Author: Christopher Jan Benitez

If you’ve never done search engine optimization before, you’re left with two choices. You could use black hat SEO tactics and gain a short-term rankings boost. But you run the risk of getting penalized and find your site spiraling down the search engine results page.

Or:

You could use white hat SEO methods right from the start and comply with the best practices for search engine optimization. In white hat SEO, the focus is on ethical and sustainable strategies that emphasize user engagement, content quality, and adherence to SEO guidelines.

Both methods have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. But it’s hard to recommend against using white hat SEO methods. After all, there are no risks to using them and they have the best chance of improving your search engine ranking.

So why don’t we take this time to look at the best white hat SEO tactics so you can apply them to your site?

Let’s begin.

What Is White Hat SEO?

First, let’s define white hat SEO. What is it exactly?

Simply put, white hat SEO refers to search engine optimization strategies that are in accordance with search engine guidelines such as the ones provided by Google

These guidelines are in place to make sure that search engine users receive relevant and high-quality results. That’s why a website that complies with search engines has a better chance of ranking than those who don’t.

If you’re a white hat SEO, you’re then presumably doing the best you can to follow all the rules set by Google. This is the exact opposite of black hat SEO, which is a white hat approach focusing on ethical and sustainable techniques.

Why People Use Black Hat SEO Tactics

So white hat SEO works wonders. Why do people even bother with black hat SEO tactics then? 

It’s simple: 

Because it works. At least, some of the time

If white hat SEO is all about complying with the rules set by search engines, then black hat SEO finds ways to game the system by finding loopholes you can exploit to rank higher on the search engine results page.

Yes, there are people who manage to cheat their way up the search rankings. And they can do it quickly too. But in most cases, these gains are only temporary. If and when a black hat SEO gets caught, their site is penalized. 

A penalty can do several things — the least of which is ranking a site lower in the search results. In severe cases, a site is pulled out of the search engine results page entirely.

Black hat SEO strategies are rarely worth doing. Though don’t be surprised to find online marketers who’d still swear by its effectiveness.

White hat SEO vs black hat SEO is still a hotly contested debate to this day.

Google Loves White Hat SEO Strategies

The search engine giant has gone out of its way to promote white hat SEO. It regularly releases updates to its search engine algorithm — with some having a bigger impact than others.

All of these updates aim to limit (if not eradicate) sites that use black hat SEO tactics from the search results. 

Here’s a quick summary of Google updates that helped reward sites that use white hat SEO techniques:

• Fred Update —  A group of algorithm changes that removed low-quality content from the search results, especially those that don’t fit Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.

• Intrusive Interstitials Update — This update devalued websites that rely heavily on intrusive pop-up ads. This is a necessary update because pop-ups tend to ruin the mobile experience.

• Mobile-Friendly Update —  An update that rewarded websites that are mobile-friendly. It’s a move that helps users on phones and tablets find sites that will load properly on their devices.

• RankBrain Update — This update helped Google contextualize keywords, giving users search results that are relevant to them.

• Panda Update — An update that punished sites with thin site content, basically removing low-quality (spammy) pages from the search engine results.

• Penguin Update — This update addressed rampant black hat SEO link building strategies that manipulate search engines into ranking pages higher than they should.

• Hummingbird Update — An update that improved results for conversational search queries.

With Google releasing one algorithm update after another, black hat SEOs are always playing defense. And once their sites are hit, it’s challenging for them to get back on track. So it’s almost pointless to even attempt to use black hat SEO strategies.

You may as well write a high-quality piece of content that will improve your search rankings using white hat SEO techniques. If you follow Google’s guidelines, there’s a good chance you’ll get rewarded in future updates. 

Should You Use White Hat SEO?

Honestly, yes.

Let’s say you get your site to rank using black hat SEO tactics. If you’re new to SEO, you wouldn’t know how to respond to site penalties once you get caught.

It’s even worse if you’re running an SEO agency since you’re intentionally compromising their site’s chances of ranking organically.

White hat SEO techniques are clearly the way to go for long term success.

Not only do white hat SEO tactics improve your search engine ranking, but they also make your website better for your target audience.

Black hat SEO often results in a poor user experience. The site content is pure garbage since it’s filled with nonsensical keywords that writers insert for the sole purpose of ranking for those terms. They offer very little value which affects the domain’s authority.

But:

If you use white hat SEO tactics, you’d definitely come up with a website you’d be proud to call your own.

The Best White Hat SEO Techniques

There are plenty of white hat SEO techniques that you could use to improve your domain’s chances of performing better on search engines. That’s why it’s really important for you to learn all about them so you can properly weigh your options. White hat SEO services include keyword research, on-page and off-page optimization, technical SEO, content creation, and local SEO to improve website visibility and attract potential customers.

Here are white hat SEO techniques that you should prioritize to get your pages to appear on the search engine results page.

1. Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization is the process of inserting select words or phrases on a website to improve search engine ranking performance. 

Search engines like Google use keywords to determine how relevant your content is to their users’ search queries. So the more keywords you have in your post, the higher your chances are of ranking on search engines. It’s even possible to rank for multiple search queries.

That’s why it’s important to have as many keywords in your post as possible

Black Hat SEO Strategies for Keyword Optimization

Since black hat SEOs know the importance of keywords (in particular, long tail keywords) for search engine ranking, they thought adding as many as they can to their site content is a good idea. So they did.

However:

This led to a practice called keyword stuffing

It’s the act of inserting so many keywords, it affects content quality. Articles stop making any sense since publishers only concern themselves with adding words and phrases rather than delivering useful content.

They also display a habit of not choosing their keywords, meaning they use all suggested terms and phrases. This shouldn’t be a problem if you can insert them all organically. But when black hat SEOs get aggressive, the content serves as nothing more than a tool for boosting the domain on search engines.

Some black hat marketers would even go as far as hiding keywords in their posts by making the font color the same as the background. 

Also, there is such a thing as keyword oversaturation. And Google got pretty good at detecting manipulative posts.

White Hat SEO Techniques for Keyword Optimization

The thing is, it’s not that hard to implement white hat SEO techniques to optimize a website with keywords. And it’s even easier since you don’t have to insert a lot of them for a post to rank on search engines.

Best of all, white hat SEO techniques naturally lead to better site content. So even your users would feel the effects of your efforts. They also make you more credible to your target audience.

So how do you go about keyword optimization?

It all starts with keyword research

Keyword research is easy. And you can even do it for free. But paid SEO tools like SE Ranking will provide you with more metrics and better performance. If you’re serious about your SEO strategy, you’ll have to upgrade to paid services eventually.

To start, you can simply type in your niche or target keyword on Google and review all the suggestions.

In most cases, the suggested keywords that Google provides would fall under the long-tail keyword classification. These are keywords that might not have as many searches but aren’t as competitive either.

This gives you the best chance of securing a spot on Google’s first page results.

You can also look at your main competitors and see which keywords they’re using in their posts. Manually reviewing competitor pages will consume too much time. So we suggest that you use an SEO tool. It can look at your competition’s target keywords and give you a list in seconds.

But the best way to research keywords is to use seed terms and run them through a keyword research tool. 

A keyword research tool can generate tens to hundreds of suggestions based on a single word or phrase. Just enter your niche or target keyword and you’ll get all relevant keywords that you could add to your content.

About Keyword Metrics

As you perform keyword research using an SEO tool, you’ll encounter metrics that might be unfamiliar to you. These metrics will help you select the right keywords to focus on. But you can only do so if you know what these metrics mean to begin with.

Every keyword research tool is different. But there are metrics that you’ll encounter no matter which platform you use.

Let’s take some time to discuss what each metric means.

Here are some of the most common metrics you’ll encounter and how you use them to find the right keywords to optimize your website.

• Search Volume — This number signifies how many people searched for the keyword (typically over a month).

• SEO Difficulty — This shows just how competitive the keyword is on search engines. The higher the number, the more competitive it is. Normally, you’d want to avoid competitive terms.

• Paid Difficulty — This concerns paid search (ads). The more competitive a keyword is, the more people are bidding for it.

• Cost Per Click — This also concerns paid search. It shows you the average cost per click for the keyword in question. A higher cost indicates that the keyword is highly competitive.

Marketers who use white hat SEO strategies would often suggest that you find keywords with high search volume and low SEO difficulty. But as mentioned earlier, it also makes sense to try ranking for long-tail keywords. 

Ultimately, it will all depend on your strategy.

Just don’t rely on keyword stuffing as it will cause your site to be ranked lower on search engines.

Some SEO tools can also categorize keyword suggestions. For example, some tools separate keywords that are in question form. These are great for FAQ pages. Related keywords give you a better idea of what kind of information your target audience looks for. Keywords that start with prepositions can make high-quality content titles.

Keyword Research Tools

When looking for a keyword research tool, make sure that you only consider reputable platforms. 

Perhaps the best place to start would be Google Keyword Planner. Not only are you getting keyword suggestions from Google itself, but it’s also completely free to use. 

The only downside to using this tool is that it is limited. There are situations where you don’t get as many keyword suggestions as you’d like. 

There’s also Answer the Public, a free keyword research tool that pulls frequently asked terms on Google search. This is great for coming up with topics for future blog content.

You can also try Ubersuggest but just like Google Keyword Planner, the free version can only get you so far. 

However:

These should be enough to get you going. Especially if you’re just a new website. You’d have enough keywords to add to your content.

Paid tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs have more features though. And they can return more keyword suggestions thanks to their large database. One of the features that both of these tools have is the ability to spy on competitors. It lets you know which keywords they’re targeting along with their metrics.

