What Is The White Hat SEO Process and Why It's Important

What is white hat SEO?

White hat SEO refers to the process of creating content that is in line with the best practices of search engine optimization, to optimize your website for search engines (in particular Google). The practice of white hat SEO aims to ensure that content that you write is the kind that Google would want indexed, and it has become especially important in the field of SEO, as Google is becoming a much more diverse search engine. However, white hat SEO shouldn't be confused with black hat SEO, which refers to the practice of developing link spam. For this reason, black hat SEO should be defined as black hat SEO, and white hat SEO should be done in accordance with the best practices of SEO.

While SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimisation, some people refer to it as The Stealing of Search Engine Optimisation, or as a form of advertising.

Why is white hat SEO important for your business?

White hat SEO is when you focus on making your content valuable and useful to your readers, and you don’t try to game the system by trying to trick search engines into ranking your content higher than it deserves. Sometimes, this content can be somewhat controversial or political.

This might sound like the White House version of SEO. In the United States, the 9 to 5 can be a thankless task, and unless you aim for the stars, you’re likely doomed to work at a desk most of your waking hours. Gillian did a Whiteboard Friday on the topic recently. Ultimately, it's up to you to decide whether breaking that monotonous routine will benefit your business, but keep in mind that this is about doing SEO with everyday product knowledge. You won’t need infinite patience to get your work done. Just take it one step at a time.

What Are Your Goals for White Hat SEO? Here’s where you can pick your exact goals for how you do your SEO. For example, we may not be attempting to buy a bunch of links to our client’s site. Rather, we’re trying to rank their directory listings in Google. Maybe you just need to get your clients to the top of a few top-ranked directories. Or maybe you’re looking to get a few links to the home page. Whatever your goal, here’s how to discern whether or not it’s worth it to use tactics in the gray hat realm.

Build Links to Non-Competing Directories - That’s just common sense!

Build Links to the Home Page of Competitor - That’s not so common sense!

Modify Your Site in Some Way That Makes It More Spammy - Hey! You might need to get rid of the keyword density!

Use Legitimate, Editorial Traffic - You’re probably doing this for a genuine reason such as user experience or brand awareness.

How can you ensure you are using white hat SEO techniques?

The best way to ensure you’re using white hat SEO techniques is to have a certain set of standards by which you abide. You should be focused on building high-quality content that is genuinely useful to your readers. So, you should take care to ensure that your content is well-written, well-researched, and well-sourced. Then, once the content is released, you should try to add keyword-targeted anchor text links to the page.

To set yourself apart from competitors, you can then take the next step by adding your SEO company to directories, participating in industry-specific forums, writing blog posts, offering to moderate blogs, creating and submitting guest posts, undertaking professional services, forming contracts with websites for SEO services, and even offering training to prospective clients or employees.

All of these actions will help you communicate the effect your work has on your target market. Furthermore, using these methods of marketing will help you build more positive associations and will create stronger brand awareness, establishing you as an SEO authority. Prospective customers will then begin to receive your services by email, landing pages on your website, and referring traffic from search engine results.

But which of the above actions should you accomplish? The answer: it depends on your niche and the industry. Here are some great questions to ask yourself.

Specific) Should I be focused on writing articles, guest posts, and other forms of content designed to attract link juice and links?

Niche) Which pages on my website should I focus on getting listed in directories like About.com, Yahoo!, Google, Live Search, and Answers.com? By focusing on content rather than links will ensure that you’re not accidentally vouching for something that isn’t your asset.

Industry) Which articles or guest posts are placed on my site that don’t directly mention the SEO company's name? Making your content about the expertise you offer, it will ensure that it’s highly beneficial to not only your target audience but to the readers of your site as well.