White Hat SEO is a practice used to improve search performance that is in line with terms and conditions of a search engine. In this tutorial, you'll learn:

White Hat SEO is the opposite of Black Hat SEO. Generally, White Hat SEO refers to any practice that improves your search performance on a search engine results page (SERP)while maintaining the integrity of your website and staying within the search engines' terms of service. These tactics stay within the bounds as defined by Google. Examples include:

Not engaging in White Hat SEO can get your site banned from Google and other search engines!

As the number one search engine, Google is visited by hundreds of millions of people per day, and each visit presents the potential for your site to be discovered by a new user.  Google is an undeniably powerful source of traffic to your website, and being banned can result in a drastic drop in website traffic and even business. Consider all the work that goes into your website and then think about what it would be like to be banned from the internet's most commonly used search engine. What's worse, once you're banned from Google, there is no guarantee that they will ever re-list you. A lifetime ban from Google would have tremendous consequences.

Why risk it? Check out a complete description of Google-approved SEO techniques at Webmaster Guidelines. Google's Webmaster resources are the go-to place to learn Google white hat SEO practices.

Definitely! Implementing White Hat SEO practices is the best way to create an ethical, sustainably successful website and business. Does this mean you can't use automation in your search campaigns? Definitely not!

WordStream has the best of both worlds: intelligent, cutting-edge automation that makes it easier to rank your site, as well as tools like an SEO keyword tool that enable you to observe Google's guidelines. Let's revisit Google's suggestions for SEO best practices and take a look at how WordStream can help:

WordStream's Keyword Discovery Tool and Long Tail Keyword Tool provide content ideas and product enhancements. These tools work together to grow your keyword list and content suggestions by recording search queries that brought people to your website and automatically adding them to your WordStream keyword database for your review.

Use Descriptive, Keyword-Rich Meta Tags

By organizing your keywords based on relevance, our Keyword Grouping Tool works as a guide for meta tags and meta keywords, including common misspellings and different variations of your keywords.

Make Your Site Easy to Navigate

Use the software's Search Engine Optimization tools to visualize and implement keyword hierarchy and Information Architecture. Once keywords are grouped by relevance and popularity, it's easy to see which of your pages should receive higher prominence across your website.

At the end of the day, it's usually good to play it safe. After all, getting on Google's bad side doesn't really help anyone. White Hat SEO practices produce effective, long lasting and ethical improvements to your website and are always good business practice. However, running with the crowd has its consequences too, especially if you want your website to stand out from the competition. If you follow White Hat SEO practices in the same way everyone else does, you're not doing much to stand out, and you may not achieve the search results you desire.

What you want is a mix of White Hat and Black Hat: Think creatively to get ahead of others without breaking the rules. Learn how to think outside the box while minimizing risk on our page regarding Grey Hat SEO.