White Hat SEO Techniques are strategies to optimize the health of your website that Google recommends.
In many ways, white hat SEO is a strategy that Google permits.
It falls within the legal dimensions of Google’s ambit of non-manipulation.
According to digital marketing experts, White Hat SEO Techniques prioritize user experience over tricking or manipulations.
This means that the website’s priority is giving out the best possible information and doing well just because of that.
Black Hat SEO Techniques or even Grey Hat SEO Techniques, aim to manipulate Google’s algorithm.
They employ tips and tricks that run contrary to Google’s principles.
However, they reach their desired end (ranking higher and traffic) through manipulating strategies.
SEO services that offer black hat strategies might appear to be attractive. However, brands should always go for SEO services that offer white hat strategies.
In this article, we will look at why White Hat SEO Techniques are important for brands. We will also look at the Top 10 White Hat SEO techniques to rank higher on Google.
Table Of Content
White Hat SEO Techniques: Why is it Important?
If there is any brand that has created a website without any expectations, I would like to meet them immediately!
Everyone, regardless of the industry they are in, creates a website for some expectations.
The expectations can range from-
- Getting website traffic
- Branding and promotions
- Sales conversions or revenues
- All of the above
I am sure 90% of the websites want the last point for themselves!
Jokes apart, white hat SEO techniques are considered as legal guidelines that you can follow to improve your website.
The internet is getting increasingly cluttered and chaotic. Standing apart means competing with millions of others. The right road might not be the easiest. In such an instance, most websites want results faster.
They want to jump over their competitors and climb the SERPs. Many brands look for SEO services that specifically offer a black hat or grey hat strategies.
Due to this drive, they end up engaging with Black Hat or Grey Hat strategies.
Google frowns upon these optimization strategies. Not only does your website stand a chance of incurring penalties, but you might also be de-indexed by Google!
This is something that no brand wants to happen. However, because everyone wants results, we tend to flirt with black hat strategies occasionally.
According to Google, there are no shortcuts to climbing the search rankings. You will have to have a long term strategy to succeed.
This strategy is dependent on having a user-first experience. ‘Serve the users well, rewards will follow’ is what Google wants websites to do.
Top 10 SEO White Hat SEO Techniques: The List
In the previous section of the article, we have talked about what are white hat SEO techniques and why are they important. Let us now look at the top techniques:
1. Quality, Long Format Content (Evergreen if possible)
This is the holy grail of all white hat SEO techniques.
Unless you are creating an original, long format and informative SEO content, you will never be able to rank.
Quality content is one of the Top 3 Ranking Factors, according to Google.
For Google, long format content at the outset is understood to be good, informative and serves a purpose.
From a technical standpoint, long articles give opportunities to integrate keywords in the right places.
This makes it easier for crawlers to read and access the article.
Websites need to stay clear from keyword stuffing though!
Evergreen content is content that users will keep going back to and referring repeatedly.
For example, ‘Ways to Bake a Chocolate Cake’, or ‘How to Roast a Turkey on Thanksgiving’ are examples of evergreen content.
2. Page Descriptions, Tags and HTML Tags:
Someone had asked me to explain the above three characteristics by taking real-life examples. I told them to think of these as addresses to your house.
If Google finds relevancy at the outset, Google will know what is inside the article. For example, if I am writing an article like this one, I need to ensure that-
- My Focus Keyword is present in the page description
- It is present in the URL structure of the page
- My meta description and title tags have my article title + the focus keyword
- The H1, H2, and H3 titles have the focus keyword.
(P.S. the focus keyword of this article is ‘White Hat SEO Techniques)
Once I have the focus keyword on the above four properties, Google knows what my article is about.
Unless it ticks all the checkboxes, its bots will not even bother to go inside the article and check.
3. Guest Posting and Blogger Outreach:
Guest Posting and Blogger Outreach are two strategies that help in getting high-quality external links. Link Building is another important ranking factor for Google.
Getting high-quality backlinks in industry authority sites is key to seeing-
- An increase in website traffic
- Improvement in SEO scores
- Better rankings on Google’s SERPs
- More sales conversions and revenues
Link building is critical to any SEO strategy.
White Hat SEO techniques lay heavy emphasis on guest posting and blogger outreach in order to build links.
However, this is where great content can open up many doors.
Unless your content is great, original and serves a purpose, no publisher is going to entertain it. Your SEO services agency needs to have a separate guest posting strategy to engage in white hat link building.
By researching and outreaching your industry related sites, you can engage with quality publishers. By pitching a great content idea, you can convince them to publish your piece on their site.
4. Invest in Creating Different Types of Content:
With so much content on the internet, articles are just not going to cut it anymore.
This means that if you want to emerge as an industry authority voice, you need to invest in creating content.
We are talking about videos, podcasts, infographics, e-books, case studies, reports and so on. Your intention is to create amazing content that people will link to.
If you want someone to link to your article, your content will have to be excellent.
The use and integration of different graphics is simply human psychology. Why did people abandon the radio and go on the television? Simple answer right!
Google’s endeavors to show people content that they will like.
To this end, it knows that visually rich content engages more people.
Creating different content types as a white hat SEO technique was not very important sometime back.
However, in 2019, it is on the top 10 list because of Google’s push for white hat SEO techniques.
Read more: 10 Content Types That Can Drive Traffic To Your Website
5. Voice Search: The Future of Search Marketing:
The future of search marketing is ‘Voice’.
