White Hat SEO: What It Is and Why It Benefits Your Business

68% of online experiences begin with a search and this makes search engine optimization (SEO) very important to businesses. As such, adopting the proper SEO tactics—aka White Hat SEO—is really crucial for your website.

At its core, White Hat SEO is all about making sure business websites are playing by the rules when it comes to search engine optimization. There are other types of SEO but white hat and black hat SEO strategies are two of the most frequent ways.

Implementing a successful White Hat SEO strategy gives business owners peace of mind knowing their website traffic won’t be penalized for shortcuts that could potentially harm the business in the long run.

By utilizing techniques like keyword research and content optimization through on-page tactics, businesses can significantly boost organic search engine rankings without breaking any Google guidelines. When done properly, White Hat SEO increases visibility to business websites, raises brand recognition, and enhances leads for better conversions—a win for everyone involved!

What is White Hat SEO & Black Hat SEO

White hat SEO refers to tactics that don’t break Google’s rules and follow its best practices when increasing a website’s search engine ranks (SERP).

Black hat SEO, on the other hand, is associated with finding and exploiting Google’s algorithmic flaws and aiming to find “shortcuts” to achieve that.

There is also gray hat SEO but that is less commonly discussed and as the name suggests, it uses an approach that is neither white hat nor black hat SEO techniques and is more on the middle ground where there is a lot left to be interpreted.

The key difference between white hat vs black hat SEO techniques or even gray hat is those other practices may result in a Google penalty.

White Hat SEO

White hats SEO is a word used to describe SEO tactics that adhere to the standards and search engine guidelines established by search engines like Google.

As a result, it involves employing ways to boost a website’s SEO without resorting to manipulating a search engine’s algorithm in any way.

It is then critical to know what is a Google-friendly site.

What is a Google-friendly site? (Guide from Google)

A Google-friendly site is a site that adheres to the guidelines stated by Google and avoids doing things that “cheat” their ways through loopholes.

There are 3 important components to a Google-friendly site:

1. Give visitors the information they’re looking for
2. Make sure that other sites link to yours
3. Make your site easily accessible

There are general design, technical, and quality criteria in their Webmaster Guidelines. Here are some more in-depth tips for each of those points.

1) Give visitors the information they’re looking for

Make your website’s home page a haven for high-quality content. This is the most critical thing to accomplish.

Writing pages that accurately and concisely represent your subject matter is essential to building a useful website and it should satisfy and provide the information the visitors are looking for based on their search query. Your site should include information that users would expect to find on your web pages, so think about what they may type into a search engine and are looking to find on your website. It is important to be writing content for the users and not for search engines like Google.

2) Make sure that other sites link to yours

For crawlers to find your site, they need to be linked to it. Google employs text-matching techniques to produce relevant and important results for the searcher.

Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote from page A for page B.

Votes cast by “important” pages have a greater impact on other “important” pages. Remember that our algorithms can tell the difference between connections that are natural and links that aren’t.

When other websites value your material and believe it will benefit their users, they will naturally connect to your site.

Spammy links are planted on your site to trick search engines into thinking your site has many links pointing to it.

Link schemes and doorway pages, among other things, are discussed in our Webmaster Guidelines. Only naturally occurring links are relevant for your site’s indexing and ranking.

3) Make your site easily accessible

Create a sensible link structure for your website. At a minimum, each page should have a static text link pointing to it. You can explore your site using a text browser like Lynx. Most spiders have a similar perception of your site as Lynx does.

Web crawlers may have difficulty accessing your site because of JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, DHTML, and Macromedia Flash features.

Things to avoid

Fill your page with keyword stuffing, try to “cloak” pages, or put up “crawler-only” pages, and you’ll be penalized by search engines.

Search engines like Google may disregard your site if it contains pages, links, or text you don’t want others to see. Do not feel pressured into purchasing an SEO service.

Certain SEO companies offer to “ensure” a high Google search engine rating or Guaranteed SEO ranking for your website are often associated to be using fraudulent methods to trick search engines into improving your site’s flow and content.

Your domain may be removed from our index if it is associated with one of these misleading services.

Ensure important names, materials, or links aren’t displayed in photos. Using our crawler, we are unable to read text embedded in images. If your page’s core content and keywords cannot be formatted in conventional HTML, use ALT attributes.