In addition, they can track keyword performance on search engines. If your page ranks for a specific keyword that you’re monitoring, these tools will let you know. And they’ll keep an eye on any changes in your search engine position.

White Hat SEO Strategy for Keyword Optimization Case Study

A case study published by Sure Oak showed that proper keyword research and optimization led to identifying content opportunities that their client missed.

Using a combination of on-site optimization and link building strategies, Sure Oak managed to provide their client with high-converting traffic. 

Their client’s organic keyword rankings grew by as much as 611% in a year for 17 of its targeted keywords.

In a separate case study published at Moz, a company ranked first for a high-volume keyword in under three months. It had to implement different strategies but on the top of its list is finding topics using keyword research.

The company wanted to rank for a high-value keyword. So it wanted to find one that’s worth focusing on. Eventually, it settled for a keyword that had 9,900 searches per month. The estimated visitors per month for the keyword it chose was over 3,000 users per month.

So you can absolutely make the argument that white hat SEO techniques work.

All you need is the right tool and mindset. You will also need patience. White hat SEO strategies take some time before it picks up steam. Don’t expect to see results right away. After adding high-value keywords, you might need to wait weeks (or months in some cases) before feeling the effects.

2. Content Quality

Online marketers have a mantra: Content is king. 

And you can understand why. Search engine optimization simply doesn’t work if you don’t have content to show your audience. So long as you publish content frequently, there’s a good chance that you’ll get discovered by your target audience.

Here’s the problem:

Black hat SEO marketers picked up on this. And so they’ve tried to publish content that brings no value to users and only serves to push their sites to the top of the search engine results page.

How Black Hat SEO Strategies Affect Content

Before we proceed, we should note that poor content does not necessarily mean badly written content. Though that is also a factor to consider.

In this case, it refers to content that offers little to no value. So that includes plagiarized posts and duplicate pages. There also used to exist a practice called bait and switch. That’s when SEOs would make a site or page rank for specific keywords. Once they do, they’ll replace the content with something else which could be about anything.

Low-quality content also refers to spam comments. It’s one of those black hat SEO techniques that introduce keywords not in the main content but through the comments section. It’s also common for the comments section to be used for creating backlinks (more on this later).

Article spinning is also something you should avoid. It’s similar to duplicate content. Only in this case, marketers use software to rewrite an article so it can pass itself as unique content. But in most cases, the articles look really messed up.

Keyword stuffing is also something you should avoid. We’ll discuss this in more detail later. But for now, all you need to know is that repeating the same keyword aggressively in your content is not acceptable. Google is well-aware of keyword stuffing and has successfully penalized websites that use techniques like it.

All of these black hat SEO strategies affect the user experience. If you’re a Google user, wouldn’t you get irritated by search results that don’t provide the information you’re looking for?

That’s why Google keeps on releasing algorithm changes that address these issues.

Today, you’d rarely see websites that rank using black hat SEO to make their content rank. 

White Hat SEO Techniques for Publishing Great Content

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to publish good content. But if you’re after great content, that’s a whole different story.

Any site that wants great content has to provide users with everything they need. You have to balance writing terrific posts with effective search engine optimization. 

Search engines appreciate in-depth content. That doesn’t necessarily mean that posts have to be long (though it does help). But you do have to make sure that your content marketing techniques include providing unique information that is factually correct.

A long post that discusses a topic in detail also gives you a chance to make your content keyword-rich. 

The thing is:

Posts are not all text. Adding images, videos, infographics, graphs, and other forms of media helps your site rank on search engines. Any element that’ll engage your audience helps keep them on your site. And the longer a user stays on a website, the better. It’s about observing the best content writing tips to provide value to readers and search engines.

That’s why it’s common to find white hat SEO marketers collaborating with writers, graphic artists, video content creators, and web developers. All of these elements come together to make the user experience more pleasant.

And when users are happy, so is Google. 

That’s why they promote outstanding articles on the search results as much as they can. They know that this is the kind of information its users want to find.

Understanding User Intent

Another important thing to remember is that your content should satisfy user intent. Remember: Google’s RankBrain update focuses on delivering content based on the nature of its user’s query. So Google will prioritize the most relevant articles on its search engine ranking.

When you select a primary keyword, you should consider what sort of data your target audience needs. 

Let’s use an example:

If a user searches for a cookie recipe, the intent is clearly looking for ingredients and steps on how to bake cookies. They don’t need a history lesson on its origin. Nor do they plan on buying cookies online. All they need is a clear set of instructions on how to make cookies from scratch.

So give your users exactly what they want.

The more specific the keyword is, the easier it will be for you to determine user intent.

User intent usually falls under one of these three categories:

• Navigational — People use navigational search terms when they want to find a site or page but don’t know how to access it. So they use Google instead. 

• Informational — Informational search terms help people learn more about a topic, person, product, or service. Search terms for a product review, for example, would fall under this category.

