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Posted 13 May 2009 |
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What Hat SEO is the manner of carrying out Search Engine Optimisation
(SEO) techniques out in an ethical manner that follows good practice
guidelines set out by search engines.
How did White Hat SEO come about?
When SEO was fairly new and entirely amateur, people realised there
were ways of manipulating search engine results fairly easily. Soon
though, the likes of Google started making it difficult for
manipulative techniques to work and issued guidelines focusing on
optimising a website solely for the user's benefit.
With these guidelines, people soon began to come around to
optimising a website with the mission of making it an authoritative
resource, and the phrase 'White Hat' became attributed. The basics of
the Webmaster Guidelines from Google state that you shouldn't:
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Deceive users or present different content to search engines
than you display to users |
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Use tricks intended to improve search engine rankings
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Participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's
ranking or PageRank |
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Use unauthorised computer programs to submit pages, check
rankings, etc. |
You can see Google's Webmaster Guidelines in full on
their dedicated page.
Unfortunately, 'Black Hat' SEO
techniques are still used by some. The reality is, White Hat SEO
is a long term process and there are instances where people become
impatient and revert to manipulative Black Hat techniques instead.
This can often still have success in the short term, but companies the
size of the Google will always have the expertise and budget to solve
the problem at some point.
To serve as a warning, car manufacturer BMW and search engine
company Big Mouth Media were completely removed from Google's listing
for using Black Hat techniques.
Why is White Hat SEO better?
Black Hat SEO is a narrow minded look at online marketing because
it purely focuses on getting a good search engine ranking. People who
use these manipulative techniques forget the important factor that if
the website doesn't deliver, the user won't buy from them. What point
is there having a sales website if it doesn't sell?
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Whenever
implementing a technique, ask yourself: "Does this help my users?
Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?" |
What are White Hat SEO techniques?
The key to White Hat SEO is to provide contextual content related
to your services. Don't mix your message; if you sell coats, don't
talk about jackets! Keeping continuity like this will save a lot of
time.
By creating new content regularly you will eventually attract
links from others within your market. This will turn your site into an
authoritative resource for that subject matter, giving you a deserved
good position within search engine results for related keyword
phrases.
In order to rank well in search engines, you should seek to:
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Create regular, fresh, topical
content. |
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Make content easy to share to
generate backlinks. |
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Have continuity with content,
services and meta tags. |
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Make it easy for your site to be
indexed (internal linking) |
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Keep your Sitemap updated and
submit to search engines |
As with most things in life, the good way isn't necessarily the
easy way! The amount of time a business needs to spend on SEO in order
to get results is a full time job, which is why companies like ours
exists. It's also why we always suggest SEO being part of your
online marketing campaign, not the whole of it. Don't ever expect fast
results unless your website is already ranks well.
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