White Hat SEO is a proven strategy to get outstanding search results over time
When it comes to choosing the right SEO strategy for your business, it can seem like a bit of a minefield. SEO is a long term strategy so no business wants to spend months on their SEO to find they’ve lost their rankings at a later date. Since SEO is often changing, any advice you find could be long out of date by the time you read it. Even when you think you’ve got it right Google can quickly change the goal posts, pushing your site back down the search results, or even out of Google altogether. There are many SEO strategies out there. They’re grouped into 3 general categories; white hat SEO, grey hat SEO and black hat SEO.
Do you know what you’re paying for?
How can you guarantee that the SEO techniques you are using, or even paying for are best for your business?
It can be pretty confusing when there are thousands of SEO “gurus” giving contrasting views, taking the wrong advice can have substantial effects on the success of your online marketing.
Many business owners will remember the effects of Google’s Penguin Update, launched April 24, 2012. Penguin penalized sites using so called Black Hat SEO practices which violate Google’s webmaster guidelines.
The update caused long lasting affects for a countless businesses, damaging the search rankings of millions of websites and leading to an uphill climb to gain those rankings back. Sadly since most business owners don’t have the time to keep up with SEO themselves they pay external agencies to manage it for them. In a lot of cases they have no idea what SEO techniques they are actually paying for or that they could be breaking any terms of service.
- So how do you stay safe?
- How do you prevent your site from penalization?
- How can you be sure you are using the best type of SEO for your business?
Never be penalized by the search engines
The best method for long lasting SEO results is to use White Hat SEO. Since this type of SEO follows Google’s guidelines you won’t ever be penalized & in the long run your site will be rewarded.
What is White Hat SEO?
- White hat SEO is ethical – It does not involve anything that could be deemed as an “unfair advantage”
- White hat SEO follows guidelines set by search engines (Not just Google)
- It is not a quick fix
- It is highly favored by search engines
With other types of SEO there’s no guarantee you won’t be penalized. While other types of SEO might promise “quick results” they may be short lived, so if you think you have found a miraculous method that will gain you overnight results, think again.
So what SEO techniques should you avoid?
- Automation of any kind – Automation is strictly prohibited by search engines, for example creating thousands of backlinks to your website, in fact creating or buying links for the purpose of SEO is not favorable by search engines either. They would much rather you gained links to your website naturally, by people choosing to share your website.
- Content just for the sake of content – Almost anyone who knows anything about SEO will tell you that quality content is among the most important factors to help you reach the top spot. But this does not mean creating content “just for the sake of it”. Avoid creating content for the purpose of search engines, especially paying for cheap content writing services or “spun” articles.
- Fake likes/shares – Social media now plays an important role in increasing your search ranking, avoid artificially gaining likes or shares. Google is not stupid!
- Over Optimization – Using a keyword in excess across your site is not a great way of winning a search engines trust. They want you to create a site that provides value to your users, not a site that is simply trying to please search engines.
- Any SEO that promises quick results – White hat SEO is a long term strategy, developing trust with a search engine does not happen overnight & relies upon many factors.
Take a look at some of the other SEO techniques that can do more harm than good.
Search engines like Google want to promote quality brands that grow naturally, not through artificial inflation. The general rule is that if your SEO appears to be natural than you’re on the right track.