What is SEO Marketing? (+ Proven Success Secrets)

SEO marketing is the practice of optimizing a website’s content, layout, speed, and backend organization to rank higher in the search engine results. The goal is to increase traffic and attract potential customers, and this guide will show you how.

Search engine optimization, or SEO marketing, is among the most effective digital marketing strategies to increase brand awareness, conversions, and revenue.

But even experienced marketers struggle to keep up with the long list of steps required to yield optimal results.

This guide explains not only what successful SEO marketing entails, but also every element you need to know in order to do it yourself.

What is SEO marketing?

SEO marketing is the process of consistently improving aspects of your website to make your site the most useful (and the highest ranked) for relevant search engine queries. The goal of SEO marketing is to bring in more targeted visitors organically (i.e. without paying for ads).

SEO marketing strategies can be broken into three pillars:

The three types of of SEO

The three pillars of SEO are interrelated concepts that work together to create one solid SEO foundation:

• On-page SEO
• Off-page SEO
• Technical SEO

On-page SEO

On-page SEO (also known as on-site SEO) refers to the practice of optimizing elements on your website to improve visibility and relevance to search engines.

The content on the page plays a huge role here, as it’s the main thing search engines crawl to understand what’s on your website. On-page SEO involves optimizing your website’s content, meta tags, URLs, headings, images, and internal linking structure.

This optimization helps ensure that your website is technically sound, user-friendly, and contains relevant and high-quality content that matches users’ search queries.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO (or off-site SEO) involves content and information about your business that exists outside of your website (yes, this can impact your search engine rankings).

The primary focus of off-page optimization is to build high-quality backlinks from other reputable websites, indicating to potential customers that your website is valuable and trustworthy.

The quantity and quality of backlinks, as well as factors like social signals and brand mentions, play a crucial role in search engine rankings.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO involves improving the backend components of your website to enhance its crawlability, indexability, and overall performance.

This includes optimizing website speed, implementing structured data markup, ensuring proper XML sitemaps, optimizing for mobile devices, and addressing issues like duplicate content, broken links, and server errors.

Technical optimization helps search engines understand and interpret your website’s content better, resulting in improved visibility and rankings.

Together, these strategies add value to your overall brand while showing prospects and users that your company is one they can trust.

How to do SEO marketing

SEO marketing is about so much more than content and coding. To see your website thrive organically, we’ll break these SEO steps into six categories:

1. Keyword research
2. On-page SEO
3. Off-page SEO
4. Technical SEO
5. Local SEO
6. Auditing, analytics, and monitoring

1. Keyword research

Keywords refer to the phrases or queries users type into search engines to gain information. In SEO, we use keywords to outline what content needs to be created and how a website’s structure should be organized.

Keyword research is the process of identifying the terms and phrases your target audience uses to find products or services related to your offer. The final keyword list will be your guide to the content you create.

How to do keyword research

We recommend starting your keyword research by brainstorming your seed keywords. These are the big, general topics that relate to your offer — and typically the short-tail keywords you want to target.

Once you have those seed keywords on paper, break down each topic into more granular (long-tail) keywords. This is called a topic cluster, and it’s an awesome way to start your keyword research and build your content strategy later on.

Next, you can visit our guide for the full step-by-step instructions on keyword research. Here’s a quick review:

1. Determine the keywords you already rank for
2. Compile topics and keywords relevant to your brand
3. Find related terms that could boost your rankings
4. See what keywords your competitors rank for
5. Assess keyword volume and cost per click (CPC)

Here are some helpful things to know in preparation of your keyword research.

The different types of keywords

Before you get started, it’s helpful to note that there are three kinds of keywords: short-tail, long-tail, and latent semantic indexing.

Short-tail keywords are very short searches that are broad and competitive — meaning lots of businesses are creating content that targets that phrase.

Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are longer phrases with more qualifiers included. These are more specific and less competitive.

Finally, latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords are the terms and synonyms related to a search query that assist search engines in better understanding the context of your content, like “Kleenex” for “tissue.”

When preparing your keyword list, you’ll want to consider all three types.

User intent and keywords

It’s not enough to simply create a piece of content that targets a keyword. Instead, you need to understand the reader’s end goal, ie their search intent.

