White Hat SEO

eugene koplyk Eugene Koplyk 25/03/2021 9 min read

Contents:

  1. Difference between white hat and black hat SEO
  2. White hat SEO methods
  3. Conclusion

If you are reading this article, that means you are searching for practical tools to rank your website Google position. Keep reading because these white hat SEO tactics won’t let you down. By the way, if you aren’t new to working with SEO, you have probably heard about black hat services. So, what is the difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO? Why is it better to use white hat SEO approaches if black ones are more fast working? And what do white hat SEO agencies do to become number one? 

WiserBrand eCommerce website optimization service representatives answered all of these questions here. 

Difference between white hat and black hat SEO

Using white hat SEO techniques means playing by the rules set by Google and other major search engines. These unique tactics allow optimizing your website navigations while targeting your customers with the most relevant information and by this getting as high as possible in ranks. We will tell you more about the most working below.

As you probably guessed, the black hat is the other side of the coin. Black hat practices can be very fast and insecure. In the beginning, they will give you quick results and big attendance. Sounds tempting? Just until Google or other search engines find you and block. 

For Google, the quality of content is in the first place, so using doorway pages or cloaking is at least dirty. That is why if you are looking for a genuine long-term search engine partnership and a stable audience, breaking Google’s laws’ isn’t the best thing to do. Moreover, if Google bans you, it is a life term. 

Therefore, here we have prepared skyrocketing white hat seo methods. 

White hat SEO methods:

Search for useful keywords

Determining the constructive keywords is the most significant part of the whole process, and that is the place where mistakes are most frequently made. While choosing a keyword, people prefer to take and target the most popular one, but actually, you are complicating your work by selecting the most competitive word in the niche. The solution is long-tail keywords. Firstly, this will help you to filter out unnecessary and bring the ‘correct’ audience. We will give an example. Keywords like ‘sports workouts’ are prevalent. Google will show you all the results where it was mentioned.

keywords search

But if you try to search for something like "sports workouts for legs’, you will get much more specific information. As you can see, a long tail keyphrase like this is less common, which means it is less competitive, which means it will be much easier for you to gain number one with such a combination. 

Also, to understand which keywords to search for, all you have to do is put the main anchor, and Google will give you the rest.

hints for right keywords

We guess you got the point so that we can move forward.

Do not think if you already found and use some keywords, that's the end. You have to monitor and look for new permanently because old key phrases have to be replaced with new ones, more particular and more depending on customer’s requests. 

Also, manual research is essential and okay initially, but moving further, you have to keep an eye on what your opponents are using. White hat SEO services like Ahrefs and Google Search Console will help you analyze the most clickable keywords and survey competitors. 

Quality content

This white hat SEO technique is quite apparent, but we have dozens of similar brands and content in practice. And this is normal because it is not only you who’s struggling in the niche. But if you want to gain number one, you aim to stand out from others. 

Stealing or just rewriting someone's content will never be effective. Some of the black hat techniques include creating many low-quality websites to see which of them will get higher. But the thing is that Google; can measure user’s satisfaction with information received. Accordingly, the more quality content you make, the more happy users you will receive, who will at least stay longer at your website and, in the best scenario, post a link. And in that term, it means Google will show it to more and more people. That is what are white hat SEO tactics are about.

So how to make searchers stay longer using White Hat SEO marketing?

The first thing is to write clear and direct headings and subheadings. This means to make your website readable and good-looking. Also, use more white space and bullet points.

The second thing is your brand building. You must have a clear vision of your website concept. Knowing this, you can quickly analyze the market and understand which colors, style, and format suites to you best. Visual is very important, so if people recall your website, they will definitely come back next time. 

And the third White Hat SEO tip is the mobile version. Paying attention to it is highly significant, while the mobile-friendly version is more popular with users than a traditional one. That is why you have to pay attention to how accessible information is. And one more time, it is one of the ranking signals for Google

On-page meta tags 

If you are new to it, we will give a little explanation. On-page White Hat SEO is an action of content optimization like links, tags, and texts. Basically, in this part, we will tell you how and where you can utilize keywords to avoid mistakes.

Let’s begin classically from URLs. You have to know about two things: URLs have to be short and specific, which means that it is an exact place to put your main keyword here.

