Why White Hat SEO is Better than Black Hat SEO

Search engine optimization is critical to getting found online. Building organic SEO requires building a strategy that takes time. Some people may try to cut corners to speed up the process, but that comes at a great risk of getting caught by search engines and black-listed. They penalize you for it because they consider this method unethical. You may even get banned from the search engine and de-indexed as a consequence.

How Black Hat SEO Works

This strategy uses tactics to give search engines what they want to gain higher rankings in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Some of these tactics include:

• Keyword stuffing. This means including keywords randomly added to the content that don’t add value or are unrelated. These keywords are intended to catch the readers’ eye but when they read the article, it has nothing to do with the keywords. Search engines crawl your content and may catch this.
• Doorway pages. These are pages that also have keywords randomly added to get them found by search engines. When a user clicks on the links to these pages, he is redirected to another page that is unrelated to the original one.
• Content spamming. This is content that is not created with the intention of serving your audience. If it’s not saying anything new or structurally distinct from what has already been published, it’s considered spam. It can be in the form of web copy, blogs or other publications.
• Hidden links or text. This is a sneaky way of inserting invisible links or keywords into a site for search engines to rank the website higher in SERPs. For example, if they are added as white text to a white background, search engines will see them, but not the human eye.

White Hat SEO for Better Long-Term Results

Yes, it takes longer to achieve the results you’re looking for when you use White Hat SEO tactics, but it’s worth it in the long run. You won’t risk being caught and banned by search engines. Your content will be valuable and directed toward your target audience, so the leads you get will be genuine ones that you can actually use.

White Hat SEO tactics increase traffic to your website by using the following strategies:

• Keyword research and analysis. Unlike the keyword stuffing techniques in Black Hat SEO, considerable time and effort are expended in choosing keywords that are relevant and appropriate for your product or service. It can take time to determine which ones are better and more rewarding.
• Quality and Relevant Content. Creating blogs, articles, social media posts and other forms of content that is interesting to target customers will help generate the traffic you want. Consistently producing great content will increase sharing and build trust.
• Link building. Including backlinks from relevant sites to your site proves to search engines that your content is good and interesting enough for others to share. in some cases, you may wand to engage top quality link building companies. Include internal links also within your site for the same reason.
• Meta tags. Meta tags and descriptions should be directed toward humans, not search engines. These appear as a one or two line summary of the content below the listings. For example, searching for “What is a meta description?” produces the following results.

A Successful SEO Strategy Requires Patience

If you’re eager to get your site in the top of the listings quickly, you may be tempted to try to trick the search engines with Black Hat SEO. But do you really want to take the risk of getting banned?

Instead, using White Hat SEO strategies will build trust and validity in the eyes of search engines and your target audience. You’ll appear as a quality source for great content and the leads you generate will be the ones you want.

St. Louis SEO for Growth Can Help You Grow!

St. Louis SEO for Growth has the expertise and resources to help you develop a long-term SEO strategy to get you found online. We can help you establish an online presence that drives the right traffic to your website and generates leads.

Get your free SEO Report Card to learn how your business stands today and how to improve your rankings in the future.