What is White Hat SEO?
submitted by markodonoghue on 30 September 2009
What Hat SEO is the manner of carrying out Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques out in an ethical manner that follows good practice guidelines set out by search engines.
How did White Hat SEO come about?
When SEO was fairly new and entirely amateur, people realised there were ways of manipulating search engine results fairly easily. Soon though, the likes of Google started making it difficult for manipulative techniques to work and issued guidelines focusing on optimising a website solely for the user's benefit.
With these guidelines, people soon began to come around to optimising a website with the mission of making it an authoritative resource, and the phrase 'White Hat' became attributed. The basics of the Webmaster Guidelines from Google state that you shouldn't:
- Deceive users or present different content to search engines than you display to users.
- Use tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
- Participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank.
- Use unauthorised computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc.
You can see Google's Webmaster Guidelines in full on their dedicated page.
Unfortunately, 'Black Hat' SEO techniques are still used by some. The reality is, White Hat SEO is a long term process and there are instances where people become impatient and revert to manipulative Black Hat techniques instead. This can often still have success in the short term, but companies the size of the Google will always have the expertise and budget to solve the problem at some point.
To serve as a warning, car manufacturer BMW and search engine company Big Mouth Media were completely removed from Google's listing for using Black Hat techniques.
Why is White Hat SEO better?
Black Hat SEO is a narrow minded look at online marketing because it purely focuses on getting a good search engine ranking. People who use these manipulative techniques forget the important factor that if the website doesn't deliver, the user won't buy from them. What point is there having a sales website if it doesn't sell?
Whenever implementing a technique, ask yourself: "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
What are White Hat SEO techniques?
The key to White Hat SEO is to provide contextual content related to your services. Don't mix your message; if you sell coats, don't talk about jackets! Keeping continuity like this will save a lot of time.
By creating new content regularly you will eventually attract links from others within your market. This will turn your site into an authoritative resource for that subject matter, giving you a deserved good position within search engine results for related keyword phrases.
In order to rank well in search engines, you should seek to:
- Create regular, fresh, topical content.
- Make content easy to share to generate backlinks.
- Have continuity with content, services and meta tags.
- Make it easy for your site to be indexed (internal linking).
- Keep your Sitemap updated and submit to search engines.
As with most things in life, the good way isn't necessarily the easy way! The amount of time a business needs to spend on SEO in order to get results is a full time job, which is why companies like ours exists. It's also why we always suggest SEO being part of your online marketing campaign, not the whole of it. Don't ever expect fast results unless your website is already ranks well.
Submitted by:
Mark O'Donoghue
Associated Links:
http://www.webtacular.co.uk/articles/what-is-white-hat-seo.htm
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