White Hat SEO Strategy Explained (Basic)
When it comes to executing any white hat SEO strategy there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
- What makes you an expert on the topic? This is where in my opinion people get hung up on page rank, DR, DA, and other metric tools to determine the value of a website/author or what makes them or their website an authoritative figure. This is because some websites we will use the MayoClinic as an example have established they are an expert in the medical field. The website metrics themself are pointless, meaningless, and ultimately what matters is they have thousands or more articles proving they are the expert including case studies and examples, definitions, and months of published articles that are mentioned by countless news outlets etc... So you need to be an expert to perform a White Hat SEO strategy that is going to work. If you are one of the first to go in-depth on a topic and break it down with proof you will establish the expert status over time and people will naturally link to your content.
- Stay on point with your H tags this includes the primary topic as being your H1 tag, a variation of the topic as an H2 tag, and H3 tags as subtopics. Such as White Hat SEO Strategy would be a primary H1, White Hat SEO Strategies That Really Work this would be an H2, and finally, your H3's such as content, on-page SEO, interlinking, and so on.
- Alt tags that really matter the spammy way of naming photos your keyword probably aren't going to cut it in the future. My recommendation is to add photos that are unique, original, and show value so a good alt tag would be "A consultant performing a White Hat SEO strategy" and a photo of someone performing the work.
- Interlinking is important if you don't have links going to your other pages they are what are considered orphan pages. Don't go overboard and link to a page every time it's mentioned but interlink 1-3 times per 500-1000 word article and/or page. This will also help pass authority also known as juice or link juice from one page/post to another.
- Video is a great way to gain more exposure because you can upload the video to YouTube and gain viewers from multiple sources remember to fill out as much detail as possible and to link back to the post via YouTube and embed the video to your page on the topic such as "White Hat SEO Strategy Explained" and link back to that specific article on your website with the video embedded.
Why Is A White Hat SEO Strategy Important?
Because if you want to survive in a pure white hat SEO world then you will have to gain links. In order to gain links naturally, you will have to provide value to your readers. You can't just explain you are the best and you have been doing this for 20 years yada yada. This is what most people do and usually get discouraged and go out and buy backlinks which if you know the risks and are willing to take them then that's up to you. Even if you are buying links which isn't a White Hat SEO Strategy I still suggest that you have a good copy. As it's not just to gain links but to gain readers, clients, or ultimately gather people ready to purchase.
Also, whether you believe it or not bolding your keyword within your article does help with ranking at least in my experience. Another thing that some people do is link to an authority page about the topic while I personally don't choose to go this route I have seen lots of websites do it with great success. Personally, I would make sure it's a no-follow link to not lose any juice and cause a competitor to rank for your keywords or phrases.
No Follow Links
I heard no-follow links don't help your White Hat SEO is this true? While it isn't going to improve the metrics of your site, you know those made-up things we discussed earlier DR, DA, etc... if there are readers or viewers and it's driving traffic it's going to help. As well as Google really chooses what links to count! While page rank is still a thing and exists it's hidden from us, years prior Google shared this info with us and made link building very easy. It also made it easy for people to trick Google which is why they ultimately hid it from us.
Do Follow Links
So do follow links do improve your site's metrics but once again Google ultimately decides which ones to actually count. Ahrefs (DR) will ultimately decide what improves their made-up metric so while this is their guess of what page rank would be it's actually a non-ranking factor. So many people focus on DR when they haven't landed one sell or the purpose of the website. Like look at me my website is a 60 DR etc.. but meanwhile, their competitor is killing it with sales and has a DR of 8. Stop focusing on these metrics and focus on traffic, conversion, and useful information to answer the searcher's "search" or questions on the topic. If this post about a White Hat SEO strategy was merely focused on don't build links, content is king, and White Hat SEO means you don't buy links. Would you still be reading? Think like the searcher and you can ultimately come up with some killer content.
Conclusion Of The White Hat SEO Strategy That Kills It
My conclusion is if you write good content that provides value and you do some good interlinking and follow the things mentioned in this post you will find you can rank without building a single link. Remember White Hat takes a long time to get picked up this is because getting the first few natural links is hard to do. You can cross-post to Facebook and other sources to get the ball rolling.