Even if you create the most wonderful website, an eye-appealing monument of creativity and well functional design, all the efforts are in vain if no one sees it. And this is exactly what is the purpose of higher search engine ranking, in essence. To make your website visible, and increase web traffic, you need to understand how different SEO techniques work. This will make it easier for you to know what to focus on, and what adjustments to make. Like most things in the world, even SEO has two sides of a coin. There is a “bad” side people call Black Hat SEO and a “good” side we know as White Hat SEO. And a bit of a gray area in between. Nevertheless, you need to focus on White Hat link building techniques to rank on page 1 of Google. And, of course, to remain there.
Use White Hat link building techniques to rank higher
These days everything is about showing on the first page in Google. Obviously, the top positions are better, but managing to get on page 1 is a huge success on its own. In short, it means better visibility, more traffic, and a potential increase in sales. Since the competition is enormous, it’s a good thing you can easily hire experts such as the Link Department team to help you with SEO. However, it will be useful for you to get familiar with effective white hat strategies first. So, let’s explain why and which strategies can significantly increase your chance to show on the first page in search results.
What are White Hat link building techniques?
If you are building your business website, you need to focus on long-term results. They are slow to show but are safe, and will remain much longer than others. For this, you need to carefully pick your SEO strategy. Generally speaking, White Hat techniques are risk-free long-term solutions everyone can use. By using this type of SEO, you will have minimal chance to get in conflict with Google. Or break any webmaster guidelines. Of course, keep in mind that over-optimization is a bad practice, so avoid it as well. On the other side, you have Black Hat strategies that focus on exploiting loopholes in search engines to rank higher. However, Google always improves its algorithms, so Black Hat’s efficiency is short living.
Why it’s important to rank high?
There are several reasons for explicitly aim at higher search engine results:
- Your website gains exceptional exposure to a wider audience. Every time someone searches for a term, those on page 1 have the best chance to attract them. This is, by far, the best advertisement you can get. This also shows Google has trust in your website for a given term and gives you more credibility.
- Showing on page 1 can significantly increase your traffic. There are millions of people using Google every day, but most of them find what they are looking for on the first page. This is your goal, to grab as many of those clicks as you can.
Some of the best link building strategies to use
The more high-quality links you have, the more chance you will have to get to the top positions in search results. Also, the higher you rank, the more authority you get, and more value your website links pass. So, here are some of the best link building strategies you can use to accomplish this:
Internal linking
The first place you should start with is your own website. You need a good internal link structure so Google can crawl your website faster. And also to connect everything in a solid and lasting network of pages. This is a simple white hat technique many website owners use. In essence, you can create your own blog to promote your website, build links, and link to others. As time pass, your website will earn more value, called link juice, and internal linking will help you pass that juice throughout your website. The best part is that you have absolute control over your internal links.
Get unlinked mentions
A good way to get more organic links is to check online mentions of your brand, business, or website. If someone is mentioning your business online, it’s a good opportunity to link to it. However, first, you need to reach the website owners and ask them to include links in those mentions. Finally, don’t forget to thank them.
Guest posting
Even though it can be a cumbersome and demanding process, guest posting can give incredible results. You can simply reach out to other websites and offer to create quality articles for them in exchange for a link. If you manage to place your guest posts on authoritative websites, it will help you create a high-quality backlink profile. The higher is the authority of those websites, the more value will those links pass to your pages.
Make use of listings
Every business owner should list their business in these listings. Google My Business profile makes a perfect example where you should make a profile and place information about your business. Generally, it’s a great option to target and engage with the audiences that already search for a specific service. In a way, carefully optimized and maintained GMB listing can help you rank higher in organic search results. Not only for local searches. Other good listings from where you can get useful backlinks are:
- Popular business directories
- Business magazines
- Local news
- Government websites
- Yellow pages and similar websites
However, be careful with researching large listing directories. Many of them serve as link farms, and links from those places don’t hold much value. Additionally, Google might consider links from suspicious places as a bad practice, and punish your website.
Broken Link Building technique
This technique involves finding broken links on promising websites and replacing them with yours. When you have a valuable article, product, or service page, you can search the web for nonworking links and ask website owners to place your links instead. In this search, you can include 404 pages. But you can also check on your competitors, and search for those that are out of business, and claim their links.
There are also many other White Hat link building techniques to rank on page 1 of Google that goes beyond the scope of this guide. Fortunately, you can always do more research, and test different ways to acquire links. Just don’t forget to audit your link profile periodically and make needed adjustments.