White Hat SEO: How to do SEO properly

White hat Search engine optimisation is the process of getting your website ranked in google the ethical/legal way. Black hat Search engine optimisation (the opposite of white hat SEO) is using illegal methods to get ranked. By illegal I mean search engines don't appreciate these methods and might punish you if you are caught using them. White hat SEO is a very time-consuming process and is very hard to master, so I hope this article will help you understand white hat SEO.

Why you should use White hat search engine optimisation

So, the first point is that search engines love websites that have put the time and effort into getting their website popular. Secondly, white hat Search engine optimisation will get your website ranking high in the search engines for long periods of time. It may be difficult, it may take a while, but it is defiantly worth it!

White hat Search engine optimisation techniques 

Good content- You have probably heard of the phrase "content is king" before and it is 100% true. Of course, effective marketing and backlink building is a huge part as well, content is the foundation. If you have good content you get returning visitors and more sales. For example, pretend there are 2 websites in the 1st and 2nd page of google. One of the websites has 1 page and 3 paragraphs about air conditioning and the other has 30 pages. Which one do you think is more useful?

Use structural markup- Being able to optimise code on your web pages is essential! Search engines give more weight to your headings. Use h1/h2 to mark your titles so search engines can find your titles easily. Also, consider using googles "data highlighter" to show help google better understand your websites content.To use data highlighter go to google search console- search appearance- data highlighter.

Optimising titles and meta data- As previously mentioned your titles are important because search engines give more weight to them. So it is important that you put your keywords in your titles. Meta data is data that search engines see but users don't. Since this was heavily abused in the past, search engines don't put as much weight on it, however, you still need to optimise your meta description at a minimum, as this is displayed by google as an explanation of your website/webpage.

Keyword use and research- When you create a website, you should base it around keywords. However, this doesn't mean you need to target single word keywords. In fact, it is pretty much the opposite of that.You need to research keywords that are most likely going to be used if the searcher is looking for your product/service. You then need to include the keywords on each of your pages in all of your important meta data. For example in your titles/meta descriptions.

Quality backlinks- Backlinks (also know as inbound links) are links from other websites pointing at your site. For them to give you an SEO boost, they have to be do-follow. Do-follow links allow search engines to follow them, this lets the search engine know that link is there. For a link to be quality it needs to be from a trusted website.

Search engine optimisation may look and sound difficult, but as you get used to it, it becomes a lot easier. If you are new to Search engine optimisation, I recommend you read my article called "an introduction to SEO"

Black Hat SEO: Never use these strategies

In this article, I am going to explain: what black hat Search engine optimisation is, some black hat strategies, why you should never use black hat SEO and a couple other things. Firstly, black hat is an unethical Search engine optimisation strategy. It uses clever tricks to give your website an extra SEO boost! However, black hat Search engine optimisation is extremely bad and it upsets the search engines. The search engines may blacklist your site or give it a lower ranking. In other words, NEVER use black hat SEO.

Why you should never use Black Hat SEO 

As previously mentioned, black hat SEO is unethical SEO. From this, you can probably gather that it is a very risky and bad thing to use. Black Hat SEO is very tempting because of its short term success. However, in the long run using black hat SEO techniques is very risky. That said, this won't put a lot of people off. The following strategies are to be avoided!

Paid Links- Paid links are very risky but quite easy to pull off! Paid links are also hard to track down, however, it is recommended that you build white hat Search engine optimisation links via guest posting, directories etc. Paid links are used a lot because they promise good results. Use paid links with caution!

Comment Spamming- This strategy is very interesting because most black hat Search engine optimisation strategies are useful and this one is not. Almost 100% of links from spam are no-follow and therefore offer no extra SEO juice. This is also very annoying for other users on the site and you will get your site a bad reputation.

Duplicate Content- Not only is this strategy possible copyright, but it is very hard to index duplicate content. It is also extremely hard to get duplicate content to rank as google knows that the content is duplicate. Personally, I don't see the point in this and you might as well put in a bit of extra effort and write your own content. You will make more money and get better rankings.

Article Spinning- This is very similar to duplicate content, but instead of using the actual copied text, you put the article through some software that re-words the article for you. This strategy is getting more popular, as it is easier to pull off. People also re-word their own articles so they can post the same thing twice!

Keyword Stuffing- Stuffing your content full of keywords to the point it becomes illegible. This technique used to be used all the time, but now the search engine can spot this in a few seconds. Making it a very risky and unrewarding technique.

Invisible Text- This technique involves putting text on your web pages that is the same colour as your background. This makes it invisible to the reader. However, search engines will see the text and rank you higher for that keyword. This strategy is very common and therefore, search engine (especially google) will spot it in no time.

Gate-Way Pages- Also know as "bridge pages", these pages are therefore one reason only, to redirect you to another page. Gate way pages are set up to rank high for keywords and when a user clicks on it, they are instantly sent to another website.