The 5 Best White Hat SEO Techniques
By Don Nicholas • 03/09/2011
How to avoid black hat SEO practices while embracing a respectable standard of journalism
There’s a growing trend where media reporters are investigating why certain websites rank so well.
If foul play is afoot, these reporters expose the black hat SEO practices and the offending websites typically feel the consequences. Google has penalized JC Penney, Overstock and, most recently, Demand Media for using black hat SEO practices.
Overstock and JC Penney were guilty of using robots designed to send links back to their website. Demand Media has been supplying the web with an excess of low-quality content that receives very few inbound links.
To avoid a similar fate, online publishers must avoid creating SEO posts just for search engines. Instead, everything we write and publish online has to be high-quality content.
The constant conundrum we experience as publishers is that it’s imperative to write and publish frequently enough to hold a significant position within your market.
Online publishers can take a number of fundamental actions to get more traffic to their website. These include increasing post frequency, promoting all articles through social networking, adding more pages to your site and gaining more inbound links than the competition.
Quality trumps quantity
Demand Media would argue that they haven’t engaged in black hat practices, yet Google is looking into them. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, has said over 500 changes have been made to the Google algorithm in the last 12 months. Cutts is aggressively tweaking the algorithm as the last set of changes was designed to differentiate high-quality content from non-quality content.
Currently, bloggers and other web authors are busy generating content. Whether you have a message to share, a need to make a living, or both, don’t abandon the scope of high-quality content.
What publishers and bloggers need to do
There’s a danger that publishers and audience development managers face… if we don’t talk to our staff about proper white hat SEO practices, they might end up going down the wrong path. These tips will help:
White Hat SEO Practice #1: Publishers need to refrain from sending the message of tricking search engines to their editors.
White Hat SEO Practice #2: Do not encourage bloggers to use a frequency that doesn’t allow them to add value to the content.
White Hat SEO Practice #3: As a blogger, ask yourself this question everyday, and after every time you publish an article: “Did I help my readers understand something better than before?”
White Hat SEO Practice #4: Maintain a standard of journalism by creating posts with added value that are relevant to your audience. Demand Media typically fails to add value in their articles.
White Hat SEO Practice #5: Put information in context that original sources fail to do.
Companies like Interweave, Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and VidaySalud.com make it clear that they are blogging about the media by reacting to stories in real time. They focus on adding value to their content to retain as many audience members as possible.
Above all else, never do anything purely for search engines. This is how companies cross the fine line between black hat SEO and legitimate, white hat SEO practices.
At the Mequoda Summit West 2011 we will teach you how to add value to your content while addressing your post frequency. You will learn to blog properly by utilizing a Google Visibility Report and 28 examples of well-crafted blog posts that truly add value for your audience.
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Posted in Audience Development Strategy
March 9th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
It’s interesting, but my attitude about SEO has changed… I used to over-think it, trying to come up with the “right” number of times to use key words and phrases. Now I just encourage our writers to focus on bringing something of value to our users’ lives in every single post. I then look to see if I can improve on the title to make it both catchier and stickier. It seems to be working. Google just upped our page rank from a 4 to a 5 and traffic went from 280,000 to 500,000 visits and from 800,000 to 1.5 million pageviews a month.
March 10th, 2011 at 9:53 am
Perhaps that is the attitude that best defines white hat seo…
Thanks,
Don
March 10th, 2011 at 10:59 am
Bringing value to users’ lives with great content helps bridge the gap between search engines and journalists.
I feel many journalists will be pleased with this new focus of Google’s.
Carl – It’s great to hear that your approach to content has been working so well.
March 10th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
And for more on black hat and white hat seo, check out this post:
http://www.pushon.co.uk/articles/top-5-white-hat-and-black-hat-search-optimisation-techniques/
Both top 5 lists are spot on.
Don
March 11th, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Great article Don!
Relevant, SEO’d headers that lead to blogs infused with quality content is the key to our strategy. Deterring from that approach would risk putting our reputation at risk—something we are not willing to compromise.
Danielle Werbick
Online Director
Interweave
March 23rd, 2011 at 4:57 pm
It’s too bad organizations feel the need to cheat. It’s hard to believe that in the end the folks at google won’t be able to tell the good guys from the bad guys and make sure that the best content really comes up on page 1.
