5 White Hat SEO Tips
By: Tola Famakinwa
SEO is a very tricky thing. Where do you draw the fine line between White hat and Black hat? It really comes down to gut feeling, doing what you feel is right and that all important question Matt asked, “Would you do it if there were no search engines?”. I’ve come up with a few white hat tips, which usually are white hat but when overdone, can lead to black hat and penalties… Find the balance.
- Learn to link the right way – yes, we all know the Internet is a dangerous place and we don’t want to get a smack on the wrist for linking to bad neighbour but we have still have to learn to acknowledge people. In other words, as much as charity begins at home and you link internally, you also have to show love to others around you. Link to other blogs that deserve it. Especially if they’ve done something for you, who knows, you just might get you share of link love. Commentluv is great for this; however, it is understandable that some site owners don’t want to take that chance at all. Find good sites and acknowledge by linking to them.
- Create Content wisely – depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you have to learn to create content wisely. If you’re selling a product, create content not just for your product specifically but general information related to your product. Don’t be selfish. The world does not evolve around you and your product. The sooner you learn that, the sooner good things will start happening to you. I read this article on being the custodian of your brand and I found it very interesting and goes on to show that when you write your posts and articles you never know who is going to read it.
- Learn the art of bookmarking and social media – Don’t be shy, social media won’t bite. It might take a while to learn it, but learn it you must! Yes, I believe twitter isn’t for everyone, neither is having a facebook fan page, but there are other types of social bookmarking. There’s Linkedin for instance where you can consult for people and gain popularity in your community or area of speciality. Learn to make use of these tools.
- Learn how to interact and network – Any blogger would tell you it’s a cold and lonely world out there, especially when it seems as though no one knows you exist. No one will know you exist until you tell them you exist. Learn to interact with other people and who knows you just might build up affiliates. SEO especially has a lot to do with networking; this could be by dropping comments on other people’s blog or even just linking to people. However, remember to drop comments, which are worth reading. Networking happens better when both parties stand a chance of benefiting from each other.
- Learn how to Analyse – Web analytics is one of the important factors to survive on the Internet. You need to understand what is happening on your website or why it’s not happening the way you would like. Analysis will help out with this. If you don’t want to go all the way with Google Analytics or other paid services, WordPress and Blogger have been so kind to provide data to give you an insight of what is going on daily.
I’m sure if we sit down we could come up with hundreds of tips for doing SEO with a white hat on, but I find these tips are something I use almost everyday. Pretty straightforward and simple, right? But its interesting to see people doing all this and doing it the wrong way, leading to penalties.
What other white hat tips do you use daily to keep on the right side of the search engine books?
About the Author
Tola Famakinwa is an SEO Consultant at a firm in the United Kingdom. Tola runs the blog “SEO for Beginners“, which is primarily a chronicle of her development as an SEO Consultant.
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