How To Do White Hat SEO: Best Techniques, Tactics and Methods

The Google algorithm incorporates hundreds, if not thousands, of signals when determining where pages rank for a search. Knowing which factors carry the most weight and optimizing accordingly can be the difference between success and failure.

White-Hat vs. Black-Hat SEO vs.

At its core, all SEO has the same aim: to improve a website’s standing in the search engines.

But SEOs, for the most part, are divided into two distinct camps: white-hats and black-hats.

Here’s an overview of the differences between the two:

What is White-Hat SEO?

White-hat SEO refers to the usage of Google-approved website optimization strategies, techniques, and tactics. The focus here is on providing users with the best search engine results. I.e., you prioritize the user over anything else.

As a white-hat, you will generally:

• Play by Google’s rules (they’re pretty clear about these in their guidelines);
• Optimise for humans not search engines;
• Create quality content that people actively want to read and share;
• Create a website that stands out from others in your niche (for the right reasons!)

On the flipside, there is black-hat SEO. This is considered to be the ‘opposite’ of white-hat SEO.

What is Black-Hat SEO?

Black-hat SEO refers to the use of strategies, techniques, and tactics that do not necessarily follow Google’s guidelines—in fact, they’re sometimes even plain unethical. But they still give you the desired result (i.e., rankings).

Black-hat mentality focuses on finding and exploiting algorithmic loopholes.

Many of these loopholes don’t hurt anyone, except your competitors. But some of them are incredibly unethical, such as hacking into websites to inject backlinks. (More on this later.)

As a black-hat, you may:

• Break (or at least ‘bend’) Google’s guidelines;
• Focus on search engines over users;
• Attempt to deceive users with things like cloaking and doorway pages;
• Hack into peoples’ websites.

Here at Ahrefs, we don’t want to take the moral high ground and talk about the ethical implications of doing black-hat SEO. That would likely spark an unnecessary debate, which isn’t our intention.

But, we do consider black-hat SEO to be very risky.

That’s why we’ve never endorsed (and never will endorse) the use of any black-hat tactics on the Ahrefs blog. We advocate going the white-hat route, although a pinch of “grey-hat” probably won’t hurt.

So, the goal of this article is to show you why white-hat SEO tactics are often an objectively better choice than their black-hat counterparts. (Unless the industry you’re in dictates otherwise, of course.)

But first, you may be wondering, is the white-hat route right for you?

What is Grey Hat SEO?

It is what its name suggests. It’s somewhere in the middle of white and black and if used by a professional, can still be effective. However, it’s safe to say that taking a grey hat approach is playing with fire if you’re not 100% sure of what you’re doing and since we’re predominantly content-led now, it’s not something I would recommend.

Grey hat consists of techniques such as:

• Cloaking
• Purchasing old domains
• Duplicate content
• Link buying
• Social media automation and purchasing followers

Is white-hat SEO ALWAYS the best choice?

It depends on your goals (and your niche).

If your goal is to build a long-term brand, then white-hat is the way to go.

But if you’re in a spammy niche like “payday loans,” white-hat probably isn’t going to cut it.

Black/grey-hat SEO dominates some niches (e.g., “payday loans”). And while we’re advocates of a white-hat approach, the truth is that there’s little/no chance of winning when playing “by the rules” in such industries.

Sure; you can start out with the best of intentions (i.e., white-hat) in these kinds of niches. But as soon as you start seeing success, competitors will likely drag you back into black-hat SEO territory.

But if you’re running a legit project in a legit industry (which we believe most of our readers are), you have an excellent chance of winning without using risky black-hat tactics.

For example, take Ahrefs:

There are tons of juicy keywords (e.g. “backlink checker”) that we could rank for and grow our MRR by millions of dollars.

And we could likely do that with just a few simple black-hat tactics.

But we can’t afford to put our entire business on the line by using such tactics. It just isn’t worth the risk.

So we choose only to use white-hat tactics (many of which we talk about below). And it works.

Here’s the organic traffic for our blog for this January vs. last January:

That’s almost 50% growth in one year.

And we didn’t use any black-hat strategies to achieve this.

