Among various methods of positioning and SEO activities, we can distinguish those that are compliant with Google guidelines (white hat SEO) and those defined as prohibited (black hat SEO).
Every company that offers positioning services certainly knows these techniques. But not everyone who orders positioning of their website is aware of them, although such activities may cause the positioned page to be removed from the Google index.
Therefore, when commissioning the positioning of your own site, you should familiarize yourself with the most important positioning techniques, just in case.
But let’s start with the basics.
Why is it better to be a white hat?
The most successful brands choose white label SEO in their search efforts as the strategy focuses on making your website more visible with high-quality content and organic linking.
These are some ways to make the proverbial white hat:
- High-Quality Content: Delivering valuable content to your target audience is typically worth linking and sharing – two key ingredients in driving traffic. Your content should be original, very relevant to your niche, and contain no spelling or grammar errors.
- Effective Keyword Sourcing and Exploitation Strategy: While keyword stuffing is welcome, keywords still have value when used correctly. Your page should focus on a set of relevant keywords, and you can identify the most effective words by researching keywords or phrases that you think could be used to find your site. Remember that single words are not always the most effective target. Long-tail keywords can be much more specific to a given product or service and thus be more effective in ranking.
- Relevant Inbound Links: Google likes to see links pointing to your website because it’s a vote of confidence. If other sites link with you, it means that you have high-quality content and will therefore be rewarded with higher rankings. However, remember that there are good links and bad links, so you want to make sure any off-site links are relevant and offer similar, high-quality content.
- Internal Links: Linking to content within your own site is a great indicator that your site is worth as long as it does not saturate it. A good rule of thumb is to have two or three links to deeply implemented pages on your site.
- META Description: Your page’s meta description is the first pair of sentences that appear in search results under your page title, and the best descriptions are written for humans – not search engines. In other words, they shouldn’t be overdone with keywords.
Why should you avoid black hat SEO?
Black SEO is a set of activities that are perceived by Google as undesirable during positioning and optimization. Repeated use of prohibited positioning techniques may lead to a penalty being imposed on a given website (it will result in a lower position or even exclusion of the website from the index). Penalties may be imposed either manually or automatically. Of course, it is possible to eliminate them, but it is quite a time-consuming process that requires the removal of the original cause of the ban or filter appearing anyway.
Some people decide to use Black Hat SEO techniques due to the possibility of achieving quick and spectacular results. However, it should be remembered that the price for impatience, in this case, can be high.