SEO work can be likened to an exchange policy: the more time, updates, and attention devoted to our websites by SEO practitioners equals an increase in its ranking on search engine results pages.
Various techniques may be implemented to optimize our sites for higher search engine rankings.
- White Hat SEO
- Black Hat SEO
- Grey Hat SEO
- On page SEO
- Off-page SEO
This blog will primarily cover three aspects of SEO: ON-Page SEO and OffPage. These three hats may be understood as good, bad, and ugly - we shall explore these traits further to determine which makes us appear attractive versus which makes us seem unappealing.
White Hat SEO
As its name implies, "White Hat" SEO refers to an ethical form of optimization that targets human visitors over search engines; its title indicates it adheres strictly to search engine rules without deviating.
Brian Dean from Backlinko defines White Hat as composed of Google-approved optimization strategies.
White hat SEO can bring many advantages to websites in many different ways. While the results might take longer, white hat SEO will leave an excellent first impression with Google and make other websites harder for their potential replacement to replace you.
Here are several techniques which represent effective white-hat methods of SEO:
- The right keyword usage
- Content of high quality
- Optimizing good links
- Search Engine Optimization
Some points presented herein have been taken directly from Brian Deans Backlinko.com website.
White Hat Techniques For SEO
Lets learn about white hat techniques for SEO and explore ways you can optimize them.
The Correct Keywords
Google SEO uses keywords to help people quickly locate what they are seeking on a website, so the first thing we should do when setting up our SEO is to find appropriate keywords for our product or service.
Avoid keyword stuffing, which falls outside the purview of white-hat SEO practices - there are various techniques you can employ in finding out your best keyword options; some are listed here:
Finding the appropriate keyword requires using tools such as Google Search Console, Ubersuggest, AdWords Keyword Planner, and WordTracker Scout - among many others.
These tools offer suggestions for websites you are using, and we can choose keywords we believe resonate most effectively with target audiences. Alongside research, we must also search Google for long tail keywords, which play an integral part in understanding peoples search patterns, which you can then add as keywords for SEO purposes.
Another aspect to remember when running our businesses is keeping an eye on our competitors and monitoring what they are up to; using specific tools, and we can also learn of any things we might be doing incorrectly that our competition is doing correctly. Borrowing keywords used by our competitors to expand our businesses is acceptable, provided it is at most 10-15. By exploring various online communities and noting what people search, keywords may also provide excellent guidance as you add on.
Theres no set limit; keep the number at 10-15 keywords when adding new ones to the mix.
Quality Content
First, let us establish something: Content does not significantly impact SEO but plays an instrumental role in improving website quality.
Putting out regular updates with good, fresh material helps with search rankings; copy-pasting from other websites wont do; making up your unique writing will yield better results and increase user interaction, creating the optimal user experience resulting in more traffic to your website overall.
Optimizing Good Links
Links can be divided into various types, such as internal links, external links, and backlinks.
They exist inside and outside a website - their purpose is described above by their multiple names. So, we will consider why links play such an essential part in white hat SEO techniques. Neil Patel states that link popularity accounts for 22.33% of Googles ranking algorithm components.
It should not take much to understand the significance of links; in general, more links in a website equals higher rankings, but here is where things get tricky - links present should lead to pages on our own or other sites that provide high-value content and relevant pages of interest for their ranking purposes.
Visits to other "bad sites" can damage our credibility and lower Google Ranking; even without visiting those designated explicitly as untrustworthy or have had pages removed, the ranking gradually decreases over time.
To address this situation, it is necessary to carefully optimize the links on our website and break links (links that lead to deleted pages) - one way of doing this is by identifying the wrong links within it and disputing them. Broken links must use "404" redirect coding so they are directed to their new pages while optimizing should be undertaken carefully as good links could become disapproved, necessitating close attention when doing it.
Guest posting on blogs can also be an excellent way to promote our websites while making our brand known online.
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Should You Always Utilize White Hat SEO?
Answering this question depends heavily upon your goals, industry, and niche. Some industries - specifically those that rely heavily on black hat tactics as part of their business models - employ them; to remain competitive, you will require using both black hat and white hat strategies in equal measures.
Google could penalize or damage your website and business due to algorithm changes; this could prove devastating if youre building an SEO firm.
We recommend white hat methods for lasting website success and longevity.
Content marketers utilizing SEO techniques as part of their content marketing plan to grow Google traffic and ranking signals must employ white hat strategies as part of their content strategy.
White hat strategies allow for gradual increases without incurring penalties for doing so. However, results may take some time to appear, and following rules is still the fundamental way to establish an authoritative web presence.
Offers a variety of SEO tools that you may use to evaluate the condition of your website.
We can generate a report showing where issues exist within your website.
You can employ various strategies to boost SEO and increase profits - everything from guest blogging to meta descriptions are effective ways of expanding SEO capabilities and growing revenue streams.
Black Hat SEO
Now that weve seen what constitutes good, let us know who represents evil; black hat SEO can serve as our foil here.
