What is the right kind of SEO?

What is the right kind of SEO? That is the question we are discussing today! Every local business or charity for that matter should take note of the fact that to get the desired results, the foundation and the implementation of any SEO strategy should be informed and guided by the best and latest white hat SEO tactics.

So what is “White Hat” tactics in SEO?

Many industry professionals agree that white hat can be defined a form of search engine optimization. This type of SEO refers to any practice that improves your search rankings on a search engine results page while maintaining the integrity of your website. In short, white hat tactics do not try to game the system of the search engines’ terms of service. These tactics stay within the bounds as defined by Google, BING, and any search engine you want your website to rank on into the future.

Search engines, especially Google, are taking concerted steps to ensure that their results are the best results possible for every individual user. Which is why – when they find a website uses non-white hat tactics, they heavy penalize them. Non-white hat tactics are often called ‘Black Hat’ Tactics or sometime ‘Grey Hat’. In certain cases, a search engine can de-rank your website forever and then your investment in the website is gone.

As such, if you run a local business it is your responsibility to hire an SEO agency, or marketing agency that has professional personnel with an intricate understanding of the right SEO strategies.

This means that local businesses should refrain from contracting SEO consultants that promise instant results. They should also refrain from contracting SEO experts that do not keep up with the latest changes of algorithm updates.

You need to understand when you hear ‘instant results’ – you can be certain that these SEO guys are using Black hat SEO. Once again, Black Hat SEO is bad, and it refers to techniques used to get higher search rankings quickly and thus breaking search engine rules.

How you spot black hat SEO. It is easier than you would think because it focuses on only search engines bots and not a human audience. Sentences are not written for a living person but a bot that has only the checklist of the search engine’s algorithm. It is becoming increasing interesting, as search engines are now having a human employee check a website.

These employees’ goal is to help catch and stop the Black Hat SEO offenders. Simply, if you are nervous about the SEO expert, just do not use them find someone that can show you White hat SEO projects of our clients. This way you can know your invested dollars get used for good white hat techniques that target a human audience opposed to a search engine.

Furthermore, keeping up with changes is particularly important as search engine companies are constantly changing and refining their search algorithms. They are doing this with the intention of ever improving the accuracy and relevancy of their search results. These changes, unfortunately, are implemented without any prior notifications or warning.

With this in mind, you would not want to hire an SEO company that is constantly left flat-footed by each algorithm update. Ideally, the expert that you hire should have an internal mechanism for identifying any possible changes to search engines. More importantly, the agency should have the capacity and capability to stay on top of any changes search engines make.

Food For Thought – Doing the right kind of SEO for your business

But let’s just say you want to do it yourself. Here are a few ideas to help you. But remember the time you place in doing SEO work – is actually time you are taking away from getting other things done for your business.

Quality Content – What is the right kind of SEO?

The first way of getting a high rank from any search engine is by creating relevant and quality content on a regular basis. By providing your site visitor new fresh and relevant content – daily, weekly, or monthly it bring more traffic to your website because if the user finds the content according to his or her needs. The search engines want you – the business owner / content creator to make the content which people want and it will reward you by enhancing your website’s ranking thereby gaining even more traffic.

Links, Alt Tags, and Meta Description

Using appropriate meta description and providing links with the title that are relevant to the content will surely improve your new website page or post from being found online. By creating the necessary Alt tags to your images is another good white hat SEO technique. Adding an alt tag will help the search engine understand what the images are about. Relevant images can attract a new site visitor; therefore it is a good source of generating traffic and increasing ranking.

Mobile Friendly / Responsive Website

You should always focus on building a mobile-friendly website. The search engine are actually make now mobile ready sites get a lower search rank score. Which bad for your business. Never mind the fact that these days, most search engine users mostly browse through their mobile phone. So if you going to do this website project yourself – build your website correctly from day one or be prepared to start all over if you don’t listen to this suggestion.

Get an SSL Certificate – What is the right kind of SEO?

Your domain should be found as HTTPS not HTTP. This makes a lot of difference because HTTPS means you have a valid SSL certificate. Think of it as a driver license, if you get stopped, this is how a police officer can verify who you are. The internet works the same exact way – an SSL certificate verifies who you are. Many servers contain higher level firewall protection as compared to HTTP – this firewall gets used to stop spam emails and possible hackers too. If anyone is buying something from your website and if they make payment through the online gateway, then its highly recommendable to use an encrypted HTTPS / SSL Certificate.

User Experience – Images, Graphics and Just Keep Updating Your Website Content

Always focus on trying to give your user a delightful experience. Nothing is more disappointing than a user coming to the website and leaving immediately without even browsing. If any user reaches your website, try to make them stay by providing appropriate content, links, images etc. You should also make sure that they are easily able to find their information without any trouble. This helps in reducing the bounce rate.

Use pictures and graphics to grasp the user’s attention. When content gets together with pictures and graphics, it makes more sense to the user and attracts them. Search engines like new content. New content has a chance to crawl fast and it helps you to increase your ranking. Constant reviewing and updating helps a lot in getting a higher rank. Remember you are on a treadmill and will never stop. Unlike the gym membership which people buy and never use – content needs to be updated regularly or your website ranking will decline regularly.

Keyword and Key Phrase Research Matters

Researching of what actually people search for and what words do they use is the key. Increase your keyword or key phrase strength. Don’t just rely on few keywords instead try to make as many keywords as possible for your website. Using relevant keywords important to the content of your business.

This will help to increase your SEO scores and therefore you should focus on thinking from reader’s point of view and then provide keywords for your page. Remember, sites like Google can take as long as 7 months to figure out where your new webpage or blog post from your website needs to live ranking wise.

Here are a few examples of mixing up your keywords and key phrases on your website.

Using ‘tour and travels’ then you should use keywords such as ‘best tours and travels’, ‘holiday packages’, or ‘honeymoon packages’
Using ‘tree removal’ then you should try key phrases like ‘certified arborist’, ‘tree trimming and stump grinding’, or ‘land clearing packages’
Using ‘Local Dentist’ then you should also include key terms like ‘Pain-Free Dentistry’, ‘New Smile In A Day’, or ‘Wisdom Teeth Removal’

Just remember that search engines work by seeking out keywords and key phrases in both the content of a website and the programming code buried into each website. Once again, if you really just want to do it all yourself – we offer some pertinent on-going consulting to ensure you do better than you competitors.

Thanks for reading – What is the right kind of SEO? by i4 Web Services!

Keep in mind, you can always find us on Facebook! It’s not just a matter of using the keywords, what matters is ensuring the keyword or key phrase actually makes sense in the text.

As mentioned above, SEO has proved to be the most cost-effective marketing method in the advertising realm. Nonetheless, it can also prove to be too an expensive endeavor for local businesses, if it does not yield the desired results and or ample ROI. If you are a local business, do not fall victim of ineffective SEO experiments you do yourself. Contact i4 Web Services today to discuss a customized solution for your situation – call 407-416-1515.

What is the right kind of SEO?