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While outlining inbound marketing strategy, marketers have to choose between white hat and black hat SEO practices, especially when it is about generating traffic through links. They have to choose the right link-building strategy for elevating current content marketing efforts. A simpler definition might be able to guide you well. White hat tactics will emphasize a strategy that will follow Google’s rules mainly in terms of quality content. Black hat tactics, on the other hand, will take a complete U-turn and will opt for a more aggressive approach, which is not afraid to bend rules.
Each strategy has its share of advantages and disadvantages. So a closer look at each one of those tactics will help in determining the approach you want to use while navigating the wild web!
Table of Contents
Time to learn about black hat SEO:
It is important to start with the negative one first. Marketers practicing black hat SEO are mainly fun-slinging outlaws as they are relying on some of the rule-breaking techniques for higher ranks. There are multiple black hat strategies available and followed by some marketers.
Keywords which are unrelated:
Adding keywords with no connection to content is definitely a red flag for search engines because of its unnatural state. Using keywords which will have nothing to do on how the product proves to be beneficial, is a serious loss. Instead, black hat SEO will use unrelated celebrity to bait the search engines. Well, this is against the Google norm. Read about 7 advanced SEO tools for enhancing your website performance.
Content automation in a comment section or body text:
Everyone can now recognize a bot comment easily. Even though the text comprises of one or two keywords to help URL rank, it is generated randomly and makes no sense to readers and even the search engines.
Focusing on doorway pages:
Primarily defined as fake pages, these doorway options are overloaded with keywords, making them easier to find on search engines. But, once you clicked on it, the keywords will redirect you automatically to separate page, making the entire task rather meaningless.
Cloaking usability:
This is yet another deceptive strategy of black hat SEO, which involves presenting search engines and visitors with different contents completely. The primary goal over here is to deceive search engines so they can display URL, which is not going to be displayed otherwise.
Using invisible links or texts:
Another common technique is to hide links or texts within the content with the aim of improving rankings. There are some ways to do so like including white text on white background, burying link in small characters or even setting the font size to zero.
Always remember that these techniques are referred to as black hat SEO for many reasons. It is quite risky to implement any of the mentioned steps and will be detected by Google police sooner or later. As a result, using back hat SEO technique will penalize or ban your site with lower rank.
Going for the alternative – White hat SEO:
Most of the successful brands nowadays go for White hat SEO techniques for search efforts. This strategy primarily focuses on making the site rather visible through organic link building and quality content. Now you must be wondering about the steps to gain a white hat technique. Well, some proven points will help you big time. Read the ultimate SEO guides for multilingual and multiregional sites.
Using quality content:
Creating some valuable contents for targeting customers is link-worthy and share-worthy. These two points are major ones for driving more traffic towards your online site. Your content needs to be original and quite relevant to your niche. It should not have any grammar or spelling mistakes. Read how to produce quality content on a budget.
Effective search and use of keywords:
Even though keyword stuffing is not welcome at all, but still keywords hold their value correctly. Your site needs to be focused on a set of relevant keywords and you can identify some of the effective ones by researching phrases or keywords you think people might be using to find a site. Remember that single words are always not the most effective ones. There are some long tail keywords available too, which are rather specific to service or product. So they are more effective in gaining higher ranks. A simple SEMRush will offer lists of words known to be effective, depending on what the product is actually used for. Read the most popular SEO tool SEMrush reviews.
Relevant use of backlinks:
Google will always see links leading back to the site as it works as a vote of confidence. It any other site is linking to you, it means you house quality content and will reap reward with higher search ranks. However, ensure that you know the difference between good and bad links. You have to make sure that any off-site links are relevant and will offer similar higher quality content.
Use of internal links:
Linking content without your site is a great indicator that site has long-term values but you don’t overstuff them. A good rule to follow is to use two to three links to some deep-seeded pages within the site.
Focusing on the meta description:
The site’s Meta description is the primary few sentences which appear in search results under the page’s title. These descriptions are mainly written for the people and not quite for search engines. In other words, the descriptions should not be overstuffed with keywords. Read how to optimize your website pages to make it to the top in Google.
The final thoughts:
It is true that ranking higher will definitely take work. Google rewards some of the long-term strategies. Even though white hat and black hat SEO shares a common goal for improving site’s visibility, they mostly use different strategies as proven already. The only benefit of black hat is a quick success through increased traffic but for a short term. But, then you have Google penalties coming to your ways with some devastating effects on site. So, consider going for the alternative white hat techniques.
Yes, white hat SEO takes longer time for some results but the strategies will focus on improving search performance by presenting quality content. They will follow all Google norms to avoid penalization at its best. It is the safest and easiest way to address your needs pretty well and grow your business in return.