SEO should just be about making sure the right content gets found.
March 28th, 2011 at 11:57 am
Thanks for your comment.
I agree with you that SEO should be about making sure the right content gets found. It seems that Google is constantly making adjustments to their algorithm so that they can weed out low-quality content and place high-quality content higher in search results. The recent Panda update from late February was the most recent example of this.
Best,
Chris
April 1st, 2011 at 9:40 am
i agree with you that SEO is too good.
tell me whats the advance
April 1st, 2011 at 9:41 am
agree with you that SEO is too good.
tell me whats the advance
April 1st, 2011 at 9:46 am
it is very useful of users……
whats the different of balckhat and white hat….
http://www.3gpcafe.com/.
June 7th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
White Hat is a Legal SEO Strategy, refers to the usage of SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on Increase human audience or Traffic on your website.
Black Hat SEO is bad SEO techniques which are used to obtain a higher search engine ranking. These techniques are regarded as being both illegal and unethical.
June 15th, 2011 at 11:55 am
Thanks for the comment H.I.S. All reputable publishers should focus on white hat SEO, not only to remain reputable, but to also avoid any negative repercussions from search engines.
-Chris
August 16th, 2011 at 11:43 am
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September 27th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Hi there, I discovered your site via Google whilst searching for a related matter, your site got here up, it seems to be great. I’ve bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.
October 28th, 2011 at 9:01 pm
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Cheers!
December 5th, 2011 at 10:29 pm
Hi there, first of all I want to say congrats to your blog, it’s easily accessible and thanks for sharing those techniques with us. After visiting many blogs today, it came to my attention this one http://www.maurisource.com/blog/white-hat-secret-seo-method-naturally-increase-serps/ it gave me a great understanding of white hat seo and I would consider to anyone willing to learn more on this topic. Cheers.
-John
January 12th, 2012 at 2:35 pm
nice techniques, i m going to implement some on my website
March 24th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
nice techniques
April 24th, 2012 at 9:46 am
But it all makes sense – Content first, search engine second. The future of S.E.O in my opition will depend on who keeps visitors longest on their website. It will not be enough to get them there but more to keep them longer, ie. Quality content.
May 10th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Hi Eugene,
I absolutely agree. Audience engagement is something that search engines like Google will be looking for more in the future.
July 22nd, 2012 at 11:06 pm
technique is amazing, I will try to apply it on my blog..
Thank’s..
July 22nd, 2012 at 11:07 pm
Great techniques Chris.. i want implement to my blog..
August 19th, 2012 at 11:46 am
Isn’t white hat SEO in googles true definition something web masters have to just sit back and let the internet community do for them? According to them, posting a single backlink to your site is considered black hat. It is tough to sit back and hope others backlink to you, not to mention the time it takes to effect your SERPs.
October 21st, 2012 at 5:29 pm
Hi Thanks for the SEO advice it will help me on building my rankings for my cleaning services website
November 25th, 2012 at 4:06 am
White hat technique works but it will take some days, but many don’t understand and they use blackhat and ruined their site/blog.
January 29th, 2013 at 8:42 pm
Your information are really valuable.. thanks for sharing…
March 14th, 2013 at 8:22 pm
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March 29th, 2013 at 6:57 am
I am newbie searching about howto I can utilized various resource to enhance the RANK of my Website and to improve my knowledge about SEO. White HAT SEO is more generic and fruitful than other SEO techniques. I have improved my knowledge about White hat SEO.
Many Many Thanks
Rakesh Kumar
April 8th, 2013 at 4:01 pm
White Hat SEO pretty much means, do no SEO.
Just make your site and write about its unique niche.
Presto.
April 8th, 2013 at 4:02 pm
I agree with Corey – this is Googles directive with their web crawlers.
April 8th, 2013 at 7:32 pm
Corey & Frank, just remember that Google still ASKS you to use keywords in order to help them define your content. They aren’t anti-optimization, they’re anti-spam. If you’re writing great, useful content, you’re doing readers a favor by optimizing them so that more people can read them days, months, and years later when they find them in search.
April 19th, 2013 at 8:24 am
its quite disappointing to see my post disappear from google as submit it to google direcrories. its frustrating whenever i write a very good post and i dont get the credits.