Learn which white hat SEO tactics will have the biggest impact on your website and how to double, treble, or even tenfold your traffic.
When selecting where pages rank for a search, the Google algorithm considers hundreds, if not thousands, of signals.
Knowing which elements are most important and optimizing for them may make all the difference between success and failure.
This article will focus on areas that, in my experience, provide excellent outcomes and a significant return on investment.
Following are the white hat SEO techniques you need to know:
First and foremost, there is mobile.
I originally advocated for a “mobile-first” strategy to SEO in March of 2015, when I coined the term “Mobilegeddon” to describe Google’s impending mobile upgrade.
The moniker stuck, but on April 21, 2015, the upgrade didn’t cause as much of a stir as anticipated.
It did, however, serve as a reminder to everyone that mobile was no longer “the future.” Those who ignored the advice to become mobile would soon suffer the consequences.
In other words, Google is prioritizing mobile, and if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, you’ll likely suffer a penalty in the SERPs.
This is particularly true for websites that use obtrusive interstitial advertisements. Log in to your Search Console account and look at the Mobile Usability Report if you’re not sure if your website satisfies the requirements for being mobile-friendly.
Google will notify you of any mobile difficulties so you can take necessary action.
Keep an eye on AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) as well (AMP). This open-source project uses AMP HTML, which promises “instant” loading, which is especially useful on mobile devices.
Although Google has been pushing this hard, early feedback has been mixed. I’m not ready to advocate getting on the AMP bandwagon just now unless you have a news site.
Claim Your Local Business Listing on Mobile
The two types of searches, mobile and local, are intimately linked.
According to The Mobile Playbook, local intent is present in 20% of all searches. Smartphone users look for location information 94% of the time, visit a business 51% of the time, contact a store 48% of the time, and make a purchase 29% of the time.
As Google’s ability to offer hyper-local results improves, having comprehensive and accurate data in one’s Google My Business page becomes increasingly crucial.
Because fewer than half of all firms have claimed their company listing, this is still an easy victory.
User Experience is a priority (UX)
Google has long urged webmasters to put a strong emphasis on creating a positive user experience.
Websites that do so will gain the most as the system becomes “smarter.” Writing clean code is only one aspect of a good user experience.
“The objective of UX design in business is to enhance customer happiness and loyalty through the usefulness, simplicity of use, and enjoyment offered in the engagement with a product,” according to an Oxford Journal research. Your website serves as the product for us.
The goal is to establish a user’s aim first, then design a navigation approach that generates a pleasant emotion and leads to a favorable overall experience.
It’s simple to include UX best practices. Templates and tips abound on the internet. A/B testing is what distinguishes the professionals from the novices.
Each of us has personal prejudices that will impact how a web page is built.
You’ll be able to quantify what’s working and what isn’t by performing a series of tests, and you’ll be able to keep testing until you get it perfect.
Researching Keywords
Another white hat SEO technique is keyword research.
That’s correct, keyword research is still crucial. With Google continuously giving fewer KW data, Moz and Ahrefs, two of the most popular SEO tool providers, have developed and upgraded KW tools in an attempt to fill the vacuum.
However, owing to RankBrain, the manner one goes about doing and utilizing KW research has altered.
Machine learning is at the heart of RankBrain. Rather than relying only on metadata strings, Google can now place things in context.
Google now recognizes subtleties in a language such as stems, synonyms, and responses.
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Parent Topics and Keyword Groups are features of the current generation of keyword tools that take this into account.
Users can utilize this data to create content that includes a sequence of contextually appropriate words.
Just be cautious and resist the urge to cram every permutation of a word discovered in a KW batch into a single page.
Have a Content Marketing Strategy That Outperforms Your Rivals
Only 37% of respondents feel they are effective at content marketing, according to a 2015 B2C research conducted by The Content Marketing Institute.
It’s critical to get content correct because it’s one of the top two Google ranking criteria. Once again, those willing to put in the effort to make it happen will be rewarded handsomely.
Everyone talks about “excellent content,” but what exactly does that imply? It all boils down to providing good material, identifying the appropriate audience, and then reaching out to them.
This doesn’t have to be a challenging activity. It all comes down to empathy for your prospects and clients. To summarise it, Ann Handley devised the following formula:
Keep “conversational” search questions in mind. Over 30% of all searches produced rich results as of July 2015.
Many of these responses were in response to questions such as “who, what, when, where, why, and how.”
While it’s fantastic to be at position 0 and receive the traffic that comes with it, the advantage is generally fleeting. Rich responses have a turnover rate of more than 55%.
More significantly, I believe that the technology used for conversational search/rich responses is being applied to voice search.
Voice search is the fastest-growing kind of search, with 55 percent of adolescents and 41% of adults using it daily.
Take Advantage of Schema to Gain a Competitive Advantage
According to Searchmetrics, almost a third of Google search results had Rich Snippets enabled by Schema in 2014 (the most current data available), while just 0.3 percent of websites using the Google-approved Schema tool.
I believe that percentage has improved in recent years, but the possibility to leverage Schema as a competitive advantage remains enormous.
Schema is a collection of various HTML tags that may be applied to a Web page, which can be found at Schema.org. These tags help to produce a more detailed description that shows up in search results (commonly known as rich snippets).
Rich Snippets for Organizations, Events, Music, People, Products, Recipes, Review Ratings, and Videos are often created using Schema.
Link Building
Link building is one of the best white hat SEO techniques.
It may become less essential in rankings in the future, but that day hasn’t arrived yet. You’re doing yourself a disservice if you neglect one of the top two ranking variables.
The trick is to obtain the appropriate kind of linkages. Links to your site that are relevant. Links that need to be reviewed by a human. The many types of links that may be obtained.
Building a resource center is my preferred method of obtaining relevant links. A resource center may be used on almost any website.
An excellent resource center helps to develop trust and authority in addition to generating connections. On SEJ, you may read about my step-by-step approach to creating a resource center that draws links and improves ranks.
To dramatically improve organic traffic, you don’t need to monitor thousands or even 200 ranking signals.
Concentrate solely on SEO learnings. If you do, you may easily double, treble, or even 10X the number of visitors that come to your website in 2017.