Generally speaking, there are three types of user intent:

• Informational: Looking for information or answers to a question (“How to cut an avocado”)
• Navigational: Seeking a specific website or page (“Citi Bank login”)
• Transactional: Ready to convert (this typically includes “buy” or another action-oriented word in the keyphrase)

How does this tie back into keywords and SEO?

Once you perform your keyword research and have a hefty list of phrases related to your product or service that you want to rank for, you need to also determine what kind of content and information the user is hoping to find with each search.

This can all be done with keyword mapping — and we have a full guide on how to create a keyword map here.

Tools for keyword research

Our full guide outlines some of the best tools to use for your keyword research. But here’s a quick review of some of our favorite SEO keyword research tools:

• Ahrefs for easy-win keywords and content ideas
• Semrush for topic research and keyword validity
• Keyword Cupid for topic clusters
• Google’s Keyword Planner for related and relevant keywords
• Moz Keyword Explorer for free search volume and competitiveness
• SpyFu for competitor keyword research
• Google Search Console for keyword rankability and declining keywords
• Answer The Public for long-tail keywords and questions
• Google Trends for trending topics and viral keywords
• Clearscope for optimizing content with semantically related keywords

2. On-page SEO

After conducting keyword research, identifying your target audience, and updating target keyword (and negative keyword) lists, on-page SEO is the next big step.

As we mentioned earlier, on-page SEO involves making improvements on your site to increase your search rankings, this includes:

• Content
• Internal linking
• HTML elements
• URL structure
• User experience

Content

From creating a strategy for new SEO content to optimizing older pieces, content is the most powerful way to improve your on-page optimization.

Here are some recommendations:

Use keywords as a guide for new content

Your keyword list will help determine what new pieces of content you need to create. (Keep in mind that, while keywords act as a guide for content ideation, the pieces themselves should never be “keyword stuffed.”)

Here’s a guide to help you ensure your content is well written, informative, and unique.

Revamp older pieces

Review your existing content to identify any thin, duplicate, or outdated content. Are any of your pieces missing a target keyword? This will give you a list of revamp-worthy content.

Search engines have a soft spot for older content, so these updates will give you a leg up.

To expand your content strategy further, check out our complete guide.

Include visual aids and readable structure

If you have the bandwidth and budget, experiment with video content. Pages with videos are often visited for longer periods of time, and a longer visiting period can only mean good things when it comes to SEO.

For photos, graphics, and other static imagery, Yoast explains that well-chosen images can complement your content and get you a good ranking in image search results.

Finally, make sure your content structure is easy for your reader to skim; that means your body text is broken up by headers, bullets, and these visual aids.

Internal linking

Creating internal links to other relevant pages on your site improves navigation, reduces bounce rate, and shows off your robust content library and expertise.

Make sure to use descriptive anchor text for these internal links — typically including the keyword of the linked article.

HTML elements

Optimizing content includes cleaning up and tweaking your technical elements, such as:

• Alt tags
• Title tags
• Meta data
• URL structure
• User experience (UX)

Alt tags

“Alt tags” are alternative attributes on an image’s img tag. The purpose of this tag is to describe what the image is portraying, which not only helps the search engine understand the image, but it’s used as context for the visually impaired.

Title tags

Header tags (the most common being H1, H2, and H3) serve as a kind of outline or table of contents for each page.

These tags also serve to emphasize what a paragraph or section will be about. This makes it easy for readers to scroll to the parts of your page that particularly interest them. Header tags are also tied to SEO. Search engines can weigh these headings and subheadings more than the paragraph copy in terms of importance.

If your blog title is H1, your headings are H2, and your subheadings are H3, they’ll be prioritized in that same order when it comes to the search engine.

Metadata

As Moz explains, meta tags provide information about the webpage in its HTML. This info is dubbed “metadata.” While it’s not visible to your readers, it’s key nonetheless. Meta tags live in a page’s source code, and it’s used to tell search engines what a page is all about.

Having pages with proper meta tags (which includes a title and description that accurately represent the page’s content) can impact not only the ranking of your page, but your clickthrough rate (CTR) and bounce rates as well.

