There’s a good chance that if you’ve started researching the search engine optimisation (SEO) industry that you’ve come across two other SEO related words – white hat SEO and black hat SEO.
White hat SEO refers to ethical search engine optimisation that operates within accepted and ethical search engines guidelines. Black hat SEO in contrast uses unethical techniques to try and fool search engines. Implement the former for best results and stay clear of the latter.
This article lists some of the best white hat SEO practices that can work to enhance search engine ranking and in turn increase traffic to your website.
- Honesty. Sounds kind of naïve or perhaps cheesy but when building your online presence always work on the principles of honesty and integrity. Your website should provide the information you are trying to achieve position for, never stray into trying to capture internet searchers or search engine positions based on misleading them. Visitor loyalty will be non-existent and search engines will quickly catch you out.
- Excellent site structure. Use all SEO tactics to their best – make sure that the title tags contain your keyword, optimise images to their full potential using ALT tags and seed well with keywords.
- Content, content and more content. Search engines love content and love to trawl through text. Visitors also devour content as research shows internet users research greatly – information and content are key white hat SEO tools.
- Get good inbound links. You’ve built your site, made it white hat SEO friendly, have written excellent content so now seek your inbound links. If you have valuable content, others will be proud to link to an honest website. Search engines love links that are build on relevance and are quality bound as at the end of the day these search engines depend on giving good results.
- Keyword optimise. Move away from vanity keywords and keyphrases and stay within white hat SEO guidelines to keyword density. Never stuff keywords or hide them in a similar text colour to your background.
- Internal links. Ensure that you link pages within your site like the links above. This helps search engine crawl your site and shows search engines that you have relevant content on your site that can be linked and is of value.
Back to our opening bullet point, that of honesty. White hat SEO should rarely make any guarantees as there is little to guarantee in SEO. Search engine optimisation is a slow, methodical, analytical and at times highly technical process.
A good white hat SEO practitioner will have clear goals that aim for sustainable and realistic targets. Black hat in contrast aims at short term gains that are quickly snuffed out by search engines.
Contact us now or call 0845 555 5040, we’ve got our white hats firmly on.
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