What are White Hat & Black Hat SEO Techniques?

Advertising one’s products has become really competitive as both the techniques of advertising and the products to advertise are constantly on the rise. There are several similar products to give competition, so you always have to think outside the box.?

Since digitalization, SEO has emerged as one of the most sought-after techniques of advertising. Basically, SEO or search engine optimization helps in optimizing websites to increase their reach in search engines. If websites have better ranking, they will attract more attention and hence help advertise themselves better.?

When we talk about SEO techniques, there are two commonly used ones: white-hat SEO and black hat SEO. These are considered among the best SEO practices and digital skills expert Michelle Thomas from Scanteam will discuss this in this article regarding the same.

White hat SEO

When we talk about white hat SEO, we are talking about all the good SEO practices that will help you achieve the best results. You will have to do everything by the rules and regulations. This can sometimes cause delays in yielding the results you want but it's the right way to do things.

Black hat SEO

You can say it is the antonym of white hat SEO. When following black hat SEO, you don’t follow certain rules. You just do things to improve your SEO rankings in a shorter span of time. But it isn’t highly recommended.?

Since black SEO techniques include adding irrelevant keywords, etc., to make the page visible, it can easily misguide people. This is wasteful for many and leads to the reporting of such sites.

No matter what technique you are using for advertising your website, the expected end result is the same. You want your website’s ranking to improve so that its quality and quantity improve on search engine traffic.In this article, we’ll understand how to use various white hat SEO and black hat SEO techniques:

Best white hat SEO techniques to follow:

Quality content

We are often asked to focus on the quality of something rather than its quantity. The reason is, that the better the quality of content shared by you, the easier it is for search engines to rank you better, without working too hard on it.

Quite a lot of content is flowing around. The only way to ensure you stay on top is to make it better - quality-wise. So, you should always try to make your website content rich and the ranking will increase on its own accord.

Relevant keywords

When you google something, you don’t type everything. You pick a few words and search, hoping something relatable will crop up. That is why keywords play a major role in SEO. It is one of the best SEO practices in white hat SEO.

However, while inserting relevant keywords, make sure to use them optimally. Overuse of keywords can distort the quality of the website. It should be placed subtly so that it appears on search engines but shouldn’t be overused in every other line. The right use of keywords will help you appear in most search engines with ease.

Page titles and metadata with keywords

One may not pay attention to using keywords in a page's title but it surely has helped many in getting good results. By including keywords in the title itself, search engines easily recognize the page and include it when the keywords are searched.

Metadata refers to the brief description of data of a website but not quite the exact content. It gives you an overview of what to expect once you land on that particular website. By including keywords in metadata, you are one step closer to achieving a good ranking of your website on search engine traffic.

Authoritative inbound links

Inbound links are considered one of the most important elements of SEO. It helps people land on your page from other websites. They are also referred to as backlinks. If used properly, they help in getting more traffic than other techniques combined.

However, it also means collaborating with other websites and spending money on the same. While it can sometimes be a bit expensive, it is worth investing your time and money into as it yields the best possible results. This is also called as off-site SEO.

Easy navigation

No one likes spending hours trying to figure out a website. The easier a website is to navigate through and understand, the better it will rank on search engines. A complicated structure only confuses people and goes against the principle of SEO.

You should always focus on making your website easy to go through without getting lost in its options and functions. This will help in getting visitors often and increase your rank on search engines. The conversion rate will automatically increase as a result. After all, that's all we want with a good SEO technique.

Fast loading pages

Response time is a major game changer for people using certain websites. If a website is taking ages to load , it’ll rank lower as people will be less likely to visit it.?

While trying to make your website data-rich, don’t forget to make it easier to load. If necessary, don’t include heavy images or anything that can slow it down for you. The site should always respond quickly to a visitor as that’ll encourage them to come more often.?

On-site SEO

Making your website presentable and arranging things in a specific manner can help in increasing search visibility. This is known as on-site SEO. It is quite an effective way of practising white-hat SEO.

All you need to do is align a few elements on the page such as the headings, content or the internal links with keywords.?

