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Modern SEO is a complicated discipline. Search engines use many signals to place SERPs. This means that there are many aspects of web pages that must be considered to get results.
Link building is a critical part of SEO. Ranking a page in search engines is heavily affected by the quality and quantity of its backlinks. It’s been this way since the inception of the search.
In the old days, backlinks were counted equally. This led to link farms and other dark hat linking schemes. Google and other search engines responded by removing this type of manipulation from their algorithms and working tirelessly to improve them.
Your site could be penalized today if you try to use black-hat methods to improve SERP performance. There are many white-hats, or legitimate, relevant backlink-building strategies that still work. These techniques are not easy to implement and require a lot of time and effort. However, the rewards can be tremendous.
Here’s a comprehensive guide to the topic. We will discuss what white-hat link building is and how it compares with black hat methods. Also, we’ll highlight the dangers. Next, we will discuss 7 white-hat link-building strategies that can help your site rise to the top search engine results pages. Let’s get on with it
What is White Hat Link Building?
White hat linking is when other authoritative websites link to yours. They all rely on organic links and not paid placement. Search engines don’t penalize white-hat link-building strategies because they add value to the content.
John Muller, the Senior Analyst for Webmaster Trends at Google, recently confirmed that it is okay to reach out to websites and share that you have published a great piece on your website. If they like it, they can link back to it or let their audiences know.
White Hat Vs. Black Hat Link Building
While white hat SEO is focused on building useful, high-quality backlinks, black hat links building focuses more on creating backlinks through any possible means. They are the opposites of each other in terms of SEO techniques. Search engines place their users’ search experience first, so they are wary of sites that try to increase relevance through tricks or inorganic linking.
White hat SEO techniques that include building backlinks in guest posts on other websites or within author profiles can be used. These relationships can be used to create niche edit requests where site owners suggest content for other sites or offer a barter arrangement.
Black hat techniques are, in contrast, a way to take shortcuts and avoid all the hard work. One popular option is private blog networks (PBNs), which are groups of blogs that serve little another purpose than to provide backlinks. Another is automated link placement tools, which focus more on quality than quantity. They all attempt to trick search engines, which can backfire spectacularly.
7 White Hat Link Building Techniques
It should now be clear that there is no way to succeed in SEO if you don’t know the difference between black and white hat link-building techniques. This should be clear. Here are seven white hat techniques to build high-quality links that will help your website rise to the top of search results.
1. High-Quality Content
A high-quality, quality content that supports any link-building strategy is the core of every strategy. This serves two purposes. It creates genuine visitor engagement which lets search engines know that you are worth sending traffic. It also gives other websites a reason to link to your content.
It is one of the most important SEO best practices. However, it takes considerable research and effort to create high-quality content. It’s a white-hat method.
It is important to take the time to research the pages that rank high for your target keywords and to create content that highlights the best aspects of each page. This creates an incentive for authority websites to link to your content, thereby enhancing your SERP performance.
2. Guest Blogging
A powerful white-hat link-building strategy is to look for opportunities to guest post at related websites with high authority. 53% believe link building is a way to improve search engine ranking. Google is more interested in websites that rank high in its search engine ranking algorithm. Google considers a backlink linking to your content from one of these sites to be a positive sign for your site. It is a seal of approval that the site has in Google’s eyes.
You can’t just pay an authority site for outbound links. Google’s algorithm considers the quality and origin of backlinks. You need to find a way organically to get backlinks, which you can do by guest posting. It’s a simple but tedious tactic that you can master.
Guest posting doesn’t require you to be an expert in your field. You can still learn guest blogging even without any writing experience. It’s crucial to research the site and write content that adds value. If you do this, other sites will be more open to your work.
3. The Skyscraper Technique
Another benefit of creating quality content is the ability to use another type of white-hat link-building strategy. This is the skyscraper method. It involves creating content that ranks higher than existing content and then trying to duplicate its backlinks. This tactic is not easy to master, but it can make your content stand out.
It is easy to understand how the skyscraper technique works. These are:
- Find a target keyword. Search for high-ranking results for the keyword that you believe you can improve.
- Make your content superior
- Ask the original sites to switch links to yours.
This is a much more risk-free approach than creating new, untested content. You can improve upon something already attracting quality backlinks so you know that there is a lot of demand for the content you are creating. Although the skyscraper strategy is not as effective as white-hat link building, it is still a viable and legitimate option to add to your link-building strategy.
4. Method of Moving Man
Content isn’t static on the internet so it changes frequently. You can also use this to your advantage by using the white-hat moving man method to build links. It’s a method that replaces links to content that has gone offline or is otherwise unavailable with your own.
It’s easy. The first step is to identify content with a lot of backlinks or some that are particularly valuable. Next, replicate the content and ask sites linking to it to reconsider replacing dead links with those that lead to your site.
Finding broken links is the hardest part of this strategy. You can start by searching for competitors in your niche that has rebranded or gone out of business. Next, look for sites with backlinks to these competitors. Once you have identified the missing content with many broken backlinks, it is easy to find the sites that still have them.
5. Niche Edits
You can also build backlinks by creating content that is specifically tailored to add value and rank to a page. Then, ask the page’s owner for a link. This is known as “making niche edits”, and it’s an excellent, white-hat link-building strategy.
It is easy to see why. Both parties benefit and there are no real disadvantages to this arrangement. You gain a link and the site linking to you increases the value of its content. This protects its page rank.
There is one caveat: Some site owners won’t consider niche edits unless you pay them. While there is nothing wrong with this, it can lead to significant increases in your costs if you aren’t prepared. Before you create any custom content, it is a good idea to get to know the owner of the desired linking site partner. You can proceed if they are open to niche edits.
6. Reciprocal Linking
The simplest white-hat link-building tactic is also one of the easiest to implement. This is where you link to trusted sites as your content sources and ask them to link back to your article. This type of reciprocal linking is a big part of earned backlinks. You’re trading outbound links for inbound links to your site. To avoid creating too many 2-way backlinks, limit the number of websites you are linking to.
However, not all site owners are willing to reciprocally link. This is especially true for sites that lack authority. It’s not worth the effort if the other side doesn’t have enough. Although it is possible to build reciprocal links early on in your site’s existence, it can be difficult to do so. However, this tactic becomes more valuable as it grows in stature.
7. Blog Commenting
Although there is some controversy over whether blog commenting can be used as a white-hat backlink strategy, there are still reasons to believe that it could play an important role in your overall linking efforts. It is also easy to do.
You only need to look for content on websites with high authority that meets three criteria:
- The content is relevant to your industry or keywords that you are targeting
- Visitors can comment on the content
- A nofollow tag is not implemented in the comment section
You can leave a comment on a site of high authority with relevant content and a link to your site if you find one. Your comment should add value to the discussion. Links to other websites are not allowed and may be removed. This will increase your site’s SEO performance over time and should result in additional organic traffic.
White Hat Link Building Techniques are the Core of Good SEO Strategy
This is the bottom line. To achieve top SERP performance, you must simultaneously improve multiple aspects of your site and its contents. Google and other search engines don’t reveal the exact composition of the ranking algorithms. This makes it difficult to hit a moving target.
Nonetheless, gaining as many high-quality backlinks to both your site and its contents as possible is the best way to increase search engine performance. Although the methods used to measure your backlinks may change, their relative importance will not. White hat link building using these methods should be at the heart of your overall SEO strategy.
Avoiding mistakes will lead to more work and penalties. Now all you have to do is put together your SEO strategy by using these tactics and then execute it with all the resources that you have.
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