Don’t have numerous URLs for the same page. Several websites offer text-only or print-friendly versions of pages that have the same material as their graphics-heavy counterparts.

There are numerous ways to indicate a page’s canonical (preferred) version if it has similar content but may be accessed via different URLs.

White Hat SEO Techniques

Now that we know what makes up a Google-friendly site then what are the most important white hat SEO techniques for it?

Below are the 3 main groups that they can be categorized under:

1.  High-Quality content
2. Authoritative inbound links
3. Great Page Experience on the Website

1) High-Quality Content

The most important aspect of modern-day SEO is about providing high-quality content to your visitors, a key part of On-page SEO. But what exactly does it consist of?

High-quality content should be:

• Useful & Helpful
• Accurate
• & most importantly provide the best answer to the searcher’s search query

In order to achieve that, the following white hat SEO practices should be implemented:

1. Keyword research and including it in the Meta Tags like Page titles and descriptions
2. Match the user intent of the search query
3. Proper formatting for Readability
4. Through Research include links to trusted external sites and internal links to other relevant pages of your website
5. Multimedia-riched content that includes Images, Infographics, Screenshots, GIFs, Memes & Videos

2) Authoritative inbound links

Authoritative inbound links tell Google’s search engine crawler that your website is an authority on a certain subject– so the more inbound links you have from other high-quality, high-authority sites, the better your website can rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Things that make up good authoritative inbound links are the following:

• The website that links to yours is using White hat SEO techniques vs black hat SEO tactics
• Use of proper natural anchor text

In order to achieve more authoritative inbound links, the following White hat SEO practices should be implemented:

• Write Guest Blog Posts on other websites
• Curate and Publish helpful resource lists
• Create compelling infographic images within content or other visual content
• Create a free tool or Sharable templates that your users are looking for
• Write great content that covers a different perspective on topics or data research points that you have
• Reach out to industry leaders and do Expert Roundups on certain topics

3) Great Page Experience on the Website

Page experience is a set of indicators that measures how mobile and desktop users perceive the interaction with a website beyond the pure information value.

It is a set of metrics that assess real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of the page are included in the Core Web Vitals set of metrics Mobile-friendly, HTTPS, and obtrusive interstitial guidelines are also included and achieving a great page experience is one of the keys factors to do well in a search engine results page.

Understand how page experience affects ranking

Even if the user experience on a page is poor, Google will still prefer pages that provide the most useful information.

The quality of the content on a website does not supersede the quality content of the page experience. However, if there are a lot of sites with similar content, page experience might significantly impact search engine rankings.

What are the Page Experience signals?

A good page experience in Google Search is dependent on the following signals.

• Great score on Core Web Vitals: Measure the site speed of the website on the aspect of loading (Largest Contentful Paint – LCP), interactivity (First Input Delay – FID), and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift – CLS).
• Mobile-friendly Website: Use the Mobile-Friendly Test to see if your website is mobile-friendly.
• Secure Site Connection: Verify that the connection to your website is safe.
• No Intrusive Interstitials: Check to see if interstitials are being used in a way that reduces the usability of your content.

Why Businesses should be using White Hat SEO

Businesses big or small should always be using White hat SEO as it brings about a lot of SEO benefits as it can build stronger relationships with the audience and will not tarnish their brand’s reputation.

Below listed are the benefits of using White Hat SEO on the search engine result page:

• No or Lesser fluctuation in Google’s ranking
• Save you Time and money as you do not have to worry about bad practices that might get you into trouble
• Never Tarnish your Reputation or even get your domain banned by search engines
• Steadily Grow in Organic Visibility

Final Thought

White Hat SEO remains a pivotal tool for businesses aiming to amplify their digital footprint. As the online landscape becomes more competitive, adhering to ethical and Google-approved SEO practices ensures not only higher visibility but also a trustworthy brand image. These strategies keep your website in good standing, protecting it from potential search engine penalties and fostering consistent growth in organic traffic.

For businesses unsure of where to begin or how to elevate their current SEO efforts, seeking expert guidance can make all the difference. At Digitrio, we offer comprehensive SEO services tailored to your business needs. Our approach is rooted in White Hat SEO techniques, ensuring your website not only ranks well in search engine results pages (SERPs) but does so with integrity and sustainability.

Take the leap into a brighter digital future. Let us help you navigate the complexities of search engine optimization and unlock the full potential of your online presence.