Search engine optimization(SEO):
Neil patel states that, “Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your online content so that a search engine likes to show it as a top result for searches of a certain keyword”.
In simpler words working an SEO is more like a give and take policy, the more attention and updates given to a website, the better the search results of the website. There are different techniques which can be used in optimizing our website for a better search result.
- White hat SEO
- Black hat SEO
- Grey hat SEO
- ON page SEO
- OFF page SEO
In this blog we are mainly going to focus on the the three hats of the SEO. ON page and OFF page will be written as seperate blogs. The three hats of the SEO can be simply explained as the good, the bad and he ugly of the SEO. So let us elaborate about these so called hats and see which one makes you fit right on the bill and which one makes you look ugly.
White hat SEO:
As the name suggests the white hat SEO is the so called righteous one. This is a method where there is usage of optimization mainly for the human audiences rather than the search engine. What makes it so holy is that it is a way where we follow the rules of the search engine optimization perfectly without deviating out of path. Brian dean of backlinko states white hat SEO as “Google approved SEO strategies”.
There are various ways in which using white hat SEO is very useful, Even though it is a slow process it gives out better results and is more long term oriented. White hat SEO also brings out a reputation for your website to Google which would make it hard for the other websites replace you. So here are some of the techniques which represent a perfect white hat SEO:
- Using the right keywords
- Quality content
- Optimizing good links
- Technical SEO
(some of these points have been referenced from brian dean’s backlinko.com)
So let us go ahead to read more about the given white hat SEO techniques and check out the ways of how to optimize it.
The right keywords:
Keywords are what people use to search the respective things that they want to search at the Google SEO. Finding out the right keywords for your website is the first right thing that we have to do. But there is one thing that we shouldn’t do, that is to stuff lots of keywords in the SEO and giving out keywords which are completely irrelevant to the product that we would like to promote. Keyword stuffing do not fall under the category of white hat SEO and should be completely looked upon. There are a lot of things which can be done to find out the right keyword, some of them are listed below.
To find out the right keyword there are certain tools that can be used, like Google search console, Ubersuggest, Google adwords keyword planner, wordtracker scout etc. These tools give out suggestions for the website that you use and we can select the keywords which we think would hit the chord with the audience. Along with this research we have to look out for long tail keywords obtained from Google suggest, these long tail keywords play an important role as you can understand that people are searching for the relative words which can be added as keywords at your SEO. Another aspect which we should keep in mind is to always keep track with what our competitors are doing, we can also use certain tools to find out what are the things we are doing wrong that are competitors are doing right. There is nothing wrong in copying the keywords that our competitors use to enhance their business. Explore different online communities, that can also help you in what people are searching and those keywords can be added upon. There are no limits for keywords but it is always good to keep the count between 10-15.
Quality content:
So let us make something clear, content doesn’t majorly affect the hat concepts of the SEO but helps majorly in the quality of the website. By putting out regular updates and posting good content automatically helps with the search results. Copying content from other websites and pasting them will not be considered as good content. It is always good if you make up your own content of the respective topic that you are going to write. Easily readable and unique contents helps the user to be more interactive with your website and helps you to create a following for yourself which is the best user experience that you can get. When all these things are done it automatically increases traffic.
Optimizing good links:
Links can be classified into various types like internal links, external links, backlinks etc. Links are present inside of the website and also on the outside of the website, the elaboration of these links are the names given above. So we are going to see why links play an important role in the technique of white hat SEO. Neil patel states that, “ the link popularity of a specific page accounts for 22.33% of the components of Google’s ranking algorithm”. This statement is more than enough to determine the importance of links, the more the links in a website the higher the ranking. But now comes the tricky part, the links which are present in the website should lead to good pages of our site or other sites. When it goes to other “bad sites” the credibility of the website diminishes, which lowers our google ranking. Not only bad websites, but when the site leads to pages which are not available and has been removed the ranking gradually decreases. So to correct this we have to carefully optimize our links in the website and also optimize the broken links (links which lead to removed pages). The way to do this is find out the bad links in the website and disavowing them. Then for broken links we have to put out the “404” redirect coding so that it can redirect to the new page. Optimizing should be done carefully because at times good links can also be disavowed and a lot of attention should be given out to it. Guest posting at blogs are also a good way of promoting our website and it also helps out to spread out your name to the online community.
Technical SEO:
Technical SEO is more like a Web designer’s playground. This type of SEO mostly include improving the speed of the website by optimizing the images, creating alt tags; create the perfect site architecture by listing out the number pages in the website in the perfect order and fixing the errors in the website. This aspect is just like content, it would improve the SEO search but doesn’t majorly play a role in the hat aspect of the SEO.
