In case you are not aware, Black Hat SEO is a disapproved practice that still helps build your SEO, your ranking. The disadvantages of black hat SEO are mainly the penalization of your site by Google and the bringing down of the site. Instead of going through such processes, why don’t I introduce to the better sister of black hat SEO? White Hat SEO
WHAT IS WHITE HAT SEO?
This is the opposite of black hat SEO. While black hat SEO is a disapproved practice, white hat SEO retains your site’s integrity and follows search engines’ guidelines. White hat SEO also means any approved practice that helps build your website’s search ranking while maintaining and following search engines’ guidelines like Google.
White hat SEO focuses not on search engines but on user experiences(Google rewards sites which focus on this, and there are many white hat SEO techniques to help your site rank better.
WHITE HAT SEO TECHNIQUES
There is a lot of white hat SEO technique for rankings but below are six effective techniques to outrank competitors:
- CREATING CONTENT IS ROYALTY: Everyone knows that content is king. One of the significant techniques of white hat SEO is creating content as without content, it’s nearly useless and not just any content useful content. To rank and impress search engines like Bing, Google, you need to write a lot of good stuff; creating good content is time-consuming, but its results are fantastic. Good content equals good ranking, so you have to create better content for a better ranking.
HOW TO CREATE GOOD CONTENTS
A. Carry out a lot of research: Writing good content cannot be possible without doing a lot of research; even if you are an expert in the topic you’d like to write about a subject you want to create, make sure you research far and wide.
B. Be straight and concise: You can beat around the bush while talking, but when it comes to content creation, be straight, simple, and concise. Just go straight to the point.
C. The length of your content matters: There are debates on how long your content should be. While many people believe 500-700 words are okay for a good ranking, concise and good content should be around 2000 words.
D. Make use of your keywords: Without making it so obvious, add your primary and secondary keywords to avoid stuffing of keywords (This is what the black hat SEO users do, so avoid it with these tips:
i. Have a primary keyword that is relevant to your topic and content
ii. Place your keywords only in places it feels natural and relevant
iii. Your content length should be more than 300
iv. Add a secondary keyword; Sometimes, people use phrases or synonyms, so you should add a secondary keyword to help rank the page. More than one secondary keyword is allowed and gives your content variety.
v. Use your keywords wisely: It’s not enough to place your keywords; how do you use them? Use your keywords wisely; the best places to use your keywords are: Page title, meta description, title tags, alt image tag, first paragraph, middle paragraph, and the end paragraph of the post, one or two subheading
E. Write to your audience: The focus of White hat SEO is on user experience, and so should your content. Know your audience and write content that suits them. Want to know more on how to write for your audience? Why not check this guide?
2. Research and use relevant keywords: It’s not enough to have keywords; it’s imperative that you use relevant ones to boost your SEO ranking and ultimately outrank your competitors. Research on your keywords and how they rank; you could also use platforms that let you research for keywords to your content. It would help if you also had primary and secondary keywords to be used in your title and meta description to rank you better
3. Have a fast loading site: Imagine opening a site, and it takes forever to load; what will you do? Play the patient card or check out another site? A website’s speed should be one or two seconds as a lot of users have no time to waste. There is a lot of content, and users can bounce back if your site does not open quickly. If your bounce rate is high, it could decrease your SEO ranking, so you have to ensure your site works pretty fast.
HOW TO IMPROVE THE SPEED OF YOUR SITE
A. Avoid images and audios with large MB’s: I know you want to have a beautiful sight, but this should never be at the expense of your ranking. If you want to outrank competitors, you should avoid images and audios large in size.
B. Use an image compressor if needed: Can’t avoid large images? I advise that you use an image compressor to compress large images.
c. What web hosting provider are you on?: Move to a fast web hosting provider as this could be the reason for the slow loading of your site
4. HAVE A MOBILE FRIENDLY WEBSITE: Billions of people use mobile phones for research, entertainment, and a lot of things. Google rewards mobile-friendly sites, and your site must be designed at least firstly for mobile phone users. It must be able to fit perfectly on a mobile device and look its best
The number of people who use mobile phones has increased, and having a mobile-friendly site is a key factor in helping you rank better. How do you now make your site mobile-friendly?
i. Use images with less size
ii. Choose a theme that is mobile responsive
iii. Use readable fonts
iv. Create spaced out links
v. Get rid of pop-ups
vi. Avoid lots of large texts
vii. Change the placement of your site’s buttons and their size
viii. Make the information available on your site easy to access
ix. Work on your mobile speed
x. Avoid using flash; not only is it not mobile-friendly, but it is dangerous to your SEO
xi. Always run mobile tests
xii. Create a desktop and tablet switch
You can also make your site mobile-friendly by using the Accelerated Mobile Page.