These were a few of the white hat SEO techniques used by SEO experts to ensure the smooth running of pages as well as getting more conversions out of them. However, this knowledge isn't enough to ensure that you don’t get into grey hat SEO, a line just above black hat SEO.?

So, let’s take a look at black hat SEO techniques to know what not to do while using SEO:

Excessive keywords

Too much of a good thing can easily be poison. It is the same with keywords. While they help you optimise your web pages, if you use them in huge amounts, they won’t yield good results.

So, while placing keywords, make sure to place only a fair few. Even they should be without much repetition or else it takes away the appeal of the people. So, even if a person lands on it due to keywords, he might not find it to his taste.?

Meta Keyword Stuffing

The brief description gives a good insight into one’s website. So, it shouldn’t contain any extra keywords that might tarnish its image. Use keywords only once or twice.?

Algorithms are becoming better and smarter by the minute. So, if you add anything excessive or extra that doesn’t provide any new information, it will backpaddle for you and won’t give you the results you want.?

Link Farming

Inbound links are helpful in getting more visitors. However, it should be generated with the help of websites that are related to your products or services as that will not only be helpful to you but also the visitor.

By placing links on several unrelated websites to gain more visitors, you will only end up losing them. Often, such links aren’t noticed by these visitors and what’s worse, they can even report the website for wasting their time. So, use these backlinks sensibly for your website to get the best out of it.

Content cloaking

Ever landed on a page that promised certain content but it wasn’t there? That’s what content cloaking is. Search engines apparently see information which isn’t actually there on the website. People do so to increase their search results.

However, it is spamming. And if anything, instead of increasing one’s search results, it only results in tarnishing the reputation of their website. It is considered bait and something that will harm your website's ranking in the long run.

Posting bad content

When you are posting on your website, you should keep a few things in mind. It should always provide some information that a person is seeking. It should be valuable and required.?

Posting things just for the sake of posting isn’t appealing. Also, copying things from other websites just to have some content to post also comes under bad content and should be avoided at all costs.?

Blog comment spamming

One of the most common techniques to increase the value of a blog is by having several people comment on its posts. Giving reviews is quite an effective technique but not always helpful.

Unnecessary spamming when the content isn't that good will only decrease its value. The comments should be honest and relevant to the blog.?

Wrapping it up

SEO has become one of the most important elements of advertising one’s page. People hire specialists such as SEO experts or SEO analysts just to make sure their website is properly optimized and is doing well on search engine results.

By using white hat SEO the right way, you can actually make quite some difference. It will not only help you in increasing your page’s visibility but also its content quality. In the meantime, keep an eye out for black hat SEO techniques.

While they may have certain appeal due to faster results, it's not fruitful in the long run. So how do you boost SEO without doing anything that falls under grey or even black SEO? By following white hat SEO techniques, obviously! Listed below are a few of the most effective ways to get the best out of SEO:

Building quality inbound links

Having a relevant website appreciate your content by linking it to their website is a sure-shot way of improving one’s website. Inbound links are difficult to develop and can be expensive too. It depends on how you develop it. But nevertheless, it ultimately helps in boosting SEO, which is what our goal is.

Focus on originality

In this digital world where everyone is posting things all the time, having something original really pays off. So, the more you focus on creating original and valuable content, the better it will be for your website.

People are hungry for original content as they are bored with seeing the same thing being recreated several times. So, even if you are unable to create some good inbound links, you can always rely on content.?

Do keyword analysis

We cannot undermine the importance of keywords in advertising. Even in the traditional form of advertising, using the right words was important. So, it's always a good idea to invest some time in researching keywords to use.?

Look up the most used keywords and place them appropriately on your website. It shouldn’t be overdone, just the right amount is needed. You can use it in the site's title, metadata and somewhere in your content on the website.

Keep your website organized

Nothing appeals to our eyes more than seeing a well-organized website. Things that make our lives a bit easier are always preferred over things that annoy us. So, easy navigation and eye-catching titles on websites is always a good idea.

While organizing your website, make sure you are placing the header, images, etc., in the right size and resolution. These are small things but matter a lot in terms of boosting SEO.