The ultimate goal of people working in SEO is increasing the ranking of a website in SERP or search engine result page of Google. There are two common techniques in SEO to achieve this ultimate goal: white SEO and black hat SEO. In this discussion, we will confine our discussion to white hat SEO.
What is white hat SEO
The white hat SEO strategies refer to the SEO techniques that don’t break the terms and conditions of google’s guidelines.
Let me give you an example of white hat SEO. The post that has more backlinks gets more priority when it comes to ranking in SERP than the one that has fewer backlinks. Backlinks mean references by another post of a website other than your website. When you post unique and high-quality content which is one condition of white hat SEO then the other website owners will give reference to your post in their post. It means your post will get backlinks organically. And, this is exactly what google’s algorithm wants.
On the other hand, people engaged in black hat SEO purchase links from other websites to increase the number of backlinks for their site. This is a violation of google’s SEO guidelines and may result in penalizing a website that purchases links instead of publishing quality content.
What are a few important white hat SEO strategies
Post valuable content
People read a post to get information about a product or service. So over 80% of the marketing team use blog posts as a lead generator. Consequently, write content for users looking for information, not for search engines.
Satisfy user Objective
Google and other search engines number one goal is to meet the users demand when they write a search query in their search box. And, that user demand is getting relevant information about a particular matter. Google’s algorithm, for example, gives top priority to a post when it is about giving. ranking in SERP is to a post that provides the most pertinent information about a search query.
To meet user demand, you need to adopt the below strategies
- Know your audience. This is important because if you know your audience you create content and post for them.
- Do some keyword research and write content around those keyphrases so that your target audience can find you.
- Format your content using subheadings because there are skimmers who don’t have enough time to read a complete article.
- Include images and videos where necessary.
Make sure your website supports mobile devices
A report on global website traffic published in 2022 showed that half of the world’s web traffic uses mobile devices to access a website which means if your site is not optimized to make it mobile-friendly, you will lose a significant number of site visitors.
Why white hat SEO is important
White hat SEO means trying to rank a website in SERP by following the SEO rules articulated by Google. If there were no white hat SEO, search result would be chaotic which means people would have to make a lot of random search to find the answer of a search query. White hat SEO is important because these ethical practices are beneficial for three parties: search engines, users, and website owners.
Search engines get benefitted from white hat SEO practices because as these practices facilitate finding something whether it is a product, service or information, millions of people will use them. Users will be benefited as they, will get with much ease what they are looking for. And, finally website owners will get an increase in web traffic to their sites.
