Types of SEO
As you know about SEO you must know the types of SEO, there are different types of SEO that will help you differentiate in what to do and what not in order to have an effective SEO strategy.
the objectives of this part are:
- Explain the SEO hats
- Describe the different types of SEO
- Explain SEO best practices
- Highlight SEO spam
In the world of SEO, there’s a lot of talk about SEO hats.
There are three types of SEO hats that you should know about: white hat, grey hat, and black hat.
Each of these hats represents that type of technique used by people for optimization.
We will discuss each of these techniques in detail.
White hat SEO
If you search for the definition of the term white hat, you may find that it relates to rightness or goodness.
In the SEO domain, white hat refers to techniques that comply with Google’s webmaster guidelines or any other search engine guidelines.
So, search engine optimizers who do not stray from these defined techniques are considered white hat SEOs
They do not use techniques to deceive search engines by creating false relevance, over-optimizing the website, or trying inappropriate link-building techniques.
To understand the Google webmaster guidelines, completely check the following reading material.
Where every SEO or business wanting to implement SEO should start is by reading the Google webmaster guidelines.
There is a significant amount of helpful information there on developing, optimizing, and managing websites.
The guidelines also provide specific parameters for acceptable tactics and tactics to be avoided.
Benefits of white hat SEO
- Security
- Avoid penalties
- Greater client trust
First and foremost, Security. Knowing that your tactics have been within the google guidelines and performed according to best practices, you can be confident in your work.
Staying within best practices and the Google guidelines will avoid any possible penalties leading to exclusion from the search engine.
It also builds greater client trust when they know that you have adhered to the guidelines set forth by Google.
Risks:
- It May take longer for results, but low-risk
These efforts, while they may take a bit longer to achieve, last longer and are more secure.
According to google’s guidelines or any search engine for that matter, it presents a low-risk, high reward.
Black hat SEO
Now, unlike White hat SEO, Black hat SEOs are those who do not comply with the Google webmaster guidelines.
They use all sorts of tips and tricks to fool the search engines.
They may use various illegitimate techniques for false relevance such as cloaking, false redirects, hidden texts or links, doorway pages, scraped content, and abusing rich snippets.
Benefits of black hat SEO
The benefit of black hat SEO is that you could see your ranking increase much more quickly which would bring more visitors and this would happen in a very short time.
But remember, this also comes with high risk.
Going outside of the search engine guidelines and implementing tactics that could be seen as black hat or borderline acceptable is playing a game.
It’s a game of cat and mouse but you are the mouse.
If you choose to employ these tactics, they may only be good until search engines or Google catches on.
The next algorithm update could bring about disastrous consequences.
Constantly chasing tactics that escape the search engine or attempt to fool the search engine, it’s a high-risk activity and you will never be able to rest as it’s a game that keeps going in order to recover penalized sits or create new ones in their place.
If you choose to employ these tactics, they will only be good until the search engine catches on.
Gray hat SEO
Gray hat SEOs may still use marginal tricks and techniques to fool the search engine such as keyword stuffing, duplicate or thin content, blog comment spam, buying positive reviews, selling links, and negative SEO, which is maliciously harming competitors.
They may also use other tricks such as SEO squatting, Google bombing, cybersquatting, private blog networks, and automating Google queries.
While some of these tactics may help with your ranking, it is certainly not a guarantee.
In addition, since many of these tactics also target competitors, they could help you but only if undetectable are used.
Many gray hats branch out into developing networks and produce an income by selling access or software.
Implementing these marginal tactics could gain you faster results but they also come at a cost.
It could be your reputation, it found out.
Other gray hats or black hats can be vindictive if they feel slighted or threatened.
In addition, there is the threat of a penalty or exclusion from the search engine.
Just as easy as rankings is gained, they could be lost.
Moreover, some of the tactics focus on search engines and not users.
Therefore, the user experience may suffer which affects your sales or leads.
SEO mistakes for diffrent types of SEO
Now, imagine that you searched for SEO help online.
But what you found was an article from 2004, recommending that you create doorway pages;
pages that are hidden from users but made just for the search engines and they are full of keyword-stuffed text.
If you do this, it would be an almost certain penalty and exclusion from Google.
Yet, this was some of the advice going around in the early days.
