What does white hat SEO mean?

Introduction

Each and every week countless SEO agencies publish articles about something that’s changed to white hat seo.

Whether that’s an update that’s occurred to Google’s algorithm, or that an seo business has a theory on how to get businesses onto the first page of Google.

However, we think that business owners often don’t want to have to piece together a million articles to try and get a sense of how seo is best implemented.

Instead we think businesses want a no-nonsense article that explains some of the factors that agencies use to get a website onto the first page of Google.

So, we thought you know what, let’s write a rather longwinded, yet informative article about what we think are some of the most important factors your business should consider when implementing white hat seo.

Let’s start right at the start, how good is your businesses website?

By how good is your businesses website, we don’t mean how much money have you spent on it, as that’s rather irrelevant.

We mean how good is it at doing its job? That’s because you can have spent a small fortune on your websites design, but if it has a sky-high bounce rate and doesn’t convert, well its about as much use as a chocolate tea-point.

From our experience some of the best websites we have ever seen are very simple.

 

So, here’s some the questions we ask ourselves when we are presented with a new website to work on:

·        Does each main service that the business offers, or group of products have its own page?

·        Does the website load quickly, or is it slow to load?

·        Is it content thin? Do the descriptions for each product lack detail?

·        Is the website easy to use, so which ever page I land on, can I quickly get to where I want to be?

·        Are there calls to action?

·        Does the website answer frequently asked questions?

·        Does the company publish blog posts?

 

And there’s so much more our seo consultants would consider, yet the questions above are ones your seo company should also consider.

What’s the user experience like?

So, let’s say your website sells luxury chocolates, so how does the website offer its products?

Does the website look cluttered? Or is there more of a minimalistic style? If there is a minimalistic style does the website offer enough information to allow someone to make a buying decision?

Does the business make is easy to buy products? And is there an FAQ section so that customers can find answers without having to e-mail the business?

These are just some of the considerations that our seo would be asking our clients.

 

Bounce rates

The bounce rate for a website is quite simply the percentage of visitors that have landed on your companies website, yet then decided to leave more or less straightaway.

So we always give this example to our clients, its kind of like launching a restaurant, and then people sticking their heads around the door, yet then leaving without purchasing anything.

This is where your marketing agency must work out what’s causing the high bounce rate, and is there anything you can do to reduce it?

Google’s RankBrain

Many digital marketing agencies think that RankBrain is being used by Google to monitor how engaged a visitor is with a website.

For example, does someone land on your chocolate website, and do they spend a great deal of time to look at what your business has to offer?

Or do they bounce straight off the website? Many believe that RankBrain is an AI programme that’s used by Google to work out which websites best answer a question.

Have you set-up your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts?

So many businesses embark on the SEO process, yet they do not set-up a Google Analytics or a Google Search Console account.

It takes mere minutes to set up a Google Analytics account, and its definitely worth doing as you will be able to obtain important data to help your businesses seo efforts.

For example, what’s the bounce rate for each page? How many visitors have the website obtained last week, last month or last year?

Google’s algorithm is always changing so make sure you keep up to date

Whoever is implementing your seo for your business, whether its yourself, a team of marketing experts or an seo agency, their knowledge must be up to date.

That’s to say an seo company may have been regarded as one of the best a few years back, yet if they do not keep their knowledge up to date, on how Google’s algorithm is changing, well its easy to implementing ineffective seo.

All seo efforts must always be white hat, as otherwise if white hat seo isn’t  implemented then your website may incur a penalty.

Put yourself in your customers shoes!

So much content marketing is produced just to try and improve where a business is ranked.

Now, you may say well that’s the whole point of content marketing, right?

Well wrong, as many leading seo companies now think that unless the work answers the question that it sets out to answer, and offers really useful information, well its not going to help your businesses seo.

So now instead of concentrating on seo factors, you must think how can we answer this question better than any of our competitors?

 

What are keywords?

Before your digital marketing agency embarks on implementing any seo, they should have a marketing strategy.

And a central part of that strategy should be which keywords your business is targeting.

For example, you may run an accountancy practice, well which sorts of customers do you want to attract?

Are they business owners that wish to obtain help with their self-assessment, or do you want to attract work from large businesses, that which for you to help them with an audit?

