Making the Shift from Black to White Hat SEO on Your Site

For several years, many companies using black hat SEO techniques would rank on page one. During this time, companies could use poor quality content and link building channels like directories to achieve rankings. Today, we can tell you as a search engine optimization company, it’s all about creating value for your audience and building links naturally.

The first place to get started is by analyzing the high quality links that your competitors have obtained. By reviewing the pages on their site that are getting good quality links, you will start understanding what businesses in your market value.

Once you have an understanding of what content attracts links, take the time to write great content on your site that will act as link bait to acquire links through a link building outreach program.

Not only should you perform an external link building program, but you should also ensure that the links on your site that link your pages are done so naturally. It’s well known that anchor text that is overused is viewed as spam by Google and the other search engines.

To avoid over using anchor text, it’s important to know how your site is currently using anchor text. Open Site Explorer is a great tool to achieve this. Simply open Open Site Explorer in a browser and type in the URL of your home page, then click the Anchor Text tab. You want to look at your anchor text usage in general and specifically for the main pages of your site.

If you have too many links with your keywords, your links may be over optimized. Here are some simple ways to ensure that your links are naturally diverse.

Terms with Your Brand Name
If you look at sites that have been built without SEO in mind, you will notice that they have a combination of anchor text. Some will link using the brand name, while others with use general anchor text, simple URLs and even page titles. In some of your anchor text, simply use your brand name.

General Anchor Text
When you write content will calls to action, at times you will use terms like “click here” or even the name of the product or offer. This in another way to make your anchor text read naturally to the search engines.

Basic URLs
Using the actual URL of the page that you want to link to is the third way to mix in natural links to your website copy.

Page Titles
As you add great content to your site, use the actual topic of the post or page to add contextual links to your site. This is an easy way to internally link your site to lower level pages using natural anchor text.

If you have any questions at all, please leave a comment below. We are here to help.