It is no secret that white hat SEO has become the preferred hat of most digital marketers. The reason is simple; Google has become more capable of identifying websites that use black hat or even grey hat strategies. Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm to identify and penalize websites that use PBNs, paid links, SAPE links etc. As a result, it is even more important that you mainly focus on doing white hat SEO on your website, especially if it is profitable. Many marketers and website investors have been burned by using black hat strategies on their income earning websites. So, if you want to avoid this in 2020, then keep on reading.
When it comes to white hat SEO, this mainly refers to how you go about building links for your website. There are many SEO’s who advocate for not even building links at all. However, even though this may be effective if you’re targeting low competition long-tail keywords, it will take a long time before you start to rank and get traffic. It can literally take over a year or even two years before you start to get enough traffic to make a decent income. As a result, some form of link building is necessary.
White Hat Links
There are lots of different types of white hat links and these include guest posts, infographics, broken link building etc. All of these links will need to be generated through outreach. We will now look at some key points to note when doing outreach as well as a few specifics about each link type.
Outreach
This is basically emailing the owners or webmasters of other websites that are similar to your own, developing a relationship with them and securing a link. Outreach has gained a lot of traction in the last few years, however, doing effective outreach has become quite tricky. Most website owners have become mail blind to the tens and hundreds of link requests that they receive on a daily basis. As a result, you need to make your own emails stand out.
The most important things you can do is customize each one of your emails, have an eye-catching email subject line and make sure that you’re reaching out to a relevant website. If you have a website that is about dogs, then outreaching to a website about cars is irrelevant. However, this does not mean that you should only outreach to other websites about dogs. You can expand to similar topics such as general pet websites, veterinary websites, family sites etc. However, you will need to approach these sites with an angle that will help you get the link. For example, if you have a website about Golden Retriever dogs and you want to outreach to a veterinary website, then you can pitch a guest post such as “How To Keep Golden Retriever Dogs Healthy.” This makes the post relevant to a veterinary website that is interested in animal health and it is still relevant to your site by focusing on Golden Retriever dogs.
As mentioned previously, properly customizing your emails is critical to success. If you use a form email or simply use generic phrases such as, “I love your website!” then you will likely get ignored. One good approach is to spend some time on the website, find at least one post that you love and talk about it at the beginning of the email. Alternatively, you can read through the About section and refer to one of their interests or hobbies. The point of doing this is to show that you’re a real human and to connect with the website owner.
One last tip is to always write brief emails. Some people get caught up in customizing an email that they write a proverbial book! However, even though your pitch might be great, if it looks like a long-form letter, most people won’t read through it. So, try to keep your emails as short as possible and to the point. This will drastically increase your read and reply rate.
White Hat Link Type #1: Infographics
Now that you understand some basics on doing outreach, we will look at specific types of white hat links. The first one is infographics. An infographic is exactly what it sounds like, a graphic that illustrates information. So, instead of writing paragraphs of information or facts, these are shown in a picture format which makes it easier to digest and more entertaining to look at.
Many people think that getting an infographic done will cost hundreds of dollars, but thanks to websites like Upwork, you can easily get one for less than $100. In order to choose a good topic for your infographic, you should check out Buzzsumo and see what is popular in your niche. Then, you can create an infographic that your audience will love. Once it is done, you can post it on your website along with an embed code. Above the embed code, you can state that the infographic is free to share.
While you may eventually get some organic links from your infographic, this will take some time. Instead, you should do outreach to other similar websites that also share infographics and ask them to share yours on their website. You should aim to email at least 100 webmasters and this should earn you at least 5 – 10 white hat links.
White Hat SEO Link Type #2: Guest Posts
The next link type of SEO backlinks that we will look at is guest posting. Even though this method has been around for over a decade, it is still extremely effective. You will need to have a list of websites to outreach to, however, it is best to ensure they accept guest posts. In some cases, some websites have a guest post fee. Since we’re doing white hat SEO, you definitely want to avoid paying for any links. So, you should only target and guest post on websites that do so freely. One great tip is to keep in contact with any website owner that you’ve already done a guest post for so that you can post more guest posts in the future for more links. You should also aim to get your link in the body of the post since contextual links are more valuable that links within an author bio.
White Hat Link Type #3: Broken Link Building
The third link type that we’ll look at is broken link building. It is best to look at the resource pages of websites within your niche and identify any broken links. This occurs much more frequently than you’d think and having a broken link is quite bad for any website’s SEO. So, once you find a broken link, you should either create new content on your own website that could replace the content of that lost link or find a page on your site that is relevant. Then, you can reach out to the webmaster, tell him/her about the broken link and offer your link as a replacement. This is extremely effective since most webmasters will be quite happy to be informed of the broken link. In the event that they don’t want to use your link, you can ask if they will accept a guest post or even link to your infographic.
The Most Important Thing About Building White Hat Links
In order to build white hat links, you will need to invest a lot of time and effort in doing so. However, this is why they are so effective and will continue to be effective throughout 2020 and beyond. The most important thing is to be patient and outreach as much as possible. A good campaign should enable you to outreach to at least 300 websites. If you have a 5% success rate, then you will get 15 links. Of course, you can achieve much higher conversion rates if you properly select the websites you are outreaching to and customize each email.
Link Velocity
Now, the final topic we’ll cover is link velocity. You may be thinking that link velocity is only important for people who practice grey hat or black hat SEO. However, that is untrue and even though you’re getting white hat links, you need to ensure that you’re not getting too many links too quickly especially if you were barely getting any links before this campaign. So, it is best to get a handful of links each month and slowly increase as your traffic and rankings increase. Natural growth is most important since any unnatural patterns are immediately identified by the Google algorithm.
Conclusion
When it comes to SEO, link building is and will be highly relevant in 2020. Once you implement the above advice, there is no doubt that you will get more traffic while staying safe in the SERPs for many many years to come.
