Last Updated on May 12, 2024 by Admin
The major goals for online businesses are higher profit and more organic traffic. However, not all SEO practices can achieve these goals. Yet, white hat SEO is a collection of tactics that work according to search engine regulations, bringing your website to the forefront and attracting organic traffic.
Various researchers have shown that white hat SEO can bring 53% of organic traffic. And that’s a lot when discussing digital competition to rank higher. Today, we will discuss white hat SEO in detail and seven ways you can use it to bring more organic traffic.
What Is White Hat SEO?
White hat SEO is an ethical, non-paid method of improving search rankings. Its main goal is to increase organic traffic and offer search engines and users long-term benefits. You must focus on Google search essentials when doing white hat SEO.
White hat SEO generally includes:
- Conducting thorough keyword research
- Crafting high-quality, engaging content
- Improving the website structure and navigation.
- Receiving high-quality backlinks from respected sources.
- Boosting up page load speed and mobile friendliness.
Why Is White Hat SEO Important?
White hat SEO is very important for search engines, or searches and rankings could be chaotic. If there are no rules and regulations in a country, then how will our country run? Wouldn’t it be very haphazard? Similarly, if there are no rules for search results and rankings, marketers could use any way to rank high, and users would have to look deep to find even simple information. It would be like searching for a needle in the hay.
Some major importance of white hat SEO are as follows:
- Long-term success: Unlike black hat SEO techniques that may give a company short-term gains but later lead to penalties, white hat SEO is all about building a strong foundation for a business’s long-run success. By applying best practices and developing value content, you are forming the website of the most trustworthy and authoritative resource in your range.
- Better user experience: White hat SEO mainly focuses on the user experience. It makes your website user-friendly, loads fast, and provides the information that users require. This results in reduced bounce rates, increased engagement, and more conversions.
- Reduced risk of penalties: Search engines, such as Google, are constantly updating their algorithms to combat shady SEO tactics. Complying with white hat SEO guidelines can significantly reduce the chances of having your website negatively sanctioned or even banned from search results, thus causing irreparable damage to your online image.
White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO
Whether they prefer white hat or black hat approaches, digital marketers want to achieve the same result—improve their rankings on Google.
Why are SEO strategists fighting to be Google’s new favorite? The answer is to be the most widely used search engine internationally.
To better understand white hat SEO, it might make sense to examine black hat SEO and understand their key differences, such as:
- White hat SEO aims to create quality content that meets user demand. Black hat techniques comprise only low-quality, duplicated, or templated content, with SEO being the only priority.
- White hat SEO entails providing the website with images correctly labeled with proper alt text. Black hat SEO is a more old-fashioned approach, using techniques such as keyword stuffing and invisible text.
- White hat SEO does not consist of filling the page with keywords; rather, it implies well-structured keyword research. Contrary to this, black hat SEO does not target single keywords but rather overuses them in headers, meta tags, or unnatural anchor text throughout an article or paper.
- White-hat SEO content follows search engine guidelines and obtains links by guest posting and developing natural link-building strategies. Black-hat SEOs commonly purchase backlinks.
Although black hat SEO is not a term synonymous with bad SEO, looking at some strategies closely, they are the same as white hat SEO. The main idea is that the black hat methods create and generate content intended only for search engines, and people do not benefit from such content. This term is usually referred to as “cloaking.
However, short-term and fast strategies are the things you must avoid, and you must focus on stable and sustainable tactics to build your website authority.
Some black hat SEO techniques can result in serious infringements of Google rules and, in turn, penalties. Such outcomes can lead to your webpage being dropped from search results—or even taken down completely.
How to Use White Hat SEO Methods
To implement white hat SEO methods, you do not need to be an expert digital marketer! Just follow the seven steps listed below, and you’ll be good to go!
#1. Analyze your current website
Analyze your website and find out what else you’re doing to increase your ranking on search engines. One of the first fundamental steps in enhancing your website is a self-assessment. This helps you determine what changes you need to make. In addition, examine the present website traffic range, for it lets you compare your data after you apply white hat SEO tactics.
