Almost every business wants to rank high on Google’s search engine. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by building links. However, there are “hats” in link building, such as white, black, and grey hats. What are these hats? What’s the difference? Which one should you use for your website?
This article will discuss white hat link building and its advantages and disadvantages. We will also look at some white hat linkbuilding strategies you can use for your website.
Link Building And Its Types
Link building is acquiring links from other websites to your own. The more links you have pointing to your website, the higher your website will rank on Google’s search engine. Earlier, Google used to look at quantity over quality, but now it’s the other way around. Now, Google is Highly focused on high-quality, relevant links, not quantity.
There are different ways to build links, and these can be broadly categorized into three “hats”:
- White Hat Link Building
- Black Hat Link Building
- Grey Hat Link Building
White Hat Link Building
White hat link building is the most common and safest method. It involves creating high-quality content that other websites will want to link to. This could be blog posts, infographics, or even videos. White hat link building also includes things like guest blogging and directory listings.
- Advantage: The main advantage of white hat link building is that it’s the most effective way to build links. Google loves high-quality, relevant content, and that’s precisely what white hat link building focuses on.
- Disadvantage: However, white hat link building can be quite time-consuming and challenging. Creating high-quality content that others want to link to requires much effort.
Black Hat Link Building
Black hat link building is a more aggressive approach. It involves tactics like buying links or participating in link schemes. These activities violate Google’s guidelines and can penalize your website.
- Advantage: The main advantage of black hat link building is that it’s much faster than white hat link building. You can get results much quicker.
- Disadvantage: However, the downside is that your website could be penalized by Google, resulting in a sharp drop in traffic.
Some examples of black hat link-building techniques include:
- Creating links with exact match anchor text
- Buying links
- Building links from low-quality websites
- Using link farms
Grey Hat Link Building
Grey hat link building combines white hat and black hat tactics. It’s not as aggressive as black hat link building but not as safe as white hat link building.
- Advantage: The main advantage of grey hat link building is that you can quickly see results. However, there is always the risk.
- Disadvantage: A website could be penalized by Google if you’re not careful.
Some examples of grey hat link-building techniques include:
- link buying
- private blog networks (PBNs)
- guest posting on low-quality websites
Benefits Of White Hat Link Building
- Creates trust and credibility: white hat link building creates trust and credibility with users and search engines.
- Better ROI: It has a better ROI than the black hat or grey hat methods.
- Builds relationships: It helps you build relationships with other website owners, bloggers, and influencers in your industry.
- Generates referral traffic: white hat links generate referral traffic from high-quality websites.
- Gain social media followers: It can help you gain social media followers and fans.
- Improves brand awareness: It helps improve brand awareness and visibility.
- Builds authority: It can help build your website’s authority and reputation.
- Better search engine rankings: These will result in better search engine rankings.
- More targeted traffic: It can bring in more targeted and relevant traffic.
- Long-term results: These link tactics provide long-term results.
There you have it! These are just some of the benefits of white hat link building. If you’re serious about ranking high on Google, white hat linkbuilding is the way.
Now that we’ve looked at white hat link building let’s look at some white hat linkbuilding strategies you can use for your website.
7 White Hat Link Building Strategies
Let us explore some of the best white hat link building techniques
- Guest Blogging
The main focus of this approach is to build relationships with other bloggers, Influencers in your industry. You can do this by writing guest blog posts for them. In return, they will often link back to your website. It will help establish your brand as a reliable source of information and authority in your industry.
- Resource Page Link Building
It’s the most used link-building tactic by SEOs. In this approach, you create a list of resources (such as helpful blog posts, infographics, eBooks, etc.) Then you approach other website owners with resource pages in your industry and ask them to add your website as a resource.
This is an excellent way of getting high-quality white hat links because you’re adding value to the existing resources on their website.
- Infographic Link Building
No one likes reading a huge text content block, but People love visual content and infographics. You can use this to your advantage by creating infographics relevant to your niche and sharing them.
These are great ways to get people’s attention. You can create infographics around statistics or data related to your industry and share them with other website owners. In return, they will often link back to your website.
- Broken Link Building
Most of the time, people create backlinks, leaving them as it is. But what if the link is broken? They don’t even think of conducting a backlink audit. That’s where the opportunity lies.
In this approach, you find broken links on other websites and then offer them a replacement resource (Your website link). This is an excellent way of getting white hat links because you’re providing value to the website owner by fixing a broken link on their website.
- Skyscraper Technique
We always want to outrank our competitors. But how can we do that? The answer is simple: create better content than them.
In this approach, we first find out what’s the content in our industry that’s ranking well on google search results. Then we create our content but in a way better than the content already ranking well.
Then we reach out to the website owners who are linking to the content we’ve found and ask them to link to our content instead. This is a great white hat linkbuilding strategy because you’re creating relevant and valuable content for your audience.