Now, imagine hundreds of these tips and techniques being published every year as a result You see, the internet is full of bad articles promoting SEO techniques that can get you removed from the search engines.
Using the wrong keywords
Another mistake is using the wrong keywords.
Basically, it’s another mistake that people don’t usually measure the results and adjust accordingly.
occasionally, the keyword research looks good and you have a great set of keywords to use in your optimization, and then it may lead to an increase in visitors but not an increase in sales, leads, or other goals of your website.
however, the keywords may have to be reevaluated.
They may have been good to get people to the website but the content of the website is not exactly what the keyword promised.
The best practices of SEO have largely remained unchanged.
But once SEO starts working with techniques that fool the search engines or falsify relevancy, they get into trouble.
Many of the techniques promoted may sound good but you have to do your research before you start executing questionable or even worse discredited techniques on a website.
Understanding and using analytics for types of SEO
Understanding and using analytics to measure your results and progress are critical to the proper execution of an SEO strategy.
Simply getting visitors to a website isn’t always good enough.
Search engine optimization is about helping websites have optimal relevance.
therefore, getting the right visitors who are the best customers or prospects of that website.
Analytics helps you refine your work, find additional opportunities, and realign keyword selections.
The last mistake made by SEOs is not learning other disciplines.
eventually, SEO has so much to offer all other marketing disciplines from keyword research, which is the foundation, to a deep understanding of how search engines work and how programming affects search engine spiders and ranking.
Keyword optimization is necessary and paid search advertising, display advertising, email marketing, and Social media.
The worst thing an SEO can do is remain static.
Learn analytics, site design principles, user experience, content marketing, and other disciplines as well.
Adding to your knowledge will enable you to understand SEO at a deeper level and in turn, you can bring a wealth of knowledge to these other disciplines as well.
Dive deep into programming, design, and writing, something that interests you and you will find it incredible that it compliments your skill making you more valuable and reliable as an SEO.
SEO best practices: No hidden content
Google’s rule for SEOs was to do things for the user first.
What that meant was, to create a website that was usable, valuable, and enabled users to find what they want rather than creating a website for search engines to rank well.
Therefore, our first consideration for best practices is to make a website for humans.
Make your website a destination that informs, entertains, and provides a reason to return.
In doing so, you will naturally create content for humans and it will work well with the search engines.
I have seen many bloggers end up ranking well in search engines not because they knew SEO but because they wrote created content that people wanted to read.
One rule that is expressly a best practice is never to hide content.
The search engines want to see and evaluate the same content that humans will see.
Creating content, specifically for search engine bots, could result in a penalty or at worst exclusion from the search engine altogether.
Many times SEOs attempt to appear more relevant by hiding words within the code of a page by using the same color as the page background.
Stuffing dozens of words into alt text, title tags, and other areas that are not seen by humans but are seen by bots.
This behavior is not only against best practices but it is one of the oldest forms of falsifying relevancy.
Do this and the search engine will easily catch you.
It is not high-tech, it isn’t elegant, and it is very easily found.
Not only could it get you demoted in the ranking but it could get you a penalty that eliminates your website altogether.
SEO best practices: Optimized snippet
The first thing that a user will see from your website in the search engine results snippet.
It is pulled from the page title, page URL, and meta description tag.
This is the first marketing message a searcher will see about your company.
It’s your first impression, so you have to get it right.
Use a title that describes what the teacher will see on the page.
By doing this, you will naturally use descriptive words from your keyword strategy.
I also find it best to use short sentences or phrases that are quickly and easily read.
Simply repeating words will not communicate your page’s value effectively.
The searcher has a question and this is where you present your answer.
In addition, the meta description, while not a part of the ranking algorithm, is the text that you can use to develop the information on your page and present it to the searcher.
Again. when using short sentences that clearly state the purpose and content will be in the snippet and keywords tend to be bolded in the results.
SEO best practices: Prominent heading
Headings are sometimes an overlooked design function.
However, they provide an excellent layout tool that benefits both readers and search engines.
The best method of learning how to use headings is to look at a newspaper.
Newspapers utilize headings in a remarkable layout technique.
Headings allow you, the reader, to scan through the content and find the content you want or need.
Here’s the key. No one wants to read paragraphs of text on a web page.
It’s hard to read and it won’t keep anyone’s attention.