Black Hat SEO refers to an unethical form of search engine optimization in which website users engage in illegal and unethical practices to enhance the status and ranking of their website, using any means necessary. We should avoid using black hat methods when performing our SEO efforts. Black Hat SEO may lead to results; however, when Google discovers this activity, it penalizes and bans websites engaging in this practice.
Although Google provides strict regulations and rules around its usage of SEO practices such as black hat methods. I will outline below some primary black hat methods which must not be practiced:
- Unrelated keywords and stuffing
- Cloaking
- Duplicate content
- Comment spamming
There are other black hat techniques, but those mentioned above are the most frequently employed.
Unrelated Keywords And Keyword Stuffing
People often assume that using more keywords will increase website views; however, this assumption can be false as using unrelated keywords can harm user experience and search rankings for your site.
Unrelated keywords negatively impact the user experience by disillusioning searchers when an irrelevant website appears for their words of choice. Google penalizes people who violate this policy, often banning entire domain names altogether. People still manage to cheat Google by creating multiple domains with identical content - an approach that should always be avoided as being penalized could leave your website with permanent black marks that hinder its chances of becoming one of Googles search results.
Cloaking
According to Wikipedia, "cloaking is an SEO technique in which content presented to search engines differs significantly from that displayed to user browsers." Cloaking involves hiding an actual website with another link, which, when clicked upon, leads them somewhere completely different - commonly seen with pornographic or banned websites that use this tactic in disguise; when found by Google, this tactic would lead to severe penalties being implemented against it.
Duplicate Content
Original and engaging blog content is always the best practice when building your website.
Duplicate content refers to taking previously posted material from another source and posting it directly on your own. Copying content from other websites should only be undertaken when proper citations and links are given to prove such activity.
An example can be seen by reading through this blogs top page on "The Right Keyword and Optimization" under "Canonical Tag." We should put a canonical tag on those web pages with duplicate content so that when Google crawls your site and detects it, it penalizes you accordingly.
Comment Spamming
Comment spamming is one of the many negative consequences of our open-door commenting policy, usually carried out by robots created by software hackers who look out for websites hosting illegal material like gambling, drugs, and porn.
This often includes links to sites offering gambling, drugs - or porn - content. Some people use social media as a promotional platform, while others waste their time doing it because theres nothing else they can do with themselves.
These comments harm websites in two ways; first, they create wrong links which, when crawled by Google, can damage their user base, and second, they contribute as spam comments, which require us to delete links that come up during comment moderation processes; this practice of comment spamming requires regular inspection and deletion if we notice anything suspicious; this form of black hat technique needs constant vigilance for its existence and prevention.
Also Read: What is SEO and how it is beneficial compared to other modules?
Avoid These 9 Black-hat Seo Tactics
At first, choosing which SEO tactics are suitable for your site can be challenging.
While white hat tactics provide essential solutions, other advanced techniques require more care and consideration.
Be sure you are following sound advice. Though some tactics recommended on blogs or social networks might appear "advanced," these methods could be black hat tactics used illicitly.
Being informed will make avoiding tactics that cause websites to crash easier, such as those featured here in 2020.
When designing and creating websites in 2021 and after, these nine techniques should never be employed:
- Keyword Stuffing
- Automated/Duplicate content
- Hidden Text
- The Doorway/Gateway Pages
- Cloaking
- Paid/Manipulative links
- Misuse of Rich Snippets and Structured Data
- The Misleading Redirect
- Negative SEO
Keyword Stuffing
Simply repeating your primary keyword(s) across an entire web page wont help increase its ranking - keyword stuffing has the opposite effect!
Some black hat SEOs attempt to manipulate website rankings by placing unnatural keyword placement on pages, often outside main content or paragraphs that make no sense when read aloud.
Keyword stuffing often results in pages total of random blocks containing no reason when spoken aloud and may lead to sudden ranking increases without explanation from visitors.
Google offers an example of keyword-filled content:
Automate And Duplicate Content
Content creation may take time, yet Google considers it one of its three critical ranking factors.
One prevalent black strategy involves creating content automatically to rank for multiple keywords without providing unique and valuable pieces - for instance, by populating multiple location pages with identical copy yet different names. Avoid issues caused by duplicate and low-quality pages by creating SEO-friendly content.
Hidden Text
Hidden text refers to text that uses the same color background or is hidden behind an image, using CSS or font sizes of zero for maximum deception and keyword cramming purposes.
Marketers would submit long lists of desired keyword placement in search engine result pages (SERPS).
Text displayed within an accordion or tabs does not follow this rule, nor does dynamically loaded JavaScript.
We advise against adding hidden text on pages as search engines have become much more competent at detecting when people try to stuff in keywords artificially.
Doorway/Gateway Pages
Google considers it unethical for website operators to publish pages solely with content designed to drive people towards one destination page, known as gateway or doorway pages.
Every content you produce on your website should have an objective, not simply be created to try and rank for keywords that dont apply.
Examples may include
- Creating pages to target geographical keywords in areas where your business does not operate physically and funnel users directly to one page.
- Search-friendly pages created solely to rank well in search results fail to meet users needs and should instead meet both.
Instead of writing for search engines, write for people.
Cloaking
Cloaking involves serving users or search engines different content or URLs to deliver an entirely different user experience.