• Transactional — This is when someone uses search terms that indicate an intention to buy, hire, or subscribe to a product or service.

A Mobile-First Experience

We should also point out that you should write posts with a mobile-first mentality. What does that mean exactly? 

Your content will likely be seen on mobile devices rather than on a desktop computer. So your posts should be optimized for mobile devices. 

When you create content, write shorter paragraphs, use headings to divide up your main content, use bigger font sizes, and get rid of site elements that could distract the reader from your message.

Of course, it’s also very important for your site to be mobile-responsive.

If your readers can make it all the way to the end of your post, then Google will take it as a great sign. All of these SEO practices will make it easier for your website to get clicks from organic traffic.

SEO Content Tools for Better Website Traffic

There are several tools you could use to improve the quality of your content. Some of them focus on fixing grammatical issues while others are there to help you come up with posts that are unique and engaging.

If you need a virtual editor to catch misspellings or other grammatical flaws as you create content, then you can try using Grammarly* or Hemingway Editor. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to miss even the simplest errors. So it’s good to use tools that’ll alert you when mistakes happen and even offer suggestions on how to fix them.

Coming up with a blog topic can be time-consuming. But with the HubSpot Blog Topic Generator, you can quickly find engaging topics to work on. At the very least, it should give you an idea of the types of posts that are popular about your niche.

CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer will review your title and grade it based on factors like word balance, skimmability, clarity, word count, and sentiment. It’s a handy tool that’ll give you an idea of what titles work and what doesn’t. CoSchedule also has a Headline Studio that lets you do more things to get the most out of your blog title headlines.

Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT)

Google prioritizes content that exudes expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (or EAT). If a piece of content has all three factors, Google knows to trust the source and ranks it higher on search results.

This is especially true for websites in industries that have an impact on a user’s health and finances. 

For example: If you have a website that produces content about medicinal products, you’ll need to somehow prove that you have the knowledge and authority to speak on the matter. If not, Google will hesitate to include your posts on search rankings. The same goes for sites that provide financial advice or legal recommendations.

Using White Hat SEO to Produce High-Quality Content Works

Robbie Richards published a case study where he was able to generate 150,723 visits. That’s an 11,065% increase in organic traffic in under six months.

The secret to his success? Great, valuable content.

In the said post, it was noted that in order to surpass the top ten results, your content should accumulate the total value of all ten entries. In short: You need to blow the competition out of the water.

If you want to replicate the results of the case study, you’ll need to deeply research every aspect of your topic. Offer as much information as you can to your readers, especially if you’re doing long-form content.

More importantly, look at your competitor’s content and see what areas they failed to cover in their posts. And make sure that you cover these topics in your own content.

3. On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing a page to make it rank on search engines. Having high-quality content is a part of that. But other white hat techniques can contribute to ranking on Google search.

These include adding the right keywords in your headlines and meta tags, reducing the file size of your media content, making pages load faster, and cleaning up your HTML.

Black Hat Techniques for On-Page SEO

Black hat strategies for on-page SEO still include some of the ones we’ve discussed earlier like keyword stuffing (adding way too many keywords) and copying content from other domains.

But there are other black hat techniques like spamming meta tags with irrelevant keywords, click-baiting, and using private blog networks (PBNs).

Then there’s keyword stuffing. This refers to content where a keyword is repeated over and over to make the page rank for the term. This isn’t as popular anymore but it still pops up now and then. Keyword stuffing is easily detected now by search engines. 

You should avoid using any of these strategies at all costs. Google will easily flag your site if you optimize your website this way. And once it does, you could disappear from the search results. It’s definitely not worth the risk.

Instead, you should try using white hat SEO strategies.

White Hat SEO Techniques for On-Page SEO

There are different parts of your site that you could improve outside of your main content.

Title Tag

The title tag is the first thing users see when they find your listing on the search rankings. That’s why you’d want it to include your primary keyword. You want your title tag to be concise since it has a character limit. Keep them anywhere between 50 to 60 characters for maximum impact.

Make your title tags eye-catching. Users will use title tags to determine if your post is worth checking out or not.

URL

Have you ever seen URLs that end in a random string of numbers, letters, and symbols? Those are actually not good. What you want is for a URL to include keywords. 

If your post is about the boom in webcam usage in 2020, then you should have a URL like this:

www.yourwebsite.com/webcam-usage-2020

And not something like this:

www.yourwebsite.com/blog/agfds98432jjhn

Google can and does look at your URL to determine the context of your post. Not including the keyword in the URL is a wasted opportunity.

Also, it makes it easier for people to remember if they need to access the post again (or link back to it) in the future.

Meta Description

The role that meta descriptions play in SEO has gone down over the years. But one thing remains true: Users still see them in the search results just underneath the title tag. 

