White Hat SEO Techniques

In SEO Basics Tutorial, White hat SEO refers to those practices generally regarded as ethical. White hat SEO can also refer to a consultant or specialist who uses ethical practices to aid Web site owners in the design and maintenance of their Web pages. White Hat techniques conform to all guidelines of search engines and never deceive (cheat). White Hat gives importance to the users and prefers creating valuable contents for the users. White hat may take long time to get indexed, but the result is long-lasting.

White Hat SEO Aims to make it easier for the search engines to tell when your site's content is relevant to a query. In most cases we do this by making a site genuinely (sincerely) more useful to its human visitors, so that they will recommend it to others by linking it from their own websites. The most important White Hat technique is simply to have a website worth recommending.

Use Original Related Content
The more original content (directly written for your website) you have on your website the better. This is for many reasons, however one of the most direct being, more content equals potentially more keywords and the more keywords the better the rankings.

Consistently Add New Content
Adding new content to your website is not only preferred by search engines but by users as well. (Blogs perform extremely well because of this.) Making minor updates to previous content is not considered as adding new content.

Big Keyword Text Size
Having keywords stand out from the rest of the text on a page places more importance on them, thus making them more valuable then any keywords within the text itself. The best practice is to use keywords within your headings (<H1>, <H2>, <H3>) as these are typically larger in size than the rest of the text on the page.

Stylize and Emphasizing Keywords

Using effects such as bold italics and underlining to highlight keywords will also place more importance on them than the rest of the text on the page. However it is important to do so within limitations. Bolding an entire paragraph will create the opposite and potentially negative results.

Keep Content Updated
The newer the content on your website the better. We live in a fast paced environment and things change quickly, thus making some content outdated fairly quickly. Keep your content updated and fresh at all times.

Limit Content Length
Generally speaking users scan content online rather than read it. Producing three pages on one given subject rather than one long page will not only achieve better rankings but it will be easier to maintain user interest as well.

Use One Domain
Putting all of your content under one roof will help build better rankings as it will not confuse search engines and visitors when navigating from page to page. Moving visitors from one domain to will set off a red flag.

Keep Your Code Clean
Table based layout and designs are bulky and the way of the past. HTML and CSS layouts are short and clean allowing search engines to get to your content quickly. Keep your code clean and well compiled to allow easier access from search engines.

Stay Away From Unlawful Content
Search engines will not put up with any unlawful use of copyrighted content nor will they promote any website that condones illegal behavior. Stay far away from any unlawful activities and do not raise any suspicions amongst search engines.

Do Not Hide Content
One sure way to get blocked from a search engine is to hide content. This is a black hat method of SEO accomplished by coloring text the same color as the background of a website so that only a search engine spider can find it.

Do Not Practice Any Cloaking
Cloaking, serving up different content to search engines than to actual users, is highly banned by search engines and is also a sure fire way to be blacklisted immediately.

Do Not Use Doorway Pages
Doorway pages were once popular however, search engines have caught on and know when you are pretending to be one thing when you are not. Stay away from doorway pages and take down any that you might currently have set up.