Whether you’re creating a website for fun or for business, discovering that search engines don’t recognize it can be frustrating. If a search engine does not display your website on their results pages, there is a good chance that no one will visit your site. This is especially true nowadays, as the days of simply typing the website’s URL into the address bar are long gone.
When people are looking for a specific service or product, they will begin their search at search engines such as Google. In order for your website to receive traffic, it must rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs). Fortunately, you or your company can accomplish this feat through various search engine optimization (SEO) practices techniques.
SEO White Hat vs. SEO Black Hat
Before implementing any SEO strategy, keep in mind that not all SEO techniques are legal and ethical. Google’s guidelines are constantly being updated. As a result, webmasters will avoid using unethical SEO strategies, dubbed “black hat SEO” by many in the industry. There are numerous black hat SEO tactics, ranging from spamming a website’s comment section to spinning and stuffing keywords throughout your content, all with the goal of increasing a website’s ranking. This ranking, however, does not last long in the business. It can frequently damage your company’s reputation.
On the other hand, there are SEO practices that do not give one website an unfair advantage over another. White hat SEO is a term used by many experts to describe these practices. Instead, it ensures that the playing field is level, making competition for placement on the first pages of a SERP fair for all.
Essentially, white hat SEO focuses on improving one’s website for the sake of a human audience rather than deceiving search engine algorithms. As a result, white hat SEO practices always keep the users in mind. Black hat SEO, on the other hand, focuses on fooling Google’s algorithm.
Why Should You Use White Hat SEO?
In essence, if you employ black hat SEO techniques, Google and other search engines will penalise your website. As previously stated, because potential visitors typically use search engines before landing on any website, being banned from any search engine will result in a significant drop in your web traffic. This effect results in a loss of profit for your company.
Furthermore, there is no guarantee that Google will re-list your website after you have been banned. A lifetime ban from Google for simply not using white hat SEO will have far-reaching consequences for your brand. So, if you’re not an SEO expert and want to rank well in search engines, it’s best to delegate the task to professionals like Digital Sisco.
White Hat SEO Methods for Increasing Organic Traffic
Now that you understand the distinction between black hat and white hat SEO and why you should always use the latter, it’s time to learn about some techniques that will increase traffic to your site in 2022. As previously stated, because Google regularly updates its guidelines, what worked last year may no longer produce the same results this time. Here are the top white hat SEO techniques for driving more organic traffic to your website for your convenience:
Design and navigation are excellent.
When ranking a website, Google considers a variety of factors and algorithms, one of which is the bounce rate of your website. When users leave your website quickly, you have a high bounce rate. Users who leave your website quickly may do so as a result of poor navigation and design. If you don’t want a high bounce rate, make sure your website has a good design and easy-to-use navigation. Users will stay on your website longer as a result, lowering your bounce rate.
Furthermore, the color contrast ratio is an important factor that will contribute to the design of your website. A good contrast ratio makes your website easier to read, which improves user experience (UX). Also, make sure that your color schemes are consistent across all of your promotions and advertisements. Customers will associate your colors with your brand this way. Fortunately, there are already a plethora of tools available on the internet that can assist or test the color contrast ratio of your website.
Create a Mobile-Friendly Website
Several articles have already demonstrated that the number of mobile users has significantly increased. There will be approximately 6 million mobile internet users in 2020, up from 3.7 million in 2016. Google has prioritized the mobile-first indexing system based solely on this figure. This means that when it comes to SEO, you should focus on mobile-first. (3)
To begin, make sure that your new or updated web design is easily viewable on mobile devices whenever you design your website or hire an expert. Text, images, and content should all load quickly.
The first two techniques are primarily concerned with the user experience of your website. However, that is not the only white hat SEO technique you should concentrate on this year. In fact, you must also ensure that the keywords you select are relevant to your business. When selecting keywords, avoid those with very high difficulty and search volume. If you choose these keywords, it will be difficult to rank against websites that already use them.
If you’re not sure how keyword research works, you should start by looking for a keyword search tool. It will be easier for you to generate potential keywords if you have this tool. Once the tool has generated keywords related to your industry, choose the ones that are most relevant to your industry and plan your content around them. Choose medium-range keywords with a difficulty of 50–70 when it comes to white hat SEO. (3)
Also, keep in mind that keywords are frequently classified as either short-tailed or long-tailed. The former has a very high keyword difficulty, whereas the latter is more focused on the customer and isn’t as difficult as the former.
As a result, the people you intend to target with long-tail keywords have a high likelihood of purchasing your products or services. This means that if you want to gain traffic in a more targeted and specific manner, you should start using long-tail keywords.
Create content that is both linkable and lengthy.
Start creating content with over 1,500 words if you want more organic traffic in 2022. You must also ensure that the content you are creating is link-worthy. But how do you create linkable content?
To begin with, link-worthy content emphasizes the proper use of keywords. Don’t forget to promote your content on your social media channels after you’ve used the right keywords. Keep in mind that articles, blog posts, product pages, and guides are all examples of content that will have a significant impact on your SEO.
Create High-Quality Backlinks
Backlinking is still a foolproof white hat SEO tactic that can drive a large amount of traffic and improve your website’s authority, just as it was in previous years. Many people will regard your content as an authority if you build high-quality backlinks to it. Google will then regard your website as an industry expert, rewarding you by displaying it on its first page.
To make your website valuable, avoid using spammy links and instead focus on high-quality ones. This is especially important now that Google will be analyzing your content and determining the authority of the links you’re putting in. If Google discovers that you are using spammy links, they will penalize you, which will harm the reputation of your brand.
A rich snippet, which appears on a search engine’s page, refers to additional information that will enhance the value of the result. When a searcher sees that a result has a snippet, they already have an idea of what the content is about just by looking at the results, making it more appealing.
Having a rich snippet is shown to have more clicks or click-through rate (CTR), allowing you to have more traffic because it is appealing to them.
Structured data on your website is required to add a rich snippet. Google can then display a snippet. This data or code will instruct Google to extract the relevant data and display it in their SERPs.
It should be noted that rich snippets cannot be used in any type of content. Concentrate on including a rich snippet on the following:
Events
Apps
Products
Businesses and organizations
Recipes
People
Finally, White Hat SEO takes time.
Although rewarding, white hat SEO techniques will not deliver on the promises they make overnight. In fact, it will take at least a month for your website to see any improvement in rankings. Even if it takes some time, you can always take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about other white hat SEO techniques from a variety of sources. Just keep in mind that black hat SEO strategies should be avoided. Essentially, when using white hat SEO, it is necessary to be patient.