To be clear: search engines pay attention to the full of keywords original text to recognize the main topic. An example is also easy given, every time you mention the head keyword of your text, Google reads it with the help of internal links that you already gave. It is like road signs but in a virtual world. And you can successfully use it as an affordable White Hat SEO because internal links transmit link-belonging to other relevant domain pages, which automatically gives them a rating upgrade. 

search suggestion

And the last natural white hat organic SEO in this subtopic is alt tags adding. 

Here Google uses it to work with images. As a search engine, Google can’t just see what is on the picture, so it needs some text explanation. That is why you have to optimize all of your images with alt tags. Otherwise, you just reduce your chances to get higher in rank. 

This is how it looks like: 

<img src=“image.jpg” alt=“image description” title=“image tooltip”>

What is white hat SEO link-creating? Actually, it is all about building the proper relations with the right partners. You have to analyze carefully all the websites that post content relevant to yours and try to predict link-building with which one will give the best outcome. There are some white hat tactics SEO that definitely should be taken into account. 

link creation

The first, and the most effective, is to become a resource center from our point of view. This requires some tactics from the above. You have to create an excellent and informative piece of content, which others can count as authoritative. This will generate an impressive amount of backlinks because people will rely on your article. So, if you want this to work, your content has to be link-worthy. 

The next effective white hat SEO service is guest posting. You have to be very careful with this one because the edge "white hat vs. black hat SEO" here is really thin. In general, you just write some articles for other websites that aren't necessarily relevant to your niche. And this approach will work well until Google decides that it is a link scheme. In other words, just some white hat SEO rules: spread your data only on checked and the most important, appropriate websites. 

And the last is dead link replacing, or it is also called broken link building. Anyway, this tactic is about founding a "dead" link and replacing it with suitable content, from your website, of course, instead. The following steps are pretty straightforward. You write to the site owner, where we found the broken link, and ask about the link replacing. This strategy is beneficial for both sides, so typically, people are happy to agree. 

A program like Check My Links is an excellent tool in your broken link research. 

Hacking Google algorithms

As we already said, this article is about totally white hat techniques in SEO, so in this chapter, we will show how to get inside Google algorithms without actually applying to black hat SEO. 

So, what is the first white hat method in technical SEO?

Site architecture is essential for Google algorithms. It is a structure, which creates a hierarchy of pages and arranges the data of your website. It allows the search engine to analyze and show your content in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The thing is, if your site has some other linked pages (or worse, unlinked at all), it will be really tough for search engines to identify it. That is why smart architecture is everything when it comes to ranking.  

smart site architecture

When you finish creating site architecture, pay attention to the next, not less deciding type of white hat seo - loading time. 

Yes, even how fast your users can go from one page to another or just the whole website's loading speed affects Google bots. Luckily, Google also took care of it and presented an excellent website speed tool - PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights helps with speed analytics and reveals all the weaknesses and strengths. It also will tell you about the broken content and other stuff slowing down the site. 

Now, your goal is to minimize and combine files, which will reduce the size and number of files. Yes, sometimes trusted white hat seo services are challenging. 

And the last parting words in your long SEO journey. Don’t forget about analyzing and monitoring bags on your website. Finding and fixing problems in time will save you money and won’t let Google downgrade your page. And a tool like an Index coverage report will help you in surveying.

Conclusions

What does white hat SEO cost? These are your patience, long-term investments, and spending a tremendous amount of time creating helpful content. But the most important, that it is effective and gives real outreach. In white hat SEO, your priority is always your customer’s experience. Sure, using black hat services you will, probably, get to the top much faster, but how long you will stay there is a question. Black hat tactics - are short-term tactics. 

Here we have made a white-hat SEO best practices guide, using which you will definitely gain number one. 

White or black hat seo? The decision is yours, but WiserBrand plays it straight.

eugene koplyk
Eugene Koplyk
Head of Marketing department
As a Digital Strategist, I help companies grow their business online. Here share my expertise, ideas, and best practices on Ecommerce marketing initiatives, branding, SEO, conversion and many more. If you want to stay connected, follow me on LinkedIn.
seo techniqueswhite hat practices