For many experts, voice search is still a thing of the future. I do not think they know what product Amazon sold most in 2017 and 2018.
Yes, you guessed it was the Amazon Echo!
With more and more humans opting for voice-based assistants, the future of search is definitely a voice.
By optimizing your website accordingly, you can reach a wider audience and get more traffic.
One key takeaway from voice search marketing is the use of long tail-question based keywords. This is because human beings type and speak differently.
According to some experts, more than focus keywords, brands should not concentrate upon long tail keywords.
Questions in the form of keywords are also one of the top white hat SEO techniques in 2019.
Optimizing the website for voice search is a bit different from a regular search.
However, once you have done it, you can be rest assured that traffic from voice searches is going to keep on increasing in the future.
6. Mobile Optimization and Responsiveness:
In 2018, Google’s Webmaster Team announced that Google is moving towards a Mobile-First Indexing Policy.
This meant that for all new websites, Google is first going to index the mobile version and then index the desktop version.
While this announcement does not seem huge, it meant to demonstrate the emphasis Google was laying on mobile website searches.
With more than 70% of the world’s total searches happening on cell phones, Google’s move just demonstrates its intent of giving consumers the best possible experience.
The first priority of any white hat SEO technique in 2019 is to make a mobile-optimized website.
The entire experience that your website would enjoy in a desktop version should be available on a cell phone. If there is any discrepancy, Google penalizes websites heavily.
The penalties range from lowering website metrics or decreasing search visibility.
7. Local SEO and Google My Business (GMB):
If you have a physical standalone store and want to increase footfalls, Local SEO is your number one white hat SEO technique.
Physical businesses can never ignore Local SEO. Google My Business is the most important platform for Local SEO.
In addition, a website’s presence on local directories like Yellow Pages, Yelp, Food sites, and other places is important.
This helps Google triangulate the business and link it to customer searches in a geographical area.
Local restaurants, salons, spas, doctors, dentists, lawyers, pet shops and similar businesses benefit a lot from GMB. In 2019, Google is going to lay a lot of emphasis on GMB.
A small insight that some of my friends in the digital industry gave me pertains to Google’s Ecosystem. If your brand is maintaining an active presence on Google’s ecosystem, Google will promote you massively.
Local SEO, especially GMB, is one of the top white hat SEO techniques in 2019!
8. A Perfect Content Marketing Strategy:
In my experience, the digital industry is split into two camps.
In one camp, stand the vociferous proponents of paid campaigns, spurious link building and champions of black hat strategies. This camp feels that they can get away with manipulating and tricking Google. They have been successful for a very long time. They are not going to abandon their strategies anytime soon.
On the other camp, are people who want to be safe and secure. Such people want to invest and build sound foundations for their brand and website online. This camp favors the proper use of Content Marketing in 2019.
Content Marketing is slowly emerging as one of the key white hat SEO techniques in 2019.
This is because it aims to operate within Google’s guidelines and builds a solid foundation.
The champion of this strategy is content.
This content is placed on numerous platforms with the aim to link it with a strong Inbound Marketing strategy. Every brand regardless of their size should invest in content marketing. This will help grow your brand organically. This will also keep you safe from Google penalties.
9. Utilize the Social Media Ecosystem Aggressively:
Social media is not just Facebook and Instagram. It is also YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others. It does not take too long to figure out that social media is a reality of our times.
By popularising your content on different social media platforms, you will attract an insane amount of traffic.
This will help you reach out to newer audiences, improve metrics and increase revenues.
Social media platforms like Pinterest and YouTube also serve as link building platforms.
In other words, you can build quality backlinks on them.
This means that they offer you with a ‘Do-Follow’ option.
According to Kellen Kautzman-
“Using Pinterest and YouTube to post images and video related to your business allows you to create your own backlinks, control the quality of your content and simultaneously reap SEO rewards.”
The interplay between your website and your social media channels needs to be as aggressive as possible. This is how you will be able to create the perfect digital ecosystem for your brand.
Read more: Understanding Social Media Analytics: An Expert’s View
10. Blog as much as you can:
No one likes to be pushed products and services all the time.
People want information. Following which, they want to have the autonomy to choose the product or service they like.
This is where your blog can become your most important asset.
By highlighting solutions to the problems of people, you can earn their trust. Once they feel secure about your information, they will automatically lean towards availing the service from you.
An active blog section on your website helps Google index your website more often. Blogs also serve as a repository of SEO friendly keywords.
However, the biggest benefit of maintaining a blog, according to me is building credibility. Blogs build credibility, loyalty, and traffic, unlike any digital asset.
This is the reason why digital marketing experts think that blogging is the best white hat SEO technique. By setting up a separate blog team and publishing regularly, you can do wonders for your brand.
Conclusion:
Most of the times, it is too much for a brand to understand digital marketing. In such instances, they are heavily dependent on their SEO Services agency. Good agencies can build brands from the ground up.
However, most often than not, brands are stuck with agencies who just want to bill them. This practice has created a lot of resentment in the industry. The ethics of doing business is slowly eroding in the digital sphere.
This is why the article is so crucial for brands to understand whether their agencies are doing the above functions or not. Unless you are following the top white hat SEO techniques in 2019, you will languish way down on Google’s rankings.
If you have any questions with regard to-
- White Hat SEO Techniques, or
- SEO Services in general
Please feel free to reach out to us.
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