A practical guide on how to implement a successful white-hat SEO campaign in 2019.
This is a step-by-step guide. You get to walk away with key takeaways to boost your SEO by just reading this.
You don’t have to be bad to win. So don’t trick yourself out of the SERP’s.
A Google penalty is a digital nightmare, at the worst; it can get you kicked out of the search engines playground. Which is why your SEO efforts should keep up with the recent Google’s Quality Evaluators Guidelines to avoid the engines disciplinary measures. The recent algorithm update demands you to disavow black hat SEO & employ white hat SEO. You are going to learn how to stay ahead of Google in 2019 and further.
This is a tectonic shift in the SEO world. This metaphor is not just befitting for the rearrangement of the operational landscape but also the gradual build-up that has led to this transformation. Fortunately, you don’t have to learn everything about the latest Google algorithm to get the full benefits of white hat SEO. It’s a real challenge to attempt such a feat. Here is why this is true;
Why you shouldn’t bother keeping up with Google algorithm updates?
Structure Before Strategy
Assuming you do manage to apply enough exorbitant effort to do so- will it be enough to keep you going when you get surprised with another mysteriously named algorithm Google has waiting in the search engine alleys for you? There are several routine broad core updates Google is gearing up to implement this year.
The fully-fledged implementation of the elusive Rankbrain doesn’t make things easier too. This disciplinary action is not as harsh as it sounds when you equip yourself with the right tools. Which is why you are reading this. Here is an upside to all of this.“Structure before strategy”
Black & gray hat days were fun. SEOers had a great run. Now is the time to hang those up.
Google makes minor changes to its algorithm 1-2 times daily. As you can imagine, this may affect your ranking gradually. In a nutshell, what worked when crawled by the Googlebot yesterday may be what works against you today. Due to this volatile nature of the search engine, it’s incredibly hard not to employ some tricks and tweaks to boost your ranking from now and then to keep yourself in the race.
Who hasn’t ever over-optimized just to get a leg up in the digital race? Ask any Google expert like Danny Sullivan; they won’t even wait for you to finish the sentence to tell you this is where most SEO goes awry.
Be wary that this is not about pointing out that there isn’t a single SEO saint among search optimizers, but to point out that you don’t have to really be one to stay right with Google’s updates. The solution is much simpler than you thought.
How to beat the ‘Medic’ and any Google Update without using a single trick or reading the GQE guideline?
If you have been paying close attention to the main intent of all of these shifts and changes in algorithms, you will realize how much Google just wants you to be relevant to their users. User-intent is the key. There is no greater scheme for Google’s compliance evolution. To satisfy your analytical brain; this is why the ‘Medic’ algorithm update boosted those who were already employing white hat SEO and did the opposite for optimizers using the other two forsaken hats.
Google’s employment of the algorithm is part of its GQR (Google quality rating) patent. The patent filed in 2013 suggests that machine learning will make humans the determinants of the quality of websites under analysis. Their observed signals will quantify the quality scores of websites in terms of rating their search ranking and relevancy through captured data.
Humans are after all the ones engaging with the websites. All you need to do is tone down on the non-compliant tactics and double down on the things that please the user. So, how do you do that exactly?
This is how simple it is to make any SEO effort a winner
The taste of victory is twice as sweet in search engine land. You don’t have to leave your chair to bask in its fruits. You have no idea how short-lived the victory is when you use unethical methods to get it. No more keyword stuffing, cloaking, link farming, PBNs, and any over-optimizing tactics.
1. Content
Image Source: Freepik
It is assumed that you know the inherent basics;
- Don’t duplicate content.
- Get an expert author or a writer with exceptional knowledge on the subject in the content.
- Create quality content on a regular basis to boost traffic.
- Avoid brief pages, blank pages, and deceptive content
Keyword Strategy & LSI’s
Take advantage of how keywords play a bigger role in user-intent than they do for ranking topics recently. Keyword stuffing is considered spammy, and the keyword density limit requires you to use your keyword/s minimally to avoid defying this rule
This may seem like a tight constraint to work against, but you can easily wiggle your way out of it with this white hat method. The use of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) is what will set you apart. Here is a practical example of LSI in action: ‘Car’ can be substituted by vehicle, motorcar, automobile, wagon, hatchback and so on.
A thesaurus dictionary or an LSI generator will do your LSI strategy a world of good. This increase in word options helps with readability by offering your audience natural sounding content and saves you time with wondering where to place your exact match keyword/s without looking spammy.
Answer Boxes
Taking advantage of answer boxes to increase relevancy is extremely helpful. Answer the questions your audience is likely to search for when they are looking for you. The more you focus on helping or impacting the audience with your content is the more Google trusts you enough to rank you higher. Check how Nirmal uses answer boxes at OnlineRockersHub.