This needs to be thought out from the start, then once you know which customers you want to attract to the business, your seo agency should do keyword research.

This is obtaining an understanding of what people are typing or using voice search for in order to find businesses within that business sector.

So for example, if you want to attract businesses that need help with their VAT returns, people may well be searching “accountancy practices that specialise in VAT returns” – therefore this is the phrase that your seo company should be optimising your website for, in a white hat way.

All work must be high-quality (white hat)

Whatever seo work you are implementing or your seo company is working on, the work must be white hat.

Onsite SEO

Sometimes when a business is first investing in seo, sometimes that business will think that all that is needed to get the business onto first page of Google will be to optimise a few ranking signals.

However, there are in matter of fact over 200 ranking signals. Now for those that do not know what ranking signals are, these are simply the signals that are calculated by Google’s algorithm in order to work out how important that website is.

So, the websites that are ranked on the first page of Google, they will be the businesses that have the strongest ranking signals, yet also that website that is deemed the most relevant for that query.

 

How many pages does your website need?

Sometimes a business will have a website built, yet each main service will not have its own page.

So for example, lets think about a dental practices website, often they will offer many different services, such as teeth whitening and teeth straightening services.

Yet, if these services are all described on just one page, well it makes it a lot harder to implement the seo.

Often what an seo will advise, is that each main service that the business offers should have its own page.

This makes it much easier to optimise each page for different keywords. So for example, the seo company can optimise the “teeth whitening” page through using white hat methods, such as optimising:

·        Meta title and meta descriptions

·        Alt tag

·        Service description

·        Internal links

 

Product and service descriptions

This bit is really important, often when a website is designed, a website designer may copy product descriptions from another website, such the product manufactures website.

Yet, if your website has duplicated content, then this can mean your website incurs a penalty.

All work therefore should be unique to your website. If you do copy any work, then your website may incur a penalty, such as the Google Penguin update, which would most likely mean your website will drop in terms of where it ranks.

 

Meta titles and meta descriptions

Often when you get your new website back from the website designers it won’t have had the meta titles and meta descriptions added.

Yet, this is such a simple task to do, your seo should be able to add these to each page in a short amount of time.

With that said, meta titles and meta descriptions are really important. For those that do not know what this means, the meta titles and meta descriptions are simply a few lines of text that is used to describe that page.

This description then appears in the serps. So your seo agency should be aiming to improve your businesses CTR.

CTR stands for click through rate. So lets say your business sells mountain bikes, and you stock a particular brand of mountain bike that’s really popular, well you may mention that brand within the meta title or meta description.

Now, someone who’s looking through all the various businesses that offer mountain bikes, quite simply has loads of businesses to choose from.

So that’s to say even if your business gets onto the first page of Google, there will still be loads of other businesses. This means their will be businesses that have organic business listings and also PPC adds.

So its really important that that your business stands out, one way to do this is to write your meta title and meta description so that there’s a higher chance of people selecting your business.

This means if your business has a sale on, or you know a brand of bike that sells well, you may wish to mention this in the meta title and meta description.

 

What are alt tags?

Alt tags are simply a description that is added to pictures on your website. So let’s say for example you retail winter jackets, well you should add a description to each picture of each jacket.

So, for example, you may write the alt tag such as “winter jacket, olive green, large parker jacket”.

This can therefore help improve the onsite seo for that page, as its another clear message that this page sells olive green parker jackets.

 

Duplicate content

Here’s another top tip, do not use any duplicated content on your website. So, for example, let’s say you have a website designed, and your website designers have wanted to make the website look complete.

So instead of writing each product description, they may have copied and pasted the product description from the manufacturer’s website.

This will cause a duplication issue, which means your website could incur a penalty. A penalty, such as the Google Panda penalty can mean that your website drops in terms of where it ranks.

So just to be really clear, do not use any duplicated work on your website, and only use white hat methods.

 

So, what exactly is Schema?

Schema is a type of structured language, its used by seo agencies to mark-up important information on your website, such as the businesses NAP information.

So, for example, lets say you run a solicitors practice, well there’s most likely going to be loads of information on a solicitors website. So, using Schema allows the parts that are really important, like the NAP information to stand out, as this will be marked up using Schema.