URL structure

Your URLs should be short, make the keyword clear, and reflect the content on the page. Long, jumbled URLs are confusing for search engines and visitors alike.

User experience (UX)

Finally, take a tour of your website from the perspective of a new visitor and make note of improvements that can be made from a more intuitive navigation to a more clear offer to page load speed (we’ll talk more about this soon).

3. Off-page SEO

Off-page, or off-site SEO, refers to the SEO tactics that take place outside of your website, such as:

• Backlinking
• Disavowing links
• Social media
• Local presence
• Brand mentions and citations
• Forums

Backlinking

Perhaps the most popular off-page SEO tactic, backlinks are the practice of earning links to your site from other high-quality websites, resulting in a higher search engine ranking.

Having high-quality, highly relevant backlinks tells search engines that other sites trust yours, so end users probably can as well.

On the other hand, if spammy websites link to your site, that could potentially hurt your rankings.

You can encourage backlinks to your site by:

• Publishing unique statistics, survey data, or other exclusive info
• Writing guest blogs or being quoted on other credible websites
• Partnering with influencers in your industry
• Reaching out directly to sites you want backlinks on

When it comes to reaching out, there’s no magic formula. And, like SEO itself, it takes time. Your best bet, when cold-emailing another brand to request a backlink, is to keep the message short, make it personalized, and highlight the benefit for their site, not yours.

For example, if you find a well-known industry site is using outdated stats or content that you happen to have an up-to-date version of, send it to them and see if they’ll replace the older link.

Some additional expert tips outlined in this article outlines include:

• Use pitching tools like HARO
• Create innovative, high-quality content
• Pay attention to trends
• Use white hat link building techniques

Disavowing links

Sadly, not all backlinks are good. Spammy or “toxic” backlinks can lower your site’s domain authority and your rating. In turn, this lowers how trustworthy your site appears. If there are a bunch of spammy sites linking to yours, Google will treat your site as a terrible one as well. Consider it a “guilty by association” mindset.

Luckily, there are steps you can take to prevent low-quality sites from tanking your SEO rep. Disavowing these toxic sites (which tells Google not to associate these links with your website) is key to maintaining a higher standing with Google.

While external linking is important, internal linking shouldn’t be overlooked. Linking from your own pages to other pages on your site is beneficial in Google’s eyes. It can also be helpful to the end user as well (which, really, is a big reason why search engines value internal links).

Pro tip: When it comes to disavowing backlinks, Google warns that this advanced feature should be used with caution. You only want to disavow links that are sure to reflect negatively on your site. “If used incorrectly,” Google explains, “this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results.”

Social media

While social media is a whole other field of digital marketing altogether, these two strategies intersect.

You don’t have to sign up for every social channel, just make sure to build a complete and accurate profile on the platforms where your audience spends their time.

That means uploading content regularly and engaging with visitors. Hop into forums that are discussing topics related to your business and join in.

Learn more about social SEO here.

Local presence

We’ll talk in greater detail about local SEO soon, but it’s worth mentioning now that it’s imperative to maintain related citations in places like Google Business and Bing Places.

4. Technical SEO

Even if everything looks fine and dandy, websites can have hidden technical SEO errors.

These may not appear or be visible to the end user, but Google’s crawlers can detect it in the website’s code. Depending on the issue, this could cause your site to get penalized.

Put simply: If too many “red flags” exist on a site, Google will value it less than a competitor’s site. Because of this, your site may not rank well despite having original, informative, and high-quality content.

Here’s what to check:

• Website architecture
• Crawling and indexing
• Page speed and performance
• Security
• Mobile friendliness
• Structured data
• Broken links and errors

Website architecture

Whether you’re launching a new website or redesigning an existing one, a website with good SEO tactics in place often starts with proper site architecture.

This refers to the way your site is structured, how users navigate it, and the ways pages are reached.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when making technical changes to your site:

• Design a hierarchical site structure (one main “parent” page with child pages) with clear navigation
• Implement breadcrumb navigation for a better user experience and internal linking
• Test out new site elements on a staging site before pushing them live
• If you change domains, be sure to check out our guide here first

Crawling and indexing

As mentioned in our technical SEO guide, a well-executed technical SEO strategy ensures that search engines can effectively interpret and rank your content, laying the groundwork for your high-quality content to rank well.

