What is White Hat SEO?

You may sometimes hear internet marketers or SEO specialists talk about White Hat SEO. You may have even thrown the word around yourself. But what does it really mean? Are we really participating in White Hat SEO if we are trying to promote our site? What do the search engine gods at Google have to say about all this?

If we had to sum up in one sentence, what exactly WH SEO was, I would say it like this. "White Hat SEO is simply following the guidelines as outlined by search engines when trying to promote my website". Basically, White Hat SEO is the ethical approach to website promotion. No tricks, no scams, no gimmicks. If your mom saw you doing it, she would be proud.

But what about this "guidelines as outlined by search engines" piece? Does Google really have guidelines? They do, and you can find them here: Google's Webmaster Guidelines

If you are serious at all about taking on an SEO project, whether for your own site or for a client, I would highly recommend you read through the webmaster guidelines. Google can be very strict about people not following their rules. They dominate the search industry and they would like to remain that way, but they can only do that if people aren't hacking their system (Using various black hat methods).

No. Google is very strict about their guidelines, but if you are legitimately trying to make the web a better place and create content that is unique to you (aka you didn't rip it off from somewhere) you have nothing to worry about. Even getting involved with link networking like buildmyrank.com or article-marketing-wizard won't get you into trouble. It CAN and probably will negatively affect your search rankings however. A good rule of thumb is: If it sounds too good to be true, than it probably is.

I am often asked "How do I know if I am doing black hat SEO?". My answer: If you don't know whether or not you are performing black hat SEO than you probably aren't.

Theory is nice, but practice is best. Listed below are 3 different things you can do RIGHT NOW to get your site more traffic, all using White Hat Methods.

A lot has bee said about Craigslist, both good and bad, but whatever your feelings on it, it works if you remember these few things.

Remember that people on craigslist are looking for a deal. If you sell super expensive products, you probably aren't going to be seeing any traffic from cragslist. If however, you offer a great product or service at a great price you can do very well on craigslist.

Remember that there are a lot of people posting OFTEN. Your posting will only be on the top for a short while. So make sure that you grab their attention as best you can and post everyday (you are allowed 3 posts per 48 hours USE THEM).

Remember that craigslist is only one of HUNDREDS of free ads sites. Go to similar site search and type in craigslist.org You will find hundreds of other free ads sites from which you could be generating traffic.

Article marketing has a history as old and varied as the internet itself. There are a lot of methods that I would not recommend. Writing for places like hub pages or Squidoo however, can really be beneficial to your overall traffic levels.

You can not only generate traffic, but you can also build some really great backlinks where you get to control the anchor text. This may not necessarily be as easy as using a link farm, but it is worth it and the links stick for a long time!

I LOVE youtube marketing. It is fun, I have seen great results and it can be super effective in sending traffic your way that is ready to buy.

You don't have to necessarily create Oscar award winning videos and you dont even have to have anything other than a half way decent microphone! Creating screencasts with screenr.com is free and it is the program that I use all the time. The free version only allows you 5 minutes of video time which I have found is perfect because I never make videos that get too long or boring.

I will be creating full hubs based on the 3 tips I gave for white hat SEO. I will provide step by step instructions on how to maximize those three things.