What is White Hat SEO?
In the world of search engine optimization there is an underlying battle of two forces, white hat and black hat SEO. Black hat SEO is a practice frowned upon by the internet community and google because it relies on shady tactics and ruleless methods to give a site almost immediate rankings. On the other hand, white hat SEO attempts to build links in a natural and acceptable fashion without using the sketchy tactics of black hat SEO. White hat SEO focuses on building high quality links and tons of good content to get your site to rank. Although black hat SEO was the most effective tactic in the early days of Google, now that they are a billion dollar company with more power than imaginable they can easily detect sites using black hat tactics and destroy all they have worked for. With every algorithm update google provides, they reduce the effectiveness of black hat tactics, leaving white hat SEO the only option to help your site rank.
How to White Hat SEO
Guest Posting
Guest posting is a very effective method to help your site rank by building quality links. With every guest post that you write you have the opportunity to gain a link from a quality site. Make sure to put a link to your site somewhere in the article. The better the quality of the article, the more likely a trusted website is going to pick it up which will provide your site with powerful backlinks that are valued by Google.
Viral Seeding
A new tactic to white hat SEO, viral seeding, is a link building technique that utilizes the masses to help build links to your site. By creating viral images or videos that can be shared across the internet and on social networking sites you can get tons of backlinks. One very effective tool in viral seeding is the infographic. Infographics are a phenomenon that are sweeping the internet by storm, getting millions of views and tons of social shares. An infographic is nothing but a large image that graphically displays data and information on a specific subject. The infographic has become a favorite of internet users and is a very viable method to build links because of the endless possibilities for subjects. Uploading an infographic or any other viral image on your website and seeding in social networking sites such as Pinterest, Reddit, or Facebook you can get a large amount of backlinks to your site.
Content Creation
Content is valued by Googles newest algorithm more than ever. Filling your site with tons of quality content is a necessity to achieve good ranking with Google. Try to make sure your articles are at least four hundred words long, and focus on a keyword that makes up three to five percent of your article. Also make sure to use H2 and H3 header tags that include your keyword. Although quantity of content is a factor, quality is imperative. Google determines the quality of your content by using user metrics which measure things such as total time on your site before the user comes back to the search engine and number of clicks your site gets. The only way to have good user metrics is to create quality content that users will appreciate and value. A great way to get good user metrics is to create a blog on your site. Blogs are proven to have great user metrics because they keep users interested and put up lots of content.
Webmaster Outreach
Webmaster outreach is a great way to naturally build backlinks to your site if you do it in a white hat manner. DO NOT offer money or services to a random website of your choosing to build links. Buying backlinks is a black hat technique that usually only provides bad links that will hurt your site in the end. You should find a quality website that is similar in subject or ideas to your own and then contact the administrator of that site and ask if they would link to your site.
Press Releases
Submitting a press release onto sites such as prlog.com or prweb.com can be very beneficial to your website. Press releases help your site gain attention and provide opportunities to gain backlinks if you include a link back to your site in your article. Press releases have been proven to be a very effective method of white hat SEO by spreading news about your site and getting links.
Written By Matthew Kruchten – RankExecutives.com head of seo consulting and white hat seo information
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