Make sure that your meta descriptions relay effectively what users can expect when they click the link. You can include a few keywords to confirm that your post includes the information they’re looking for. 

Include meta descriptions in your content marketing SEO strategies. It can help improve the user experience.

Headlines and Header Tags

Headlines—which are different from title tags—can also help improve your site’s SEO performance. With the right headline, users will find reasons to continue reading your content. The more people engage your posts, the better. It will increase your chances of ranking on Google search.

The same goes for your header tags. These are your H1s, H2s, H3s, and so on. These are natural breaks in your content. They add a natural flow to your article and improve readability, especially on mobile devices.

Both headlines and header tags are useful for inserting primary and secondary keywords.

Image Optimization

Images make your content more engaging. But it can also cause your site to load slowly. If you’re using high-resolution files, you’d want to use image optimization software to reduce the file size.

A smaller file size will make images load faster.

Adding image alt tags also gives your post a chance to rank on Google image searches. So there’s another benefit of optimizing your valuable content through images.

Anchor Text

You can also insert keywords in your anchor texts (links). So instead of using non-descript anchor texts, try using descriptive words instead.

For example:

Check out this post for more information.

The text in bold doesn’t really give search engines any context as to what the link is all about. Compare that to the example below:

Check out this list of Photoshop resources for more information.

Using “list of Photoshop resources” makes it clear to Google and your readers where the link will take you.

What Are Canonical Tags?

We’ve talked about duplicate content being a problem. And you might think that you don’t have duplicate pages. 

But here’s the thing:

There’s a good chance that you already have duplicate pages. You just don’t know about them yet.

How? It has something to do with URLs. You can use different URLs to access the same page. For example:

http://www.exampleurl.com

https://www.exampleurl.com

http://exampleurl.com

While all of these refer to the same page, Google sees these as different ones. And that’s the reason why it considers them duplicate pages.

There are other ways for a website to get duplicate pages. But regardless, the solution is simple. And that’s by setting up a canonical tag.

A canonical tag is a string of code that tells Google which page is the master copy. By doing so, it will ignore other instances of duplicate content. There are tools available that’ll help you set up your canonical tags if you’re not sure how to go about doing so.

The Importance of Internal Linking

Internal links play an important role in SEO. Not only do they help Google figure out what your content is about, but it also helps Google discover other pages on your website.

It’s also good for your audience as well. Internal links introduce related pages that they might be interested in. And the more time a person spends on your site, the more reason Google will have to rank you higher in the search rankings.

But you can’t randomly link to different pages on your site. You need some sort of structure. There are many theories on which white hat SEO strategies for internal linking people should use.

However, one of the most popular techniques is silo building. It’s an internal linking strategy where you group similar content, establish a hierarchy from the most important to the least relevant, and link them together.

Source: Bruce Clay

The idea is to have the most important page to pass off link equity down to your smaller pages so that all pages are covered. You can learn more about it from Bruce Clay, the man who popularized the concept.

Use White Hat SEO Tools to Fix On-Page Issues

Almost every SEO tool out in the market has on-page optimization features. Even better, they let you know which issues you need to address immediately. They’ll even offer suggestions on how you could fix those errors.

Ahrefs is a big name in the industry. But it’s far from your only option. There are SEMrush and Moz too. You will also find smaller names in the market. It could be time-consuming to find them all but it’s certainly worth it as some offer their services at a lower cost.

Here are other SEO tools worth considering:

• Ahrefs Broken Link Checker — Just enter your site or page and Ahrefs will check if there are broken inbound and outbound links.

• Screaming Frog — A popular SEO tool that checks the status of a site. It reports if there are on-page SEO errors like missing pages and links, no meta tags, and missing anchor text.

• Google Rich Results Test — A free tool that lets you know if your website supports rich results. Rich results refer to search engine results that go beyond the blue link. Examples include carousels, images, and other non-textual elements.

• Google Mobile-Friendly Test — Works just like Google’s Rich Results Test. Only this time, Google checks if your website is optimized for mobile devices.

• Smush — A WordPress plugin that automatically optimizes and compresses your images. It also has a lazy load feature that lets you load images as needed (versus loading them all at once).

4. Backlinks

If internal linking is all about linking to pages within your site, backlinks are all about receiving links from third-party sources.

Backlinks are one of the best SEO methods to get website traffic. When you get links from other website owners, it only signifies to Google that you’re a trustworthy source and that the information you’re providing is useful to people.

That’s why it’s very important for site owners to get as many backlinks as they can. 

Black Hat Tactics That Involve Backlinks

It’s no surprise then that black hat marketers exploit backlink SEO practices to boost their websites in search rankings.

When you check any list of black hat tactics, you’d find that the most serious offenders use backlinks to game the system. Here are some of the more popular black hat tactics that people use to get backlinks.

