What Does White Hat SEO Mean? An Absolute Beginner’s Guide

Paid advertising offers a valid way of driving targeted traffic to your website. But SEO remains a crucial part of any marketing strategy since so many people start their queries on a search engine.

It’s so valuable that businesses will spend over $70 billion on SEO by 2020.

While investigating SEO companies, you may have heard the term ‘white hat SEO.’ If you’re wondering what it means, then read our guide to find out!

What Is White Hat SEO?

SEO practices are divided into two camps. White hat refers to those that stay within the terms and conditions set by different search engines.

Serving up a fast website that works well on mobile devices is a good example of a white hat technique.

Its opposite practice is black hat SEO. These techniques rely on deceitful practices to get an unfair advantage in the search engine results.

Buying links or keyword stuffing might seem like a shortcut. But it’s black hat SEO because it creates a bad experience for web users.

Black hat SEO is rightfully getting harder to do as Google’s AI becomes more intelligent.

How White Hat SEO Works

White hat techniques work inside Google’s framework of ‘best practice’. Because you’re working with the search engines instead of against them, you’ll see better results.

That applies whether you’re targeting the global or local search results.

White hat tactics involve providing quality content that users need. Or setting up clear site navigation to make the website easy to use. You can signal to Google what the site is about through keyword use.

These techniques position your site as an authoritative source. The authority around each piece of content or page on your site is cumulative, so it builds its effectiveness over time as you generate backlinks.

Why We Use White Hat SEO

Google can ban your site for using black hat SEO. Unless you want to pay for ads on social media, you’d lose all of your traffic. So we implement white hat SEO to play by Google’s rules.

White hat strategies are often cheaper. They’re used for the long-term so you can build an organic presence around your website.

They might take longer to take effect, but once they do, the momentum of a piece of content can snowball. That kind of momentum is hard to fake, sending positive signals to the search engines.

All of these techniques also provide a great experience for your visitors. That makes them more likely to become your customers.

Use White Hat SEO for Success

Now you know what white hat SEO is and why you should use it. Even if black hat SEO looks like a good idea for quick results, it’s too risky to rely on.

The penalties aren’t worth it. White hat, on the other hand, offers you the chance to build a useful resource that the search engines will share for you.

If you want to make sure your site uses the right strategies, check out our guide to hiring an SEO expert!