Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial factor for most online businesses to consider. It can make a lot of difference in driving traffic and boosting their business. There are various ways they can improve themselves from an SEO perspective, such as hiring an SEO consultancy service. White hat SEO techniques are ways of boosting your website’s rank by obeying the search engine’s guidelines. White hat techniques are safer and can help your site in the long term. Here are 7 top white hat SEO techniques you must follow to rank your website. 

1. Prioritize Mobile Devices

Prioritizing mobile accessibility helps in: 

• Faster website crawlability
• Better user experience
• Higher Google search ranking

For reference: Google has various metrics over which it indexes a website, and one of those is having a mobile-first indexing priority. Most online audiences browse the internet extensively on their mobile phones, and this number has been steadily increasing with the popularity of smartphones. Therefore, providing these users with a better experience means there will be greater conversation rates when they click on your site.    

2. Research your Keywords

Keywords are at the heart of SEO and are among the best white hat techniques you can use. Keywords in your content tell the search engine what the content is about and provide your site link to users when they search for it. Here are some ways you can make the most out of your keyword research: 

• Use smart keywords
• Avoid keyword stuffing (this is a black hat technique)
• Integrate keywords naturally
• Research competitors’ keywords

We will illustrate this with an example. Consider the topic ‘Cars.’ As you can see, it is too broad, and it won’t be easy to find appropriate keywords for it. Similarly, consider the topic ‘The filament of a car headlight.’ This topic is too narrow, and no user will be searching for any keywords you come up with for this. Now consider the topic ‘What is the best car engine?’ This topic is just right, and you can come up with smart keywords, like car financing, that can help bring your site to the top of search results.    

3. Link-Building

White hat link-building is another SEO technique that involves getting your website’s link posted on other websites. This helps you build authority on your website as Google considers quality backlinks as one of its metrics. Here are some practical methods in which you can create backlinks in a white hat manner: 

• Guest posting to other websites. Helps create high-quality backlinks. 
• Create quality pieces of content. This makes people want to share them.
• Build relationships online with authoritative blogs. 

4. Improve your Website’s Speed

Having a website that loads fast is crucial from an SEO point of view and digital marketing. This is for two main reasons: 

• Improves user experience
• Improves search engine ranking.

Here is an example. Imagine you are in the shoes of a user who is in a rush and needs to find an answer or product fast. They click on your website, and it takes a few seconds longer to load than usual. Do you think that the user will stay? When can the user go back and click on another website?

Furthermore, having a faster site means search engine crawlers can go through your website faster, which is one of the guidelines for ranking your website. As you can see, page speed is quite crucial. You can increase website speed by: 

• Minimizing HTML and CSS code
• Using browser caching
• Optimizing images

5. Use Schema

Schema is a rich snippet tool provided by Google that can help you integrate rich snippets into your website. While rich snippets are not a direct ranking factor by Google, they can help improve in various ways. Some of these are: 

• Increasing Click-through rate (CTR) 
• Increase visitors 
• Help you take advantage of any SEO strategy
• Gives your site a competitive edge. 

6. Improve Your Content

In essence, it is your content that visitors click on your website for. Having high-quality content that fulfills visitors’ intent is the primary purpose of all search engines. Some ways you can improve your content are: 

• Research your content 
• Write in a well-structured way. 
• Research your competitors’ content. 

Writing better content can also help improve the other techniques that you make sure of. For example, it will get your website ranked higher as there will be higher CTR. The Google search engine will realize that your content is valuable and raise its rank. Additionally, it will improve your chance of getting backlinks as other websites will want to link helpful content. 

7. Using Alt Tags 

You can also increase your website’s search visibility on the image search part of search engines. Alt tags help provide context to search engines about what your image is about and index it accordingly. They are helpful for a variety of reasons: 

• Help you rank higher on search engines 
• Drive additional traffic to your website
• Improve the user experience.

Final Thoughts

There are various SEO techniques that you can use to improve your website’s rank on search engines. White hat SEO techniques ensure you follow Google’s guidelines which will be much more helpful in the long run. By using the techniques mentioned above, we are confident that you will be able to boost your website’s search engine ranking in no time.