• Comment Spam — As discussed earlier, there are instances when people would leave comments in posts where they would leave keywords. The same can also be said for backlinks. Black hat SEO marketers would find high-authority sites and add backlinks regardless of their relevance to the post.

• Link Farming — Link farming involves launching a bunch of websites for the purpose of linking back to each other. You could say that creating private blog networks (PBNs) fall under link farming. Google can detect link farming activity. Those that are caught link farming are deindexed from search rankings.

• Link Exchange — Working with other site owners to give each other backlinks goes against Google’s guidelines. This used to be a go-to strategy for black hat SEO believers. But because these website owners typically don’t have high-quality content, link exchanges are easy to spot. Google caught on to these shady SEO practices a long time ago.

Buying Links

But of all the black hat SEO methods for backlinks, buying links was the most prevalent. And it comes in many forms too.

The worst ones are those where website owners shamelessly asked people to link back to them in exchange for money. And because backlinks were in such high demand, some website owners became open to selling them.

Because Google hates SEO practices like link buying, they penalize both buyers and sellers once detected.

There are different ways to add backlinks. They don’t necessarily have to come from the main content. They could place backlinks in footers or the sidebar, for example.

Some marketers pay for guest blogging opportunities where they could insert backlinks to their site. Guest blogging, in itself, isn’t a bad thing. But when you have to buy or sell the right to do so, that’s when it becomes a shady practice.

You also used to find black hat SEO professionals that offer to pay in kind. Instead of paying in cash, they’d send product samples instead. In return, they expect the reviewer to add links going to their product pages. 

Here’s the bottom line:

Don’t pay other site owners to add links to your site. It won’t work. And even if it does, it’s only a matter of time before Google catches you.

Use White Hat SEO Techniques to Get Backlinks

The truth is that getting links using white hat SEO strategies can be time-consuming and difficult. You’ll need to invest time and money into producing high-quality content that addresses user intent.

In short: Your content marketing strategy needs to be on point for this to work (even if it means using the best tools at your disposal).

That said, it’s certainly possible to get backlinks using white hat SEO. And not only will you end up with quality content, but you’ll also surge in search rankings. It’s a win-win situation for you, your users, and search engines.

Here are some of the ways you could get backlinks using white hat SEO.

You go on Google, enter your target keyword, review all the top posts, and create a piece of content that surpasses the top entries.

That’s the basic concept behind the Skyscraper Technique. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Making content better than your competitors isn’t a walk in the park. You’ll need to do more research, insert better graphics, source data from credible sources, and keep your content engaging.

But if you pull it off, you’ll get backlinks from high-authority sites in no time.

Broken Link Outreach

It’s not that uncommon to find pages with backlinks that no longer work. And if you’re a website that has broken links, you’ll want to replace or remove those links immediately. That’s because Google doesn’t like it when pages have backlinks that go nowhere since they affect user experience.

What you can do is reach out to sites with broken links and ask that they replace the missing backlink with one that points to your domain.

Not only are you helping the website owner with their broken link issue, but you’re getting a backlink in the process.

However:

This only works if you have a page that’s relevant to the one being replaced. For example, if the old link is about the benefits of oranges to the body and you happen to have a page dedicated to the topic, you can ask the site owner to link back to you.

And make sure that you have quality content. Otherwise, none of those you reach out to will link back no matter how nice you ask.

Publish Studies

If you happen to sit on a lot of data, you can release them as part of a study. Writers like referring to studies since it backs up the points they’re trying to make. And it’s not just your average writers. Reporters from news organizations and professionals in the education field link back to studies as well.

Educational (especially sites with a .edu domain extension) and news sites have high domain authority. That means backlinks from these sites are really sought after by SEOs. In fact, there are content marketing campaigns dedicated to receiving backlinks from these folks.

Guest Posting

Earlier, we talked about paid guest posting and how ineffective it is. But if you guest post on sites that are related to your niche, you shouldn’t get in trouble with Google. Why? Because you’re not trying to manipulate search engines. 

So if you’ve been invited by a third-party site to write posts for them, then feel free to do so. They’ll probably let you insert one or two backlinks as a way of thanking you.

Making an Effort by Reaching Out to Influencers

You can publish as much high-quality content as you want. But if you don’t make an effort by promoting it to other people, then you won’t receive as many backlinks as you deserve.

Using social media to share your content with your followers is one thing. But when you use social media to seek out influencers in your industry, they can end up sharing it with their audience which improves your reach. You’d also become an authority figure in your field.

It’s also common for publishers to email websites about their posts to see if they’re interested in using them as references in future articles. This is even truer for posts that include studies, infographics, direct quotes from influential people, and other resources that have inherent value.

Tools for Getting White Hat SEO Backlinks

Again, most big-name SEO tools will include features that’ll help you analyze your backlink performance. So let’s focus on SEO tools that are specific to link building.

• Hunter.io — Hunter.io is an email finder tool. This will come in handy if you find a site that you’d like to work with but you can’t find contact information for anyone working there. 