So, to enable better reading and scanning, which is what we do instead of reading, we use headings to break up the content.
Prominent heading: H1
If you see a newspaper, the H1 headline is like the main headline of a newspaper.
If you remember, there is only one primary headline in the newspaper.
It is the most important information on the page.
Because of this, the H1 is only used once per page, at the top, and it contains the most important information on the page.
It explains the purpose and the value to the searcher or reader.
Ideally, in about one to two seconds, a searcher should be able to read your headline and know if they are in the right place.
Prominent heading: H2, H3, and H4
Now that you have used your H1 as the primary page heading, the rest of the headings are used to emphasize sections of texts.
Users automatically understand the difference between heading signifying content areas because of the text size, weight, and typeface.
The boldest and heaviest is the headline, which is the center of attention.
The next size and weight are the subheadings, the H2 heading, which breaks up your content into different sections, articles, or areas of the page.
Within those subsections, H3s can be used to break up content even further.
Sometimes an H3 or H4 is used to precede each paragraph.
Here’s the key.
Each subheading is short and communicates the content of the paragraph quickly.
These are short summary statements that let the searcher know what content is contained in the paragraph.
Now, this helps the reader.
The amazing thing is that the same idea works with search engines.
Using HTML markup to denote a headline or subheading tells the search engine which content is the most important.
The words contained in the H1 are the most important on the page.
The words contained in an H2 are next in importance and so on.
Overall, any text that is highlighted in a heading, bolded, bulleted, or emphasized in any way makes it more important than the regular words contained in paragraphs.
In this, what works for humans, works the very same way for search engines.
SEO best practices: Organized Hierarchy
If you are developing a new website or redesign or if you have to fix a site that is not indexable by the search engines, then developing a clear hierarchy is critical.
As you have heard throughout this blog, it isn’t just the words that are used to determine relevance, it is also the context of those words being used throughout the structure of your website.
When designing your new site, you want to organize your page URLs and content within a hierarchy.
In this example, you will see that we have shoes.
Now, there are many ways to organize this.
So, it’s up to you to determine what is best for your company.
In my example, I’m starting with the product, and then the most logical categories.
You can usually spot this in your keyword, and see how people search and you will find how they organize.
Now when people see my URLs in the search results, they will know what is on the page because they understand the word in the URL and how I have organized my products.
Developing a clear hierarchy of content, information, or product enables people to find things easier and it also enables search engines to index, process, and determine the context of the page, the section, and the overall website.
This is a bit tricky. If you have already developed a website and that website is indexed by the search engines, ranking well and attracting visitors, then this is not a recommended course of action.
If you were to take it, then it will require a massive amount of work to redirect old content to new URLs.
Therefore, it’s not a light decision.
SEO best practices: Practical links
Now let us talk about links. And how it can affect different types of SEO
Links are the backbone of the internet, they are a foundational part of any search engine algorithm.
Because they all use links from other websites to determine context, importance, and the content of the page.
It goes for both your internal links and external links, to and from others’ websites.
The key is to present a link with contextual relevance.
By this I mean when I typically see a link (click here) it is usually persecuted by content that explains the link was for making click here completely useless.
basically using generic words such as click here there is no added value or explanation about the link on the link.
In the first example, I emphasize the link without context with “click here”, while doing that I separated the content from the function.
In the second example, I combined the content and the function, thereby increasing its value to the user and to the search engine.
Just added some weight, content, and context to the text, and focused it on the destination page
However, don’t go making too many links on your page.
What is SEO spam?
The word spam started from email spam, that is, receiving emails that you never requested, needed, or wanted.
People would send mass mailings and acquire as many emails as they could in order to send their unsolicited advertisement emails.
In the early days of search engine optimization, those involved in SEO, split into different camps.
Spam became the word for practicing techniques that violated the search engine policies.
Spam is ultimately an attempt to create a false assessment of relevancy through content, links, or the programming of your website.
Falsifying Content
Falsifying content through SEO spam was more of a problem in the past.
As search engines have increased in their technology and capabilities, on-page techniques are easy to find and dealt with quickly by reduced rankings or elimination from the search engines index.
These days, if you were to employ any of these techniques, it would be found and penalized very quickly.
Keyword stuffing is using a keyword over and over on a page in order to increase the relevance of the content for that word.
This falls victim to the over-optimized penalty implemented in the panda update in 2011.
