Importance of White Hat SEO | Net66

One cannot over-state the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO). When you want to find a local business, hang-out or event, do you go and get the phone book? Of course not; nowadays everyone heads to the nearest computer and brings up their search engine of choice. Therefore, your website needs to be prominently displayed, on the first page and close to the top of the results. The reason for this is quite simple: pages near to the top of the search engine are often seen as being the most reliant, the most trustworthy and the most authentic. Here at Net66, this is our goal. We aim to provide authentic search results based on organic SEO methods.

Generally speaking, there are two ways to get your website onto the first page of Google. Firstly, you can purchase some Google advertising; this is known as pay per click or PPC advertising. In terms of SEO, this is often seen as less valuable as many people often ignore the ads. Nevertheless, there are some benefits to PPC advertising: enough that Net66 runs campaigns that fully utilise the power of PPC. For instance, the results are instantaneous (something that organic SEO cannot offer) and it does drive traffic. Secondly, there is organic SEO. This is often touted as being the most important factor in online marketing. This claim is not without foundation; as mentioned earlier, the higher you are on Google, the more trusted and visited your website will become.

As such, there is vast temptation to engage in unethical practices known as “black hat” SEO. Some methods of black hat SEO include:

• Hidden Text
• Spam Blog or Forum Posts
• Keyword stuffing
• Use of 'Link Farms'

However, these methods of SEO are, typically, contrary to Google's Webmaster guidelines and, as such, often get 'punished' by Google. This could result in your webpage being removed from the search engine giants results and not being indexed. Therefore, all your hard work and exhaustive SEO activities will be useless and your website will remain unvisited.

Thus, here at Net66, we believe that it is much more beneficial to engage in “white hat” SEO. These methods help your site to climb up the Google rankings in a more natural, ethical and approved manner. Some of the most effective white hat SEO techniques are:

• Ensuring that your site has quality content on your site.
• Using structural or semantic mark up and separate content from presentation.
• Providing proper titles and meta data for your pages.
• Doing adequate keyword research, and targeting your campaign for your area.
• Quality inbound links.

In addition to being both safer and ethical, white hat SEO also has benefits for your business or website. For instance, there is no point in getting to the top of the search results for one term, using unethical methods of optimisation, only to have high traffic and no sales due to people not finding what they need on your site. After all, how long do you normally browse a site if it is not what you searched for?

To ensure that your website observes the guidelines distributed by Google and doesn't violate any of the search engine's rules, it is advised that you employ an in-house webmaster or recruit a professional SEO agency, such as Net66, that has knowledge of the guidelines, and sticks to them. In conclusion, a poor, erratic or unethical approach to SEO can be damning for your website. Employ an agency that acknowledges that. Employ Net66.