• Prospect.io — Prospect.io is an email outreach tool. Using this product, you can use an email template to draft your message then send it in bulk. You can also track all of your interactions. This makes it easier to manage all of your backlink opportunities.

• HARO — HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out. It’s a service that connects reporters and potential sources. Using this tool, you can find reporters who need direct quotes for their stories. And in exchange, they’ll add a backlink to your site.

• Check My Links — Check My Links is a Chrome extension that can crawl through content to find broken links. This will come in handy if you’re planning to use the broken link building strategy to get backlinks.

5. Site Navigation

Site navigation is often forgotten as SEOs tend to focus on content and other factors. But make no mistake: Site navigation is very important. It’s one of the SEO techniques that fall under technical SEO.

Even black hat SEO marketers will improve their site navigation because there’s no way around it. Even they would like to avoid the penalties attributed to poor technical SEO.

White Hat SEO Techniques for Better Site Navigation

So what can you do to improve your site navigation?

Here are our suggestions.

Speed Up Your Website Load Time

Google isn’t shy about the fact that they want websites to load fast. It even released a tool called Google PageSpeed Insights to aid users in figuring out if they’re meeting the company’s standards.

If there is code or media content that’s slowing down your site, Google will let you know.

Unfortunately, some of the steps that you’ll need to perform to speed up a website will require some HTML knowledge. So depending on how comfortable you are with coding, you might need to find someone to help. Preferably a person who knows how to minimize HTML requests, use asynchronous loading for CSS and JavaScript files, and defer JavaScript loading.

You can also look for a web hosting solution that has great uptime. You don’t want your site to slow down when there are too many people trying to get to your site.

Use Google Search Console to Discover Site Issues

Google Search Console is a free tool that tells you if your website is facing technical issues that you need to address. While it may not be as comprehensive as paid SEO tools, it still provides great information. 

It’s a good starting point, especially for those who don’t have the budget to spare for technical SEO.

Be Mobile-Friendly

You want to have a mobile-friendly site. As hinted at earlier, Google is well aware that most of its users are using mobile devices to access the internet. So naturally, it wants all websites to load properly on phones and tablets.

Fortunately, there are plenty of site builders that offer mobile-ready templates. If you’re a WordPress user, pretty much all of the templates you’ll find on the platform are mobile-friendly.

If you’ve built your site from scratch (or hired someone to do so), then you might have to tweak your code for your website to load properly outside of PC and Mac.

Being mobile-friendly also means removing distractions from your site that might be okay on desktops and laptops but not so much on smaller screens. We’re referring to pop-up ads, banners, and similar distracting elements.

Your content should also be formatted for mobile devices. Sentences should be shorter, you’d have to leave just enough white space for improved readability, and you should avoid having long paragraphs.

Use SSL

Having SSL certification means your domain has security protocols in place that encrypts all communications between a server and a browser.

Put simply: SSL protects your users’ personal information including credit card data.

If you’re an online store, it’s very important to have a site with SSL. But in all honesty, every site should have this certification.

Fortunately, it’s not that hard to get SSL. Most web hosting solutions include SSL when you sign up for one of their plans. 

You’ll know if you have SSL certification if your URL starts with https:// instead of http://

Remove Broken Links

You don’t want your site to have broken links. So as soon as you spot them, you need to replace them with working links or just revert the anchor text to regular text.

There are plenty of reasons why you’d have broken links. You could have pasted the wrong URL. Or the landing page could have gone down since you published the post. It could have also been redirected to a page that has since been deleted.

If you haven’t checked your website for broken links in a while, use one of the SEO tools we mentioned earlier to crawl your pages. You might just surprise yourself by how many there are that you need to update.

Check Your Website for Duplicate Content

Just like broken links, you also need to scan your site for duplicate content. You can fix them by identifying which one should be canonical or by deleting the page from your site.

Disavow Backlinks

As much as possible, you should only get backlinks from high-authority domains. But that’s rarely the case. In reality, multiple sites will link back to you — especially as your site grows in size.

If you start getting backlinks from dubious sources like gambling or pornography sites (which does happen no matter what your niche is), then you could submit a disavow request from Google.

Google Support has a step-by-step guide on how you could submit a disavow request. But to summarize, you’ll have to create a list of domains (or URLs) that you don’t want to receive backlinks from and submit it to Google.

Do note that Google only recommends this action as a last resort. If possible, you should contact webmasters and request the link removal before taking drastic actions.

Have an XML Sitemap

Your white hat SEO strategies should always include having an XML sitemap. This will let search engines know which of your pages are the most important.

There are SEO tools that will help you create an XML sitemap. 

White Hat SEO Help: Freelancers vs Agencies vs In-House Team

If you’re running a small site, it’ll be easy to optimize your site on your own. But once your site gets more website traffic, you’re going to need help.

