I’ve recently found myself in two client meetings where the topic of “white hat SEO” arose. If you’re not familiar with White Hat and Black Hat SEO—I suggest you read a little on the subject—especially if you’re a business owner hiring search engine experts.

In these meetings I’ve realized this topic is still pretty vague, even after umpteen years of its existence. What I’ve found myself sharing, and what I’ll share here with you—my trusted reader—is that much like my favorite movie (Young Frankenstein) “white hat is good—black hat is bad”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-F7D8ogwZk

You see, white hat uses logical techniques that keep your visitors and Google happy. Black hat may work wonders in the beginning but leave you feeling pillaged when you suddenly disappear like Big Bird on debate night. *Zing*

To keep it simple: build respect and forge a niche while using these tried and true techniques.

1. SEO, META Data, & Keywords

Fuhget about META Keyword tags—they are deader than dead. Google killed them years ago, thanks to the porn industry, but Bing has been rumored to account for them in some minor variant.

However, the content on your website needs to be massaged in such a way that it assists the search engines while they index and rank your site. Usually long tail phrases, three to five words, tend to work best and enhance your chances against the competition. The focus words should be used in the page titles, summaries, URL, META Description, and throughout the page itself using natural language—don’t just try to jam the words in, it will show. Remember: Readers first and search engines second.

2. Link Sharing and Reciprocal Linking

This one’s up for debate this year. Some say it’s dying and that may well be so. But it’s not dead yet and still has clout in the world of ranking.

3. Link Within

Internal linking is very useful for your visitors as well as for the search engine spiders. Internal linking consists of hilighting your desired keywords and phrases within your site and linking them to other pages within your same site. This allows you to direct your viewers to other pages within your site—aka Link Juice—allowing them to gobble down all the digital goodness you’re hitting them with.

It works by exchanging links with ideally more authoritative sites that have a higher page ranking than you—hence they have been around for a while and are popular within their niche. This contrasts with Black Hat methods of buying of bulk links on other site and simply pointing them to you. You will tend to find yourself on poor quality sites with irrelevant content. This method is time consuming but can have a major impact down the road.

Everyone’s on Facebook, Twitter, and any other social media site that pops up over night. Why not use them to link to your pages? Let people share them by adding the option to your pages—link juice is the name of the game.

4. Ensure Your Content is Useful & Understood

More important than anything is creating a website that readers will want to, umm, read. Crafting user/web friendly content is not for the faint of heart. Nobody enjoys the old corporate mumbo jumbo

through a top down proactive approach, our company synergises with provoking thought leaders to…

SNORE—I’m on to the next site already. Check our About page for example and really appreciate the effort that went into writing our story.

It works—seriously. You can even hire us to write for you—we don’t bite.