Black hat SEO:
Now we’ve seen the good guy in the form of white hat. It is now time to see the bad guy in the picture called as the black hat. Black hat is the form of an SEO technique where the website users tries all the crooked and wrong activities in the book to improve the status of his website and to increase his Google search ranking. These are methods that we should always stay away from. Black hat SEO also give out results but when Google finds out about this, it penalises your website and also sometimes bans your website. Even though there are strict rules and regulations given out by Google, people still find a way to cheat it and try out the black hat SEO. I am now going to list out major black hat methods which should never be practiced in the SEO:
- Unrelated keywords and stuffing
- Cloaking
- Duplicate content
- Comment spamming
There are many other black hat techniques but the mentioned ones are more frequently used.
Unrelated keywords and stuffing:
There is a great misconception in people’s minds that the more keywords we use, the more the views of their website. This is a highly misleading thought, using unrelated keywords gives a bad user experience and would hither your site’s search ranking. The reason why unrelated keywords damages the UX is because the user gets highly disappointed when an irrelevant website shows up for the words they are searching. Google penalise people who violate this policy and also at times bans the website. But people still find a way to to cheat google by creating different domains but with the same content. This is a way that people should always stay away from, because getting penalised would give their website a black mark which would be irreplaceable and would hinder the chances of getting the top search result.
Cloaking:
According to wikipedia, “Cloaking is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user’s browser”. In simpler words cloaking is the method of covering a website with a webpage or url of a completely different website. When a person clicks on to that link it directs them to a completely different platform, cloaking is majorly used in pornographic sites and various other sites which have been banned by the government. Cloaking is more like a disguise of a website in a bad way and when found out by Google would be heavily penalised.
Duplicate content:
When a website is created, it is always better to write up original content and putting out blogs about the things you do. Duplicate content as the name suggests is the way of copying content from other websites and posting it in your website. Copying content from other website can be done properly when you give the reference from where the quote has been taken from or putting out the link of the website from where the content was taken from. An example for that is given out in this blog at the top, under the topic of “The right keyword and optimization”. We should give out the canonical tag on the page of the website where the duplicate content is present. Thus when Google crawls through your site and finds out about the duplicate content it penalises the website.
Comment spamming:
Comment spamming is the bad result we get due to the open door commenting policy. Usually comment spamming is done by robots created by software hackers who check out for websites to put out links to various illegal things like gambling, drugs, porn etc. There are also people who do it because they want to promote their website and also time wasting people who do it because they have nothing else to do. What these comments do to the websites are these gets added as bad links which are present in their website, which while crawled by Google makes the user to be affected. The way to stop these comment spamming is to regularly check out the comments we get and then delete the links which come up. Comment spamming is one of the most trickiest black hat techniques in which we should always keep a lookout for.
Grey hat:
According to Google, “Grey hat SEO refers to a computer hacker or computer security expert who may sometimes violate laws or typical ethical standards, but does not have the malicious intent typical of a black hat hacker”. Grey hat SEO lives on the edge of being neither a white hat nor a black hat SEO. This is much more riskier than what we do at white hat and less dangerous than what we do at black hat. Since the inception of the grey hat is of this kind, they have a much lesser chance of being penalised by Google. Like the above posts we shall now see some of the important techniques in the the grey hat SEO. Reference taken from https://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2018/02/12/5-grey-hat-seo-tactics-that-you-should-use-at-your-own-risk
- Social bookmarking
- Small website updates ‘
- Article spinning
- Negative SEO
Social bookmarking:
Social bookmarking is the way of adding and sharing bookmarks of web documents, these can be done legally in many social bookmarking sites and also social media sites, but when the sharing of content increases and when it gets too stuffed then there is a risk of it becoming a black hat and being penalised.
Small website updates:
This majorly falls under the category of white hat SEO, but since there are not any clear gainers obtained through this they are considered as grey hat. The small updates do work at times because Google is fond of websites that give out regular updates and tend to crawl the website. The small updates might be just changing the font size or background colour. These techniques have not been heavily verified but it may or may not help the website to get a better search ranking.
Article spinning:
Article spinning can be explained as a way where we see a content, instead of completely copying it we write up a content in a different way with the same meaning. This is risky in some sense but the major problem is that the uniqueness factor gets completely stripped off the website. But since the Panda update of google the risk factor of article spinning has substantially increased.
Negative SEO:
Negative SEO is the way where instead of improving the ranking of your own website, you try to hurt the rankings of your competitors. What you do is to remove the links of your competitor’s website and giving them the no-follow tag to their links. By this way, the ranking of your competitor decreases and that gives you dominance over that particular keyword. This is risky in the sense of falling on the footsteps of black hat and it also doesn’t hinder the fact that your competitor could do the same thing to you.
Conclusion:
From this blog we have seen the majority of the steps which help to cover the three hats of the SEO. This would have helped the readers to get a good idea of all the hats and you would have known what are the best ways to optimize your website. The other types of SEO which are the ON page and OFF page can be seen as two seperate blogs.