Accelerated Mobile Pages
Accelerated Mobile Pages is a technology created by Google. AMP pages reduce your website’s load time and is easy to use too. An advantage of using Accelerated Mobile Pages is that helps your site load faster while also giving you access to beautiful features like its characters limit.
Google has a limit on character titles for both mobile and desktop devices; for mobile, it is 78 character limit and for desktop its 70 character limit. Implementing AMP pages is quite easy especially if you’re using WordPress. This is possible through plugins like
i. AMP: This is the official AMP plugin on WordPress
ii. Better AMP
iii. AMP for WordPress
iv. AMP On
You can also make your site mobile friendly with some WordPress plugins:
a. WPtouch: This is a really popular plugin, one recommended by Google. It enhances your sure which inadvertently leads to a faster site, easier to read texts. WPtouch automatically gives your site a simple theme for mobile users while maintaining your original theme. Since it’s recommended by Google, your SEO and search rankings can increase greatly.
b. WP Super Cache: This is also a popular plugin. It increases the speed of your site and may be installed via Auto Optimize. It saves your site’s pages whilst making them load faster.
c. Jetpack: This is a more complex plugin because of its many features but also a beautiful one. It’s designed to give you more traffic, protect your site, and draw readers in. Some features of Jetpack include:
i. Related post option: This feature allows similar posts to appear at the end of a published post. This feature helps your traffic and also boosts the usability of your site as readers who loved a particular content can easily navigate to another related one.
ii. Site statistics: This is another feature that allows you to watch and monitor your traffic to know what social platforms, pages, and posts are getting all the views.
iii. Social sharing buttons are created to make sharing your site’s content easily.
5. UPDATE YOUR OLD POSTS: Another way to increase and outrank competitors is by updating your old posts and new and updated information. It’s a white hat SEO technique that helps elevate your rankings
Work on existing content, update them with new, improved information, and you will see a change in your rankings.
HOW TO UPDATE/IMPROVE OLD POSTS
A. Work on content-length: check your old posts and increase your content length, adding more information and ultimately more value to the post and your site.
B. Work on your posts’ grammar: As time goes by, your writing skills improve, so revisit your old posts, fix those grammatical errors and spelling errors to increase readability and rankings.
C. Rewrite your meta description and titles: Change those titles that have no ranking, rework your meta description to improve your clicks and SEO.
6. Build high-quality backlinks: Backlink is the most important white hat SEO technique as you can increase your traffic and improve your site’s authority. Your content can outrank your competitors by merely building high-quality backlinks. There are different ways to build high-quality backlinks and also the right way.
HOW TO BUILD YOUR QUALITY BACKLINKS
- The skyscraper link-building techniques: This is the simplest and effective way of building your backlinks; it’s also the simplest, which is great, but how do you use it?
HOW TO USE THE SKYSCRAPER LINK BUILDING TECHNIQUE(STEP BY STEP GUIDE)
A. Research and find relevant popular content: Find popular and relevant content related to your niche that also has many links. Analyze the backlinks of your competitors and save them.
B. Create better content: Check for the best-ranking content and create better ones. This means you must up the quality of your own content to be better than others.
C. Reach out via email: The third step is to email the owner of the website that your competitors get their links. Tell them about your better content and ask him to add your content to his site. This will up your content quality and also boost your ranking.
2. Build your backlinks with Infographics: Infographic means a visual representation of information or data.
Learning how to make an important infographic is the best way to attract backlinks to your content. Infographic attracts readers but also garners your social media platform attention, you can add your infographic image to your social media account, you can also place it on submission to infographics accepter websites, and in return, they’ll give a quality backlink for your site. Now you know what infographics mean, but how do you make beautiful infographics?
HOW TO BUILD BEAUTIFUL INFOGRAPHICS
- Select a topic and pick a design
- Find a good designing app, but I recommend checking out http://canva.com to create an Infographic
- If using Canva, which I use for designing and recommend, search for ‘infographic’ and watch beautiful designs pop up. Choose the one you like best, edit it as you please and download it(It’s free)
- Once you’ve created and saved it, publish it on your website, making it sharable for readers on all social media platforms
SEO can help or mar your site; it all depends on the hat you decide to wear. You choose the white hat(the good and long-term effective guy) and its techniques, which focus on your SEO and your audience at large. Do not focus on just your SEO, do not attempt to use the black hat SEO techniques as this can lead to a penalty of your site. There are different white hat SEO techniques but if your wish is to draw in more traffic, then you should follow the above tips to help your site and its traffic but its worthy to note, that all these tips cannot compare to the tip which states seeking expert help on SEO as they are the best help one can find on boosting your SEO and rankings, which is why we are here; to help you. Have questions on SEO? Want to contact an SEO expert? Why not check out our products and services? Reviews and other posts here