This is not only good for ranking purposes it establishes a relationship and positions you as the expert authority within your industry.
3 main examples of Answer Box optimized content:
- How To articles
- What is’ …
- Lists
Filter Comment Spam
- Keep a list of blacklisted words for users to see.
- Avoid employing a 3rd-party comments plugin and instead, have users log in before they can comment. This makes it easy to moderate the comments section. Adding a commentator in addition to this will help you to tread on the compliant side of Google.
Bonus point
Measuring and tracking your keywords with tools will help boost your fulfillment tremendously. You get optimal insight on what keywords being in the most engagement and ROI so that you can optimize your content strategy better.
To one-up further, optimizing user experience is paramount. Ignoring this alone will impact visibility on the SERP’s.
2. User Experience
- Clean & Simple Web design
- Easy Navigation
- Fast loading website
- Clear CTAs(call-to-actions)
- Usability
- White-hat link building
Clean and Simple Web Design
UX design is co-existent with SEO. These two allies keep people on your website, which Google likes to be an average of 3 minutes. It doesn’t matter how creative or how much you are paying your web developer, you should aim to simplify the design of your website to avoid confusing users. Notice how major websites and forums are employing this simple yet effective style.
Easy Navigation
Besides a confusing outlay on a webpage, bad navigation can lead to high bounce rates if not fixed soon. This is obviously a dip in conversion rates. Having too many ads or having them badly placed on your webpage in a way that disturbs the user is bad for PageRank.
Fast Loading Website
A slow loading page will sabotage the best SEO efforts and rob itself off traffic. Make sure to test your websites speed with online tools like Gtmetrix. Getting speed optimization right boosts your efforts by 20%. Javascript and flash are usually the culprits of slow page load.
Clear CTA’s (Call-To-Actions)
Image Credits: Freepik
Creating clear Call-To-Actions can have a major boost in conversions. Legible CTA labels can make a big difference to your campaign. Make sure to maintain congruency in their design. Don’t add too many CTA’s, that can confuse the user and make them not take any action at all.
Usability
Optimize your website for MPA(Mobile Page Acceleration); that goes for mobile phones or whichever device your audience is using. Same goes for the channels they frequent. Adopt the latest trends such as voice search, video subtitles, infographics, motion design, night mode features and other useful technologies and advancements that are useful for users. Test these trends for speed & usability on different devices and browsers to make sure they don’t hinder the user experience.
White-Hat Link Building
White-hat link building serves your SEO well when you have relevant outbound links instead of adding as many links as you can to boost your ranking score. Natural linking is favored by Google.
Linking to third-party resources increases your ranking score. Linking to content within the context of your content is favorable for internal linking. Google’s guidelines translate this practice as a sign of relevancy. Instead of buying links, you can be strategic about asking for them. This is a less drastic & dangerous link building strategy than link farming.
Bonus Tip for a Winning white-hat link building strategy
For example, seek out broken links from an authority website that might be beneficial to link to in your niche. Once you have pointed this out to them; ask them to link back to you instead. This reciprocal method beats tricks such as link-farming & PBN(private blog network)s that Google doesn’t like.
You can also look for websites that are mentioning your website. Start with thanking them for the mention and follow up with asking them to link back to you. Cross-linking to pages in your own website will make the page easier to crawl and boost page rank.
Don’t forget your SEO takeaway bag
Along with the aforementioned takeaways, there are numerous other resorts that you could employ that will save you from twisting and tweaking your SEO efforts. But this one is worth its weight in gold.
SEO problems are mostly attributed to more than just one problem area. Whenever you have to optimize any of the above areas, remember this; your lowered ranking or any impactful compromise is almost always alluded to a series of bad practices.
There could be multiple variables working simultaneously at hindering your progress and overall success. Referring to this guide as you conduct an SEO audit can help you a great deal. When used right, you won’t even have to do too much auditing to keep up with future changes.
Now that you have a bad-ass white hat strategy in your corner, don’t just keep it to yourself. Make no bones about sharing this guide with as many people as you can. Platforms such as social media have proved how it takes one post to make a seismic impact on a revolution. You could be saving many a poor soul a ton of frustration from just a simple virtue of sharing.
Feel free to indulge us if you have a comment of your own too. Your words mean gold to us.
If you like this article, pin this
Image Credits: Freepik
Here are some relevant and useful articles for you to read:
- Why Search Traffic should be your Primary Traffic Channel?
- How to boost Organic Traffic by Adding Area Pages?
- How to set up Yoast SEO Plugin?
- The future of the Web according to Tim Berners Lee
- How to submit your site to Google Search Console?