- Encouraging Social Media Share
In this century, everyone is present o social media. So it’s an excellent opportunity to get white hat links from social media platforms.
You can do this by creating shareable content and promoting social media sharing. The best way to do this is by adding social media share buttons on your blog posts and making it easy for people to share your content. You can also use Twitter Cards to get more shares on Twitter. And different things on different social media platforms.
You will likely get white hat links from social media platforms. This will help increase your reach and get more people to see your content. This strategy can be a money saver because you’re building links organically without having to reach out to other website owners.
- Find Backlink Opportunities From Competitors
A straightforward white hat link-building strategy that often gets overlooked. In this approach, you find out who your competitors are and then check their backlink profile to see where they’re getting their links from.
You can use a tool like Ahrefs or Majestic to do this. Once you have the list of websites linking to your competitor’s website, you can also reach out to them and ask for a link. This is an excellent way of getting white hat links because you’re reaching out to websites already linking to similar content in your industry.
How To Make White Hat Link Building More Effective
Get Website SEO-optimized
Who should optimize your website for SEO to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs)? This will make it easier for people to find your website and link to your content.
List Of Things To Optimize In SEO
- Title Tags
- Meta Descriptions
- Headings Tags
- Keywords
- Images
- URLs
- Internal Links
- External Links
These are just some things you can optimize on your website to make white hat link-building more effective.
Use Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google that lets you see how your website is performing on Google searches.
It also provides valuable insights into what keywords people use to find your website, the average position of your website in SERPs, the click-through rate (CTR) of your website, and much more.
Optimizing For Mobile Search
Mobile traffic has been increasing year over year. And it’s not going to stop anytime soon. Mobile devices will account for nearly 75% of all internet traffic by 2025.
To stay ahead of the competition, you need to optimize your website for mobile search. This means making sure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly.
You can also use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to improve your website’s performance on mobile devices. Google has said that they’re going to give preference to websites that are using AMP in their mobile search results.
So, if you want white hat links from Google, you must ensure your website is optimized for mobile search.
Link To High-Quality Websites
It would be best if you only linked to relevant websites with a high domain authority (DA) when you’re link building.
Domain authority is a metric created by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine results pages. The higher the DA of a website, the more likely it is to rank higher in SERPs.
You can use a tool like MozBar or Majestic to check the DA of any website. It would be best if you aimed to get links from websites with a DA of 50 or higher when you’re link-building.
This will help improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages and make it more likely for people to find your content and link to it.
FAQs
Q1. What is white hat link building?
Ans. White hat link building refers to the practice of acquiring backlinks to a website through legitimate and ethical means. It involves creating valuable content and promoting it in a way that naturally attracts links from other reputable websites.
Q2. Why is white-hat link building important?
Ans. White hat link building is important because it helps improve a website’s search engine rankings, increase its visibility, and drive organic traffic. It also builds credibility and authority for the website in its niche.
Q3. What are some white-hat link building strategies?
Ans. White-hat link building strategies include creating high-quality content that others want to link to, guest blogging on relevant websites, participating in industry forums and communities, reaching out to influencers and asking for backlinks, and earning links through partnerships and collaborations.
Q4. How do I know if a link building strategy is white hat?
Ans. A white-hat link building strategy focuses on creating value for users and adheres to search engine guidelines. If a strategy involves manipulating search engine rankings or using deceptive tactics to acquire links, it is likely not white hat.
Q5. What are the benefits of white hat link building?
Ans. The benefits of white hat link building include improved search engine rankings, increased website traffic, enhanced credibility and authority, and a stronger online presence. It also helps build long-term relationships with other websites and influencers in your industry.
Q6. Does Creating White Hat Link Build Costs?
Ans. The cost of white hat linkbuilding varies depending on your approach. If you’re doing it yourself, it’s mostly just the cost of your time. If you’re hiring someone to do it for you, the cost will vary depending on their experience and services. White hat link-building service range from $500 to $2000 per month.
Q7. How long does it take to see results from white hat link building?
Ans. The time it takes to see results from white hat link building can vary depending on factors such as the competitiveness of your industry, the quality of your content, and the effectiveness of your link building strategies. In general, it may take several weeks to several months to start seeing significant results.
Conclusion
You might see the white hat link building from the above guide. If you want to get loved by google, then white hat link building is the only method you should focus on.
You can do white hat linkbuilding in many ways, but the most important thing is creating quality content that people want to link to. Yeah, It can take time and effort, but in the long run, it’s worth it.
If you can do that, you’re well on getting white hat links from Google and improving your website’s ranking in search engine results pages. So, if you’re serious about SEO, start focusing on white hat link building today!
If you have questions about white hat link building, feel free to comment below.