About White Hat SEO And How To Do It

ok i think this kind of question has been asked over and over again but i never seen any detailed reply (or at least, i forgot that i have read one lol)

basically i have been doing black hat stuffs for years, buying services from here and several other places, etc etc. We know Google is going stricter and stricter and definition of white hat SEO has also evolved because of that reason. Many people says white hat SEO is like doing "nothing" because even if you write an article and you put a link in it intentionally with your anchor text, it's not white hat anymore.

so tell me, if any of you believe you are doing white hat SEO, what exactly that you do?

People say what we need to do is to get natural backlinks. But how? If your main intention is to get traffic through youtube, forums, facebook, etc. and one day some people link to your site naturally, I can understand. but still you can't call that white hat SEO. That's just "bonus link" from people who trust/like your website. so how can someone says he's doing white hat SEO? By doing what exactly?

As far as i know, writing web 2.0, writing articles and submit them to directories, using private blog networks, etc. are all black hat SEO because they are meant to trick Google. so how is white hat SEO performed? Getting link that IS NOT intended to manipulate search engine results? and how to get these links? By writing a "useful" guest blog post in other blogs and beg the admin to make the link ********? I dont understand.

There is no more black, white or grey it is what is working. Right now the strongest weapons are:

1. Private blog networks with unique content on different geolocated i.ps ( different webhosts)
2. Guest blogging - a bit expensive but it pays off
3. Real Social traffic
4. Strong Web 2.0 acc - not just one crappy article
5. High PR Blog comments with low OBLs 10< to money site or Private BN or Web 2.0

No such thing as white hat SEO.

White Hat SEO means you are not doing anything to trick Google, which means you don't build links at all. I can't agree this isn't SEO - you still need to optimize your website (on-site optimization) and you need to write high quality articles to attract links from other sources.

However, there are very few 100% white-hat marketers out there. Most marketers work "grey-hat", because it's much easier to get natural link when you already have some traffic (people know you exist and they can link to you).

You miss the definition of blackhat and spamming links. In my years of SEO, am yet to see a site get deindexed for spamming links but with a black hat method it's possible. Google is fighting spam and not against creating or working towards getting links yourself. If you want something real good pay 1k for SEO, a lot of you won't and can't afford or do that.

Jacob Sterbenk said:

White Hat SEO means you are not doing anything to trick Google, which means you don't build links at all.

Click to expand...

I will have to disagree with that viewpoint semantically. It's not about tricking google, it's more about telling Google "Yeah, this link was totally me". Whitehat SEO is more about Extensive PR more than anything. Angela/Paul links are actual people from your site (writes, your company profile), using the rel="me" to tell big G-Unit that you are active on external areas.

Manually submitting website to directories, doing guest posts etc. Grey Hat is more of the automation of this, mimicking the backlinking nature to look like it is circulating around the internet with authority (ie: using xRumer to ask a question on a forum, another profile answers that question using your link as the authority).

I would put it simpler than that.

White Hat SEO = Content Marketing

Guest Posts are nowing starting to become the new paid links.

I'd say some of what you call Black Hat tactics are actually White Hat. Submitting articles to directories is not BH, in my view - it's marketing, as is Web 2.0. I'd also say content creation with suitable keyword density is White Hat. The line between White and Black, for me, is when your tactics move away from being intelligent and useful, and become obtrusive to people who find your site. Keyword stuffing makes articles unreadable. Spam blog commenting can downrank the blogs that get the comments. It's Black Hat if it cheats other people out of what they can reasonably expect.

wokaka said:

People say what we need to do is to get natural backlinks. But how? If your main intention is to get traffic through youtube, forums, facebook, etc. and one day some people link to your site naturally, I can understand. but still you can't call that white hat SEO. That's just "bonus link" from people who trust/like your website. so how can someone says he's doing white hat SEO? By doing what exactly?

As far as i know, writing web 2.0, writing articles and submit them to directories, using private blog networks, etc. are all black hat SEO because they are meant to trick Google. so how is white hat SEO performed? Getting link that IS NOT intended to manipulate search engine results? and how to get these links? By writing a "useful" guest blog post in other blogs and beg the admin to make the link ********? I dont understand.

Click to expand...

You raise some very valid point here. I have seen those practicing ?white hat? SEO still take the same approach as a person performing black hat tactics in terms of link building. For instance a company that reaches out to other organizations in the area to get them to link to their website is essentially a link exchange scheme and against Google?s quality guidelines. Google wants these links to happen naturally but often times this isn?t fast enough for most people.

I think to perform white hat SEO, you may still border on some black hat tactics but you may still be optimizing for users. So for building backlinks, even though a company may reach out manually and exchange links with other companies, they may only do it within their own niche and they may place relevant anchor text and embed the link in a context that makes sense on their website. In my mind, things don?t truly become black hat until you are creating a poor user experience in exchange for higher rankings.

This post on SEL gives some pretty good definitions of black hat from different standpoints,

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-is-blackhat-seo-5-definitions/8151/

Great thread,

Shawn