Are you sure of what kind of SEO strategies your marketing agency is using? Where to begin with search engine optimization can be difficult to determine, as most people have an opinion about what works and what does not.
Knowing about the distinction between White Hat and Black Hat techniques will help you achieve your long-term SEO objectives. Let’s get to know what these various types of hats are and what is the right one for the marketing needs of your hearing practice.
White Hat
White-hat techniques aim to create a great user experience for the people using your website. Tactics such as producing high-quality content and optimizing page load times improve the quality users get from a site and the convenience with which they can access it. Put simply, these tactics are aligned with the kind of internet that Google themselves want to see.
Unique, relevant content: Content must be shareable that helps to naturally attract interest by being informative and entertaining. It needs to display an expertise and authority and provide real value to the reader, improving their lives in some way. Search engines record this relevant authoritative and reliable content and will reward your site accordingly.
Content written for humans: This seems strange to say, but black hat techniques involve creating content for robots. Keyword stuffing and hidden text is all designed to pass algorithm checks rather than improve the lives of the people reading the content.
Long-term strategy: Techniques that meet Google’s guidelines and create positive user experiences are often more time and work than black hat approaches. This means you need patience to see the desired results. Yet SEO has a much better effect long term. When you use tactics designed to enhance your overall site experience, you will slowly begin to gain consistent rankings for your target keywords. Doing so requires investment in content which can produce results over many years. This makes a white hat strategy the better long-term solution.
Black Hat
Black hat SEO relates to a number of practices used to boost search engines ‘ websites or pages in ways which violate the terms of service given by search engines.
They generally:
- focus on speedy, short term results over long-term gains
- uses unusual tactics to boost rankings on search engines
- ignores the advice given by the search engines themselves
Because these methods clash with the terms and conditions of most search engines, this can cause the websites to be excluded from the search engines themselves. On Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and the Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines, a list of tactics and strategies used by Black Hat SEO professionals was publicly condemned. this list includes the following techniques:
Black hat techniques
Keyword stuffing: Websites would like to be listed on search engines for unique keywords. Stuffing keywords means creating web pages and websites with a disproportionately large volume of a certain keyword in an attempt to send exaggerated keyword signals to search engines. The idea is to make the website rank well for these keywords.
Hidden text or links: Like keyword stuffing, keyword hiding means switching the color of the font of a text in order to make it hidden from human eyes. The invisible keywords are designed to trick a search engine into providing a good ranking in search engines to the web page itself.
Link schemes: Google documents a range of link schemes that run counter to its Webmaster Guidelines. These include the use of automatically generated programs to link to a website, providing someone a free service in exchange for a positive review and link, and the practice of exchanging links with other websites.
It’s best to go white hat
Although you can achieve some quick gains for your site traffic by using black hat methods, Google penalties are becoming increasingly powerful and can have disastrous effects on your rankings and traffic. No hearing practice can afford to be de-indexed, with so many searches on Google everyday. We believe you shouldn’t take risks when it comes to the online presence of your hearing practice.
AuDSEO
AuDSEO acknowledges that Search Engine Optimization is a practice that continues to evolve, and should never be considered a quick win. That’s why we use White Hat tactics to slowly and surely improve your web presence and increase your search engine rating. Contact us today for more information.