Sitemaps often have outdated or broken pages that redirect traffic, which is a big issue when Google’s spiders try to crawl and index your pages. As a result, your pages won’t rank on the SERP.

Similarly, it can take Google a long time to crawl newer published pages.

Here’s what you can do to avoid crawling and indexing issues:

• Create and submit XML sitemaps to search engines to assist them in indexing your web pages faster
• Configure the robots.txt file to dictate which pages search engines should (and shouldn’t) crawl
• Use canonical tags to prevent duplicate content problems

Page speed and performance

A page loading time that takes three seconds (instead of one) has been shown to increase bounce rate by 32%.

Suffice to say, the loading time of your web pages directly affects your user experience and, as a result, your SEO marketing results.

Google has been upfront for years about how page speed is a ranking factor. You can test out how speedy your pages are with Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, and to improve your page load speed:

• Optimize images
• Minify CSS and Javascript
• Leverage browser caching
• Optimize your server response time

Security

Keeping your site safe and secure is non-negotiable for optimal SEO performance. In order to do this:

• Use HTTPS to protect user data
• Keep your SSL certificate up to date
• Choose a high-quality hosting provider

Mobile friendliness

The majority of searches are now done on mobile devices. In fact, Google rolled out mobile-first indexing in the spring of 2018 to take precedence over its traditional desktop index. Because of this, it’s crucial for your SEO to make sure your entire site is mobile friendly.

To understand how Google currently ranks your mobile site, use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing tool.

You can learn how to build a mobile-friendly site, conduct an audit of your existing site, and the best tools to help along the way by using our guide here.

Accelerated Mobile Pages

Created by Google and X (formerly Twitter), accelerated mobile pages (AMP) are a critical part of Google’s mobile approach. AMPs feature a more minimalist, stripped-down HTML version of a webpage for quick loading and easy access on mobile devices.

It’s up to you whether or not AMPs are worth it for your business. While they may receive a favorable ranking on the SERP, these pages often don’t have as many elements or designs as regular pages.

AMPs don’t appear to be going away anytime soon. That’s why it’s worth it to explore your options when it comes to enhancing your AMP content for Google Search and customizing these pages to fit your needs.

Schema markup, structured data, and rich snippets

Schema is a structured data vocabulary created by the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex). Also called structured data, schema markup is what helps these search engines better understand and define what a post or page is about.

This special language can be added to an HTML markup as code to enhance the snippets that appear below your content on the SERP.

With schema markup, you can add elements like a publish date, event schedule, or product rating. It can improve your SEO and CTR by adding context to your pages, thus helping you rank better.

This additional content is referred to as “rich snippets.” If a normal snippet merely includes the URL, title tag, and meta description, any additional info is considered a rich snippet.

You can add schema markup to your pages by visiting schema.org, selecting the type of markup that you want to use, and adding the code to your page.

If you publish on a site like WordPress, you can add this data via plugins in a snap. Once added, you can test that the structured data was set up properly via Google’s structured data testing tool.

Pro tip: While adding structured data to your pages can boost SEO, adding it doesn’t guarantee that they will show up on the SERP, even if you’ve followed all of the steps correctly. 

Broken links and errors

It happens to us all: funky glitches and error messages that pop up in place of a published article or service page. During your technical SEO audit, look out for broken links and errors and make fixing them your top priority.

To get started:

• Identify and fix any broken links
• Create custom 404 error pages that push users to other relevant content
• Make sure to implement 301 redirects for moved or deleted pages

5. Local SEO

Local SEO leverages content to answer locally relevant or location-based searches (such as “near me” or searches based around a local city or region) for businesses with a brick and mortar location or local service offering.

However, location-based searches are treated slightly differently than a standard search.

Search engines rely on signals such as local content, social profile pages, links, and citations to provide the most relevant local results to the user.

Perhaps the most important signal of all? Google business profile.

Optimize for Google Business Profile

This search engine feature aims to show that a business is relevant and authentic. Building and optimizing your GBP is the best way to ramp up your local SEO — and as a bonus, GBP-optimized businesses may show up as