Blog posts

Adding good quality blog posts to your website is a really important part of SEO. Yet, so many businesses and even seo companies get this part wrong.

That’s to say quite often businesses focus too much on trying to improve where the business ranks.

And now you might say, well that’s the whole point of SEO right? Well, not really no, as you should always aim to offer a good service to your customers first.

The reason for this is if you don’t put your customers first, the seo will most likely fail. It will fail because the bounce rate will increase, the level of conversions is likely to decrease.

So let’s say for example you retail bathroom products, such as claw legged Victorian baths, now if your business was to offer really good advice on how to replicate a Victorian looking bathroom, well then the business is likely to sell more items.

Yet, if the seo business that you’ve appointed uses rubbish seo methods, then this can mean that your businesses rankings go down.

A common mistake that so many businesses make is to write the keywords they want the business to rank for too much within the businesses content marketing.

So, for example, the seo company may keep writing “claw legged Victorian baths” too much, and Google’s algorithms will detect this.

The work could be then deemed as spam, and this could mean that the website incurs a penalty. 

 

Does your business have a mobile version of your website?

So many businesses have a mobile version of their website, so they think that is all that is needed to obtain more sales when people are looking at the website on smartphones and tablets.

Yet, your digital marketing agency should work with your business to optimise the mobile version of your website. That’s to say is the mobile version easy to use? Are the product descriptions easy to read? Is the website well designed? Or, does the mobile version of your businesses website have a high bounce rate?

Your SEO agency should be asking these questions.

What is content marketing?

An essential component when it comes to implementing a successful seo marketing strategy is to create content marketing.

Now content marketing can be used onsite, which often comes in the form of written work, or it can be used offsite.

The main purpose of using content marketing offsite would be to obtain a backlink, which is then directed at a page on your website.

However, here’s the thing the quality of content marketing can vary massively. For example, a digital marketing agency can create work which can help to improve where your business ranks, help to bring more visitors to your website, and sometimes even help to obtain more backlinks.

Yet, with that said, some seo agencies and business get their content marketing wrong, this is often due to them mentioning the same keywords too much.

So for example lets say you run a car dealership, well if your seo company was tasked with helping to sell a certain brand of car they would often use content marketing.

However, if say to the seo business, we want to appear on the first page of Google for “brand of car + the name of the city”.

Well, the marketing agency may then write “brand of car + the name of the city” too much into the content marketing. This is sometimes referred to as keyword stuffing, and this could mean that the business incurs a penalty.

So, as you can see, its really important that which ever marketing agency you choose, they must use white hat methods.

What does offsite SEO mean?

What exactly are backlinks?

Earlier on within this article we mentioned that there are over 200 ranking signals, and these signals are used to calculate how important your website is.

So for example, lets say you looking to purchase a new set of drums, so you may search for the brand of drums, and the model you wish to purchase.

Now there may well be thousands of companies up and down the country that sell those set of drums. So Google has to work out which business is best placed to answer your question.

And the business that has the strongest ranking signals will rank at the top. So, as you can see its really important that a business works on strengthening their ranking signals.

Now, what many seo companies believe is the most important type of ranking signal is backlinks.

So, often the businesses that rank at the top of Google will have the strongest backlinks.

If you don’t know what an external backlink is, well its quite simply a link from another website that is directed at your business’s website.

These links pay well be directed at a page on your website, or the homepage.

If the backlinks are of good quality, and are relevant to your business, then they can pass link juice.

That is if the backlink is do-follow. The more high-quality backlinks your website has the better.

So in a nutshell often the businesses that rank at the top of Google have really good quality backlinks.

Yet, the businesses that have low quality backlinks, well these are likely to incur a penalty.

Anchor text

Anchor text is quite simply the text that you click on in order to follow a link. So let’s say you are on a dentists website, and you are interested in getting your teeth whiter. So you see an article about teeth whitening, and click a link that states “click here to book an appointment”.

The line of text that states “click here to book an appointment” is the anchor text.

White hat SEO agency

We hope this guide has helped you to understand some of the methods that seo use to improve a businesses SEO.

If your business requires further help then why not give us a call?