by the search engine now:

Keyword ‘stuffing’ used to be a very common practice and was a black hat method intended to ensure that the word associated with a company was picked up. We’ve all seen those articles which are barely legible as every other word is a keyword. Many good SEO content writers now refuse to write content where a client may ask them for a keyword density of 7%, as it lessens the quality of the piece considerably.

However, keywords do still have their place for use with site content, including blogs, images and video and PPC/Adwords. These days, it’s better practice to use similar words throughout a piece of writing as well as the main keyword. Key phrases are also good practice and should be used. It’s also important that these are used in Titles and sub-headers as well as throughout the text.

Content – ascended from King

Have you heard the phrase ‘content is king’? This is no longer true, content is everything (well, pretty much). It’s no longer enough to stick a poorly written blog up once a month – or worse, use text spinners to rejig old content.

Content must be:

• Original and not infringe on the intellectual property rights of others
• Highly relevant and useful to your industry and audience
• Very well written with good grammar and spelling
• For image and video should include a title, ALT tag and description and if appropriate, give credit to original artist (if using creative commons licensed images for example)
• Point to the source of research and quotes where applicable

Adding value to your audience

The best possible way you can perform best in the search is by giving value to your audience and preferably, your industry too.

"WHITE HAT SEO" Not about Gaming Google - 2

#3: HELP GOOGLE KNOW WHAT YOUR CONTENT IS ABOUT BY GETTING VOTES OF CONFIDENCE

Google needs to know what your content is about in order to place it in the right SERPs for the right search terms.

One way it does this is through on-page signals–things like the inclusion of keywords in the URL, title, body content, etc.

Another way is through on-site signals— internal links from related pages on your site using anchor text that is descriptive of the content (i.e. it includes the target keyword).

And then there are off-site signals–inbound links from 3rd party trust-worthy sites that have related content linking to your content. A 3rd party citation of your content tells Google that a real, live person who created it thinks your content truly is about “xyz” (aka your keyword).

This is the origin of SEO’s spammy reputation. Bad-actors manipulated off-site signals by fabricating inbound links with things like link farms—clearly not living, breathing humans giving a vote of confidence that the content is indeed about what you claim it to be.

As a result, Google has put great effort into knowing when an inbound link is from a quality, trust-worthy site, versus a fabricated link purely for manipulative gain. The former helps you. The latter hurts you.

So when you hear the term “link building,”forget those old school black hat tactics. The game has changed. When done right, link building can be an extremely powerful way to boost search rankings. As a bonus, it could drive referral traffic too. 

The key here is in building relationships and reaching out to bloggers and journalists to let them know about your awesome content.We’ll need to write a whole other post on white hat link building.

BUT THE POINT IS -

If you followed technique #1 , you’ll have content that’s in demand–and the bloggers you reach out to will know their audience enough to know that.

If you followed technique #2 , bloggers will appreciate the resourcefulness of your content and be more likely to cite it when it is relevant and complimentary to the content they are creating.

IN WHITE HAT

• Reach out to influencers to let them know about your content, pointing out why it might add value to their content.
• Personalize your outreach in a genuine,one-on-one way that shows you know the blogger.
• Be patient. Building mutually beneficial relationships takes time. 

IN BLACK HAT

• Send mass emails to influencers with no personalization. It won’t be effective. It won’t get you to the top of Google. And you’ll burn bridges in the process.