Here’s why this may be happening (in our opinion):

• Black-hat SEO is more expensive than ever before: Google is much smarter than it used to be; blatantly spammy, low-cost tactics—e.g., keyword stuffing—are no longer effective. So as a black-hat, your only option is to turn to more expensive tactics, such as building a PBN. And when you take into account the costs of doing this correctly (i.e., buying many expired domains, dedicated hosting, private whois, etc.), black-hat SEO can get real expensive real quick.
• Black-hat SEO is VERY risky: Nobody wants a Google penalty. But if you go down the black-hat route, there’s a decent chance you’ll get one. It, therefore, seems the obvious (and only) choice to many, ourselves included.
• Black-hat SEO requires some level of “technical knowledge”: If you go down the black-hat route, you won’t get too far unless you have a profound and detailed understanding of how the web works and how you can exploit that knowledge to your advantage. Most of this knowledge is not shared publicly, which means that many people don’t see black-hat SEO as a viable option.

Here are some of the steps you should follow to make sure your SEO methods are strictly white hat.

Best White Hat SEO Techniques

1. Quality content written for the benefit of the reader, not the search engine crawler, is the most crucial element of modern day SEO. It is the best way to be rewarded by search engines and how they rank your site or blog. Always remember that quality content is king!
2. Content-relevant keywords based on disciplined research around page content is mandatory. Also, pay attention to keyword usage. Stick to one primary keyword and 2 or 3 secondary/supporting keywords.
3. Keyword-rich page titles and metadata are also mandatory. It’s easy to overlook or underestimate these areas, but optimization is low-hanging fruit for most sites.
4. Lean code and semantically structured markup language, including the use of keyword-rich heading elements on your pages, aid search engines in finding what they’re looking for when crawling your site.
5. Authoritative inbound links that are gained organically versus paid links have become one of the most important elements in your SEO efforts. Attaining authoritative inbound links takes time and dedication, but the tremendous impact on how you rank in SERPs and increased overall site traffic make it well worth the effort.
6. Simple website navigation generally boosts where your site places in organic search rankings. It also helps visitors find what they need without getting frustrated, which is a win for potential conversions.
7. Fast page loading times is a necessity because, like simple navigation or mobile optimization, responsive sites don’t frustrate visitors or encourage bounce. From an SEO standpoint, site speed is a search engine ranking signal. Sites that are slow in responding to visitor requests for whatever reason (large images, image carousels, etc.) generally rank lower in SERPs because the user experience is jeopardized. Be mindful of functionality and features and how they impact load times.

8. Use HTTPS. Your domain server should be HTTPS not HTTP. This makes a lot of difference because HTTPS servers contain higher level firewall protection as compared to HTTP. If anyone is buying something from your website and if they make payment through the online gateway, then its highly recommendable to use HTTPS servers.

9. Mobile is Everything. You should always focus on building a mobile-friendly website. Now-a-days, users mostly browse through mobile phone and therefore it is important that your web page should have mobile-friendly versions and built accordingly.

Being familiar with white hat SEO isn’t enough to keep you from inadvertently crossing into an SEO grey area or, worse, do something that violates search engine guidelines — black hat SEO territory.

Conclusion

Definitely! Implementing White Hat SEO practices is the best way to create an ethical, sustainably successful website and business. SEO can help or hinder your site success, depending on the hat that you choose to wear. White hat SEO is a powerhouse, delivering relevant content, clicks, higher visibility, more conversion opportunities, and other business builders. Black hat SEO, on the other hand, is fraught with peril — potential fines, site shutdowns, bounces, a dissatisfying user experience, and a loss of conversion opportunities. Be sure you’re educated about which tactics are white and black so you choose the right ones.

Failure to engage only in White Hat SEO practices can get your site banned from Google and other search engines.

As the number one search engine, Google is visited by billions of people per day, and each visit presents the potential for your site to be discovered by a new user.

Google is an undeniably powerful source of traffic to your website, and being banned can result in a drastic drop in website traffic and even business. Consider all the work that goes into your website and then think about what it would be like to be banned from the internet’s most commonly used search engine. What’s worse, once you’re banned from Google, there is no guarantee that they will ever re-list you. A lifetime ban from Google would have tremendous consequences.

The worst part is once you get banned by the Google, the chances are that Google might never re-list your website again.

This kind of lifetime ban from the top search engine can have tremendous negative consequences.

So, why should you even risk it?

So, the best option is to implement white hat SEO techniques and reap the benefits it offers.

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