So here’s the question: What kind of help should you get?

You’ll likely end up with three options. You could hire freelancers to do the work for you. Then again, there are SEO agencies that are more than willing to lend a hand. Or should you build an in-house team instead?

Let’s look at the pros and cons of each.

Freelancers

Hiring freelancers like myself for your content needs is ideal for those who already know what they want. Since you’re the one handing out instructions, you need to have at least some basic understanding of SEO. Your success or failure is in your hands.

There are benefits to hiring freelancers. It’s usually cheaper to hire freelancers. You can set the terms (for example: project-based vs hourly wage). And it’s easier to reduce or add manpower as you see fit.

Most freelancers are used to acting independently. Meaning after you send out your orders, you can jump back into handling other aspects of your business.

For larger projects, you can even hire virtual assistants so you’d only have to coordinate with one person. Your virtual assistant will handle the freelancers on your behalf.

But:

There are also downsides to hiring freelancers. For starters, you’d have to screen all applicants. There are cases when freelancers are unable to deliver. Or if they do, the quality isn’t up to standard. Only hire help with proven track records or have sample work to show.

Also remember that as their employer, you still need to treat freelancers with respect. You have to be fair even though they are not regular employees of your company.

Agencies

SEO agencies are ideal for medium-sized businesses. They also work for people that don’t want to focus all of their time on online marketing.

The biggest advantage of hiring an SEO agency is that they’ll take care of everything. You only need to supply them with data and they can work out white hat SEO strategies for your business.

Creating an SEO plan is time-consuming. So it helps if you have experts who already know all the best SEO methods. They can tackle keyword research, technical SEO, on-page SEO, and all the other strategies we talked about in this post.

They’ll also prepare reports and bring you up-to-date on your progress.

You’ll have to do your research though. Every SEO agency will claim that they are the best. Try to see which companies they’ve previously worked with. Or seek recommendations from other entrepreneurs.

One possible downside to hiring an agency is that you won’t know if you have their full attention. They typically work with multiple brands at the same time. So you can’t tell how much time they’re allocating toward your success.

Then there’s the cost issue. While hiring an in-house team is undoubtedly expensive, you have fine control over how many you hire and flexibility over what they work on at any given time. You have the freedom to start small and grow slowly. You dictate the pace.

With agencies, you’re at their mercy. They dictate the price. And in some cases, you’ll have to spend a lot to see the kind of results you’re looking for. So take that into consideration as you make your decision.

In-House Team

This is undoubtedly the best direction to go. But if it were that simple, then every website would have an in-house team. 

The biggest hurdle is funding. Not only do you have to pay your team their salary, but you also have to deal with the cost of employee benefits, upkeep, equipment, and training.

You’d also have to take a more hands-on approach when it comes to their development. Eventually, employees would want promotions, additional benefits, and perks. You have to keep them all happy and provide opportunities for growth.

But with that said, you want people who are invested in your website’s success. If you hire the right SEO manager, you can come up with new strategies that you know will work for your business. No need to rely on outsiders to make decisions for you.

Having that kind of control, for some people, makes it worth investing in an in-house team.

Hybrid Approach

The hybrid approach gives you the best of all three. Some companies manage to hire freelancers and an agency while working with an in-house team.

Here’s an example scenario where all three work together:

Freelancers are used to generate content for the website either as blog posts or articles. They can also do graphics, videos, audio, and other forms of media content that the website might need.

The agency is there to recommend SEO strategies and report on the website’s performance on search engine ranking. They will also alert the company if Google is about to drop another algorithm update and discuss how it could affect the current strategies being employed.

The in-house team will then be in charge of all the technical and on-page changes that need to happen. It’s also ideal to have your webmaster be a full-time employee. 

A Quick Note About Black Hat Freelancers and Agencies

Another thing that you should remember is that black hat freelancers and agencies do exist. And if you’re not sure how to tell the difference between good and bad SEOs, your search engine ranking might drop.

If you’re lucky, freelancers and agencies will let you know right away if their strategy involves black hat SEO. But in some cases, they only state results. 

For example, some SEOs will tell you that they can generate hundreds of backlinks in a matter of days. If you’re not SEO-savvy, you’d think you’re getting a great deal. But in reality, what they’re probably doing is generating backlinks from domains that they own. And as we talked about earlier, Google doesn’t like it when sites generate backlinks that way.

And yes, some freelancers and agencies will recommend that you buy backlinks. Not only is that bad, but you’d have to shoulder the cost too. And in the end, that strategy will only do you more harm than good.

Here’s the bottom line:

Be careful of who you hire. You don’t want to use a black hat SEO strategy by accident. 

Try looking at client testimonials to gauge whether it’s worth working with a particular SEO freelancer or agency. And if what they’re offering sounds too good to be true, be skeptical.

Infographic Originally Published at Christopher Jan Benitez