If you’re a beginner at SEO you probably wonder what are the right ways to play this game. As you might have heard, there are both white hat and black hat approaches performed by various businesses. Symbolically, black hat techniques seem more effective, but also riskier, too. On the other hand, the white hat SEO approach is only playing by the rules and following the official SEO guidelines. Many people wonder if doing business with the white hat approach simply a waste of time, especially if you need results soon. Well, our team at AZ Citation Services can assure you that is absolutely possible. Getting amazing results while playing by the book is something you can reach – it’s just a matter of time and the intensity of your focus on success. Let’s go through the white hat SEO guide and see how you can improve your SEO game.
The reason why you should choose White Hat SEO techniques
We can all agree that Google is a tool that can attract more people to your website, more than anything else. For that reason, you should do your best to stay on Google and only improve your rankings over time. Practicing something else other than White Hat techniques can get your website banned from Google, which can dramatically impact your website traffic, in a negative way. Therefore, to avoid any risk, play by the rules, and create content that has high-quality and grows over time.
Main steps of the White Hat SEO approach
Now it’s time to learn the proper way to practice the good side of the SEO. Here are the main steps you should know to get content that’s acceptable by Google’s rulebook.
Easy access and navigation of your website
To make sure your readers or clients will come back, you need to make your website easy to access and navigate. This will improve your visitors’ experience and make them come back. For that reason, you need to take time to focus on your website’s information architecture and help it achieve more in organic search results.
Meta descriptions are often underestimated
Another way you can improve your rankings is by writing short, yet informative meta descriptions. This little piece of text is what appears under the title in search results, and what makes a user click on the link to open your website. So, even though it is short, it can be very powerful. Therefore, make sure to write good-quality meta descriptions, and here are some tips to do that:
- stay in the 160-165 characters frame – this is a standard and recommended SEO length of a good meta. It will be fully visible in the search results and show the essence of your content;
- use the keywords – it is essential that your meta descriptions are keyword-rich. Don’t overuse them, but make sure to include them in your meta and show the audience what they are looking for in the search results;
- set the right tone – make sure the tone of your meta description is not completely different from your content. There should be some consistency in quality and language choice;
- specify it – being too general in your meta descriptions will not make your title stand out from the others. Be specific and describe your content with the necessary details.
Take a look at other parts of on-page SEO
Apart from optimizing meta descriptions, another white hat technique to make your website better is to write descriptive URLs. As they give out info about your content, make them informative, short, and keyword-rich.
Furthermore, watch out for how you use anchors for internal links. If you use keywords in your anchor, Google will recognize the topic of your content, and boost its rankings.
And finally, don’t overpack your content with keywords. Even though it might have worked in the past, keyword stuffing is not accepted by today’s sophisticated search engines. Have a strategy for your keywords, which means spreading them well in the text, and including them in your headings and subheadings as well.
Give answers to your visitors’ needs and inquiries
To make sure people visit your website and purchase certain products or services, you need to give them what are they looking for. That’s why you should create high-quality content that gives them answers or solutions to their problems. To make sure you’re going in the right direction, do some keyword research, and see the specific keywords you should use to optimize. Also, use interesting ways to promote your goods or services. Apart from just plain text with basic information, use additional things like videos, helpful guides, and tips, etc. Depending on the business you’re running, the market will be more or less competitive, but standing out from the crowd should always be your focus.
Use backlinks avoiding Black Hat techniques
Of course, you need backlinks to rank well in SEO. However, it’s often challenging to avoid black hat ways. Here’s what you can do:
- create better content than the content that already does well in Google search – using the Skyscraper technique, check the top posts, and use their strongest points to create high-quality content.
- do guest posting – write for websites that will publish your content, but stay in your niche. Posting to unrelated websites can be recognized as spammy guest blogging and get you penalties.
- look for broken links – if you find a page or website you like, and want them to include your links, investigate their pages for broken links. Let the admins know about these, and suggest some of your related links replace the broken ones.
As you can see from these articles, white hat SEO techniques are not difficult to do, but at the same time, they will bring you better rankings without any risks. Therefore, it’s time to start optimizing – the right way.
