How often have we heard the term White Hat SEO thrown around in the digital space?
Now, instead of nodding along at its mention, you’ll know exactly what this phrase means. Allow us to break it down for you:
What is White Hat SEO?
In short, White Hat SEO uses honest organic techniques to enhance a website’s performance in Google searches for relevant keywords.
That means following the SEO recipe for success without cheating or using any Black Hat SEO shortcuts like keyword stuffing, link buying, or hidden text, which violate search engines’ terms of service. (We’ll be covering Black Hat SEO in a future post, but in the meantime: know that Google is getting better and better at detecting when a site has cheated to get ahead in the search rankings, so don’t do this!)
The whole point of organic search rankings is to display the highest quality, most useful sites near the top. SEO exists as a way of telling search engines which sites these are for a given keyword phrase. White Hat SEO is a collection of techniques that rewards high quality sites with increased rankings, while Black Hat SEO tactics serve solely to increase a page’s search rankings – not to provide quality content.
At Rock Solid Marketing, we are committed to only using White Hat SEO tactics in our clients’ SEO services.
Image credit: SEOMoose.ca
Examples of White Hat SEO Techniques
White Hat SEO requires that all of the items listed below a). Be of high quality, and b). Be optimized, in order to perform well in keyword searches.
- Written content
- Images
- Site performance
- Meta information
- Site architecture
There many ways of doing this, but here are some of the most important and effective methods:
- Consistently post high quality content
- Use descriptive meta tags that include your keyword phrase(s)
- Include your keyword phrases in headers and within content (but don’t overuse them)
- Have an easy-to-navigate site
- Internally link from one page of your website to other pages on your website
- Cultivate backlinks on related websites with high domain authority or page rank
More On White Hat SEO
Interested in learning more about White Hat SEO tactics? Here are some other articles we’ve composed:
- SEO Tips To Set Up Your Website For Optimisation On Day 1
- Things You Should Be Doing To Optimise Your WordPress Site
- Google Analytics: What You Need To Know
- Tips For Driving Traffic To Your Website
- Why Your Website Isn’t Showing Up On Google
