The Basics of White-Hat SEO You Need to Know

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When it comes to digital marketing, not strategy is complete without SEO. Yes, unlike other methods like PPC marketing, SEO does take a while to bear fruit.

This can make it feel like your efforts are in vain. The reason why it takes longer for the results to show is simply due to how big the internet is. Google needs to parse through, and its algorithm needs to analyze every site in order to determine search ranking, and this can take weeks to months to occur.

Another big mistake people commonly make with SEO is that they use scam tactics to boost their rankings. The issue here is that, even if it does work, that success is very short lived and you might even be penalized as a result.

That is why you need to know not only how to integrate SEO into your digital marketing plan, but to also use these white-hat SEO methods:

Optimize Your Website

There is a lot wrong with your website that you might not even realize. For starters, every old and outdated page that is still published but not linked up to your main site is hurting your ranking. You need to go through, clean up your website, ensure there are no broken links, and much more. Site speed and security, for example, are now weighed in when determining your ranking.

Improve Your Content

Content is king, which is why optimizing it and publishing the best content moving forward is great not just for search engines, but for the real users who visit your site.

Just remember:

To update old content rather than re-publish it
To make your content “skim-friendly” with plenty of headers
Longer content performs better

Infographics, videos, and interactive media are also great to boost engagement and shares. Try mixing it up until you find the sweet spot.

Clean Up Your Backlink Profile

Offsite, you will want to go through and find your backlinks. If the site is of poor quality, it is wise to ask for the link to be removed or to disown it through Google. This can happen even if you are a new site, simply because expired domains can be adopted after a certain period, meaning you inherit not just the name, but its legacy. Once your backlink profile is cleaned up, you will then want to start on a white-hat guest post strategy to improve the quality of your backlink profile and to expand your reach and visibility.

The best way to boost your search ranking is to use managed SEO services from a digital marketing agency like Click Intelligence. That way you can benefit from specialist help in all four categories. If you don’t have the expertise, don’t stress, and don’t risk hurting your site’s ranking by perhaps committing to outdated and spam SEO tactics.

SEO is often seen as a mystery to many businesses and companies, and for a good reason. Google does not release the specifics of its algorithm updates, and so, therefore, it is up to SEO specialists to go and deduce using data what the new algorithm change is now looking for and how it has affected their clients.