#2. Conduct keyword research
We have always said, and we always will, that keywords are the most important step in reaching your target audience. Keyword research is all about searching for the most relevant search terms your website could deal with. By using keyword research. You will be able to find out the types of words and phrases that people use to find those sites that are similar to yours, as well as the level of competition for each of the keywords. Keyword research ensures you can strategically thread keywords into your pages, e.g., page titles and meta descriptions. Keywords are one of the major elements for search engines; thus, you need to be selective with the words you use.
To conduct keyword research properly, you can use the following:
- Use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner to find relevant keywords for your website or related topics.
- Try to use longtail keywords more. They have less competition and are more specific than generic keywords.
- One of the best ways to use it is to find keyword gaps. Research year competitors (at least the top 10) to find which keywords they are using and which they are missing.
#3. Create high-quality content
SEO-optimised, high-quality, user-centric Content is the king of SEO and will remain so until search engines and Google exist. Hence, content is the cornerstone of White Hat SEO.
Websites that offer worthwhile content tend to be rated higher by search engines. They assess the value of a page based on factors such as content length, multimedia usage, the average time users spend on the page, and the page’s bounce rate. Alas, instead of concentrating on the precise metrics of the page, it is much more convenient to create qualitative content.
For example, people are likelier to stay on the blog post if it provides useful information. The more high-quality content you produce, the more chances you will have to rank high in search engine results. To create high-quality content:
- Focus on high-quality content and make it rich in keywords
- Target the pain point and interest of the users
- Try different formats like blog posts, articles, white papers, social media posts, etc.
- Use infographics, videos, links, bullet pointers, etc, to make the content more engaging and easy for users
- Use shorter paragraphs and be very specific to the topic
- Most importantly, interlink the related pages and source the statistics and data
#4. Engage on social media platforms
Search engines also seek which pages and brands social media users mention. Let your presence on social media help you promote your brand, including the content you have developed. Online media posts also appear frequently in search results, and therefore, they are another avenue through which to appear in search. Start with a post on the biggest social media networks by creating comprehensive profiles for your account, and then you can get involved in building relationships with potential clients.
#5. Speed up your website
Another important point is the speed of how quickly your website loads for its users. Search engines prefer faster websites as these are the ones that have been found to provide a better browsing experience. There are free tools on the Internet that you can use to find out how fast your website is. If you discover that your website loads slowly, you can work to improve the speed by performing actions such as:
- Removing unnecessary plugins
- Reducing image size
- Changing the web server to a faster one.
#6. Pay attention to on-page SEO
On-page SEO is optimizing individual web pages to improve their position in search engines and gain more visitors relevant to these pages. Key elements to focus on include:
- Title tags: Create exciting title tags that are keyword-focused and provide users with a precise definition of the page content and a reason to visit the website.
- Meta descriptions: Categorize the content and make the page’s theme clear. Then, write an engaging meta description that includes target keywords.
- Header tags: Implement hierarchical header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to organize your content and guide search engines through its importance.
- URL structure: Build descriptive URLs with keywords that strictly match your website’s content and hierarchical structure.
- Internal linking: Link to other internal pages of your site to allow for seamless navigation, share link authority, and present deeper context for search engines.
#7. Use Structured Data
Microdata, or schema markup, is a code you can implement on your website to give search engines more information about your site’s content. By implementing structured data, you can enhance your search engine listings with rich snippets, such as:
- Review stars and ratings
- Product prices and availability
- Event dates and locations
- Ingredients and cooking times in the recipe.
To implement structured data on your website:
- Identify the types of content that can have rich snippets on the search results page, like products, reviews, events, articles, and so on.
- Create the needed schema markup with Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.
- Fill in your structured data with Google’s Rich Results Test to see if it is correctly implemented and qualified for rich snippets.
Conclusion
White hat SEO is a powerful alternative to enhancing your rankings and gaining a solid online reputation. By looking into the seven criteria, you can create sustainable growth and build trust with search engines and your audience. White hat SEO is vital to us at AlgoSaga Internet marketing agency, and we insist that our clients apply ethical and effective strategies to take their brands to the next level. Be the change you want to see by using white hat SEO and prepare for your organic traffic’s snowballing effect!