Search engine optimizers attempt to rank web pages according to content written solely to increase their search engine rankings while diverting visitors elsewhere (or to another place or thing). This practice violates search engine guidelines.
Focus your efforts on providing users with an excellent user experience, and search engines may soon recognize your site as valuable content.
Paid/Manipulated Links
Black-hat SEO can often be confused with link schemes. Many digital marketers understand the value of providing users with valid, not hidden, text in their posts, but link building can sometimes prove more challenging.
Bottom-line, links must be earned. This is especially important when one considers they act as editorial votes of confidence between websites, so any attempt at building them using underhanded techniques like:
- Links that are paid (sponsored) but do not have the rel="nofollow" and rel="sponsored" labels
- Excessive link exchanges
- Blog comment spam
- Forum spam
- Large-scale guest posting campaigns or article marketing campaigns
- Automated link building
- Web 2.0 properties, spammy directories, and bookmarking sites
- Site-wide footer or sidebar links
- Use of anchor texts that are exact matches or commercial
Misuse Of Rich Snippets And Structured Data
Structured data can be an excellent way to define entities, actions, and relationships on the web; however, its all too often misused or exploited for black hat tactics by malicious parties.
Structured data can often be manipulated to present false or incomplete information, for instance, when someone attempts to create data more favorable to their website, like when marketers use fake reviews with 5-star ratings to increase SERP ranking and click-through rate (CTR).
This is pure deceit, and you should ignore it completely.
Misleading Redirects
SEO uses redirects as part of their process for updating an old URL with new ones or migrating sites; redirects ensure your content remains easily accessible for both humans and search engines alike.
This technique ensures your site remains easily navigable for its audience and search engines.
Black Hat SEOs employ sneaky redirects - which resemble cloaking in appearance - to divert search engines away from what users view, often indexing an original URL while redirecting users elsewhere.
Google Webmaster Guidelines list sneaky redirects as one tactic that violates these guidelines and are black tactics that must not be employed.
Negative SEO
Contrary to popular belief, not all black hat SEO tactics are directed against the website that marketers want to be ranked.
Negative SEO techniques may also be employed by unethical SEOs who use them against competitors rankings as part of an evil scheme to increase traffic for themselves and cut into their rankings - something Google does not allow in terms of their guidelines for search.
Attackers typically create links that do not naturally belong on another domain to be penalized and therefore inflate its link profile with artificial links in hopes that this leads to penalties from Google or Yahoo! As these kinds of attacks are relatively rare, you should remain mindful of your link profile while remaining alert for such attempts against it.
Black Hat SEO Vs. White Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO violates search engines guidelines by manipulating them to gain higher rankings, often to their detriment or removal from search results entirely.
White Hat SEO offers more ethical ways of SEO by producing quality content with great user experiences that rank well in search results.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is more of a web designers arena. This type of SEO generally includes improving website speed by optimizing images and alt tags, optimizing page order on the website by listing out pages in alphabetical order, and fixing any errors within website architecture, among many other elements that would add SEO search but will not significantly contribute towards ranking well with search engines themselves.
Like content, however, it still makes up part of search optimization but does not play an integral part of its own.
Google defines gray hat SEO as computer hackers or computer security specialists who may sometimes violate laws or ethical standards without malicious intent while not falling under black hat hacker grouping."Between ethical and unethical SEO tactics, there is a range of practises that, while riskier than doing everything at once, are less dangerous conception, it stands a lower chance of penalization from Google than white or black-hat techniques.
We shall now discuss some methods used for gray-hat SEO like we did in the above posts!
- Social bookmarking
- Minor website updates.
- Article spinning
- Negative SEO
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking refers to adding and sharing bookmarks of web documents online; this practice can be done legally using various social bookmarking and social media websites.
However, excessive sharing could pose risks of becoming a black hat and becoming penalized by law enforcement authorities.
Small Website Updates
Although these updates fall within white hat SEO techniques, because no tangible gains are gained, theyre usually classified as gray hat techniques.
Still, minor updates do work sometimes since Google prefers websites that make frequent updates; Google will regularly visit them and index the changes like font size changes or background colors being altered by these minor updates - these techniques have yet to be heavily verified but may help the website secure better search ranking results.
Article Spinning
In essence, article spinning refers to writing similar-sounding content without copying directly, instead of just copying what they see verbatim from one webpage into the next - an activity that obliterates the uniqueness factor and decreases uniqueness on websites.
Since Google released the Panda update, the risk associated with article spinning has substantially increased.
Negative SEO
Negative Search Engine Optimisation refers to any technique by which one attempts to harm their competitors rankings by turning off links to them and giving no-follow tags; this decreases their ranking, giving your keyword dominance over that keyword and decreasing competition from them.
While doing this may risk black hat tactics being applied back against you from competing businesses attempting to do something similar (and vice versa), it doesnt preclude their ability from doing the same against themselves!
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Conclusion
From this blog, we have seen most of the steps that help cover all three hats of SEO.
Ideally, this would have provided readers with a comprehensive knowledge base of SEO Company to optimize your website in terms of all three caps; other forms, such as ON page SEO and OFF page.
