If you ask any SEO expert which the best SEO technique to implement is, he will definitely recommend the white hat technique. Why is that?

In our previous article, we have discussed what black hat and white hat SEO techniques are. A brief review on both terms is that white hat is a safe technique that is focused on making your site more visible through quality content and organic link. Meanwhile, the black hat is a risky technique as you will have to break some Google rules in order to generate traffic to your websites. Black hat SEO technique is an old technique commonly used by rule-breakers to generate more traffic on their page for a short time. Why short time? Because once Google finds out, your websites can no longer run normally as Google will either banned or penalised your web page. For this reason, many experts will recommend you to turn to be white hatters rather than black hatters. Besides, being a white hatter means you can generate long-term traffic which is also known as Ethical SEO.

See also: SEO Writing Tips in 2019 & How to Actually Rank on Google

“SEO is not about gaming Google. It is simply about creating content that people want and that satisfies their search intent.” – Kimberly Kosaka

Further the discussion, in order to generate long-term visitors and traffics, you need to be able to follow the white hat SEO rules. There are three rules a white hatter must obey as written by Kimberly Kosaka, a marketing director at Alexa, in her e-book. These rules are meant to ease your SEO job by putting aside spammy tactics and generating more customer-focused content.

Rule #1 Use and optimise keyword research to discover content demand

Tips you should follow:

·         Choose target keywords that are fairly popular. The ranking for your keywords should depend on the competitive strength of your site. For example, you can select low-competition keywords that your site can rank for. The important thing is you should be realistic in how high of a competition level you can take and still get results.

• Include target keywords in all the right places like URL, title tag, alt images, body content, etc.
• Instead of repeating the same target keywords, use other keywords that are related to your target keyword which the body of your content.
• Use target keywords in an anchor text of internal links to your new content.

Note: You should create and find a great opportunity for long tail keywords that your audience understand. Additionally, you should meet costumer’s area, speak to them naturally through your blog post, and use terms they understand.

Rule #2 Create SEO content that answers the search intent

Tips to follow:

• Think that your content is a question and answer session. The keyword query is the question while your content is the answer.
• Be a useful resource for your audience. Provide your searcher what they want or need.
• Be clear in your title tag and meta description about what your content promises.

Note: You do not need to be a genius in your SEO. You can put a little bit of empathy for user searching to go a long way to get a result in SEO, Kosaka advised. Therefore, when you create a keyword, be sure that you think about your customers whether they are searching to earn something new, purchase things, or find a solution for their problems. Phrases that they type reveals a lot about their intention. Here are some tools to help you with a popular search: Buzzsumo, Answer The Public, Google Trends, Facebook Trends, Twitter Trends, YouTube Trends, Alexa, etc.

Rule #3 Help Google know what your content is about by getting votes of confidence

Tips you can follow:

• Make sure that your inbound link comes from a quality, trust-worthy site.
• Reach out to influencers to let them know your content by pointing out why your content might add value to their content.
• Personalise your outreach is a genuine, one-on-one way that you know the blogger.
• Building mutually beneficial relationship takes time, so be patient with the process.

Note: The key in this rule three is to build a relationship and reaching out to other journalist or blogger that you have awesome content. The more focus you put on serving searcher’s needs, the more benefit you will gain. Therefore, you should avoid sending no personalisation emails to influencers as it can burn bridges along the process.

Read also: Is SEO Enough to Bring Success for Business?