This is also related to the keyword density. many older articles would advise you to have a specific density of keywords to content.
This is irrelevant now in the face of google’s Hummingbird update, which looks at natural language, context, and conversational content and not a specific word.
Duplication is an issue as many websites attempt to increase their content by stealing content from other websites.
They also do this by publishing feeds from other websites and aggregating multiple contents feeds.
In both cases, these sites are using other people’s content and rarely, if ever, publishing unique content of their own.
These tactics are aggressively pursued by Google and eliminated from the index.
Other techniques are over-linking your content to other pages, especially with repetitive anchor text in the link.
It prevents a very poor user experience and is a low-quality attempt to inflate relevance.
Thin or shallow content that is repetitive.
Now, an example of this is sites that attempt to rank for multiple cities or locations by using the same content but only changing the location or the city on every single page in the text and then linking to every location on every page.
Again, search engines don’t like this.
They consider it low-quality, thin content.
Aggregated or scraped
Aggregated or scraped content is using other websites’ content to make your website more relevant either through feeds, copying original content, or republishing massive resources to provide authenticity to the content owner and penalizing those that steal content or use content from other websites to create their websites.
Finally, websites that have unregulated spam comments or spam posts in their blog show an obvious lack of management and are reduced in relevance and influence
Falsifying Links
Falsifying links is the primary reason for constant updates to the algorithm.
As search engines move to measure the true value of links, many in the black hats or Gray hat communities attempt to create false or artificial relevancy through the influence of linking schemes.
Google’s Penguin updates in 2012 specifically targeted linking schemes.
Thousands of websites were dropped from the index as they utilized linking schemes and networks to artificially attempt to create influence.
Schemes, communities, and networks were identified by the search engines as taking payment to publish links on pages but without disclosure of the relationship.
This method is still around as there are those who still try to manipulate links for relevance but the efforts tend to be short-lived.
Falsifying website content
Falsifying content is also done through programming techniques that show the search engines one page but will show a user another page.
This technique creates that are built for the search engine spider but will redirect the actual users.
It will redirect humans to other better-designed pages.
These are called doorway pages.
They detect the search engine spider and present one set of pages but show users something else.
Search engines despise these techniques as they want to evaluate the same page that the user will see.
So much of algorithm updates over the years have been utilizing methods to detect and penalize these techniques.
We have talked a lot about the hidden text, that’s the attempt to add text without seeing it but for search engine spiders to see and attribute it as legitimate content.
Now, this is done through color combinations such as white text on a white background but it’s easily detected.
As search engines have simply had to look for the color codes used in the programming
Other programming issues or websites that have malicious intent against users such as fooling users into giving personal or financial information or spreading viruses or Trojans to other computers.
SEO spam
When it comes to deciding what tactics you are going to use, here are your options and this was a question I had to answer myself in my career.
I have a website and one day I sat down and I had to decide that with the time that I have,
Should I add content that I know that my users want to see and will help build my reputation and business?
Do I create doorway pages for the search engines rather than for users and the doorway pages could possibly help me?
But yet they don’t provide any valuable information for my users.
So, that day I decided that my users were the ones that would build my business.
So, I would always work on my website to benefit the user first and not just to make content for search engines.
I have benefited greatly from the approach.
So, the choice is clear.
If you choose to use spam techniques, you will have to constantly monitor search engine changes and react and be fearful that someday all of your efforts may completely disappear.
You will also have to have the resources available to participate in those schemes and communities
Or you can put your time, money, and resources into creating highly entertaining or valuable content that people want to see.
If they like it, they will read it and recommend it, which will add to your links.
Legitimate marketing techniques work wonders when you have great content and the best part of that is that you don’t have to worry about the search engine suddenly changing your future prospects.
The periodic table of the SEO success factor
Key takeaways
- SEO hats help distinguish optimizers based on the different optimization techniques they use.
- There are different types of SEO, choose which you want to be and follow best practices
- White hat SEOs are optimizers who use techniques defined in Google’s Webmaster guidelines, while black hat SEOs don’t.
- Gray hat SEOs use marginal, questionable tricks.
- There are several best practices that help you ensure effective web optimization such as:-
- making your website human-oriented
- Not hiding content
- Good metadata
- Organized headings
- Organized website hierarchy
- Practical links