Why Focus on White Hat SEO Strategies? Tips from Woodley Marketing & Moz

 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is composed of different processes and techniques that help a website rank on various search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, to acquire organic (non-paid) traffic. The executed strategies should focus on what the search engine understands.

Internet users visit search engines to get answers to their queries. For example, you are looking for the “top marketing companies in London” on Google, you will be directed to a new page that lists down disparate websites that match your needs on the search engine result pages (SERP). Most often, websites that are placed on top get the most traffic simply because people think that these are trustworthy, as per the assessment conducted by the aforementioned platforms.

• • Whitehat vs. Blackhat SEO Strategies

There are several strategies implemented to ensure that you can acquire organic traffic to your website, and are categorized as whitehat and blackhat techniques.

Whitehat strategies are those that follow the search engine’s guidelines. There are diversified algorithms, known mathematical instructions assessed by spiders or crawlers, to assess a website’s relevance, credibility, and authority.

On the other hand, blackhat strategies are those that are proven quick ways to rank a website, however, does not follow the guidelines the search engines have set. Executing blackhat strategies may improve your website’s ranking, but may not last as you can be hit by a serious penalty that could either affect your ranking or your chance to be seen on SERP again.

“Although blackhat techniques still work very effectively when done correctly, it is not a sustainable strategy in the long run. If you run a serious business in 2017, it is simply not worth the risk anymore. Time and time again, we see business owners get impatient with their SEO campaigns. It turn, this desire for quick results can often turn very ugly. Whitehat SEO is much more effective now than in the previous years. Google’s AI is constantly improving and the webmasters that focus on a good user experience tend to be rewarded.” – Tom Woodley, Woodley Marketing.

• • Hire a Competent SEO Company

In choosing the right SEO Company, you have to thoroughly check the strategies they are planning to roll out. Always keep in mind that although black hat strategies are guaranteed fast, the ranking that you will be able to achieve won’t last long. Google is smart; you can trick it for one moment but rest assured that it will haunt your website down and penalize you.

“…believing the sales pitch that unfortunately many I’m going to say low-quality SEO consultants use, which is there’s a secret sauce. There are no secret sauces in SEO. If you hear like, “This is how Google works blah, blah, blah, and then here’s how we do our secret optimization techniques. I can’t tell you what those are. It’s a proprietary methodology, but it works really well,” that’s baloney. You should reject that. If you ask, “How do you do it,” and they say, “I’m sorry I can’t tell you, it’s a secret or it’s proprietary,” that is a very, very bad sign. No one has a secret proprietary process. SEO is a very, very open field. It’s well understood. It has origins in a lot of secrecy, but that is not the way it is today and you should never accept that as an answer. That is a red flag.” – Rand Fishkin, MOZ.com

You need to thoroughly check the progress of each strategy. If you are unsure about the provided data, the SEO company needs to explain to you what all these mean and how it can affect the ranking. A report must also be provided to assess your website’s health, focusing on the missed strategies.

Set a realistic goal. Ranking a website does not happen overnight. It’s a continuous process, and most often, results may be seen after 3 months. It can also be a daunting task as the technical methods need to be perfectly done to ensure that everything adheres not only to the existing guidelines but also to the foreseeable changes.  Luckily, there are several SEO companies, like Woodley Marketing and Moz, that can help you conceptualize and implement the plans.

Remember, having a website alone cannot improve your sales. You have to execute numerous digital marketing strategies, including SEO, to achieve your actionable goals.

 

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Check out this Top 5 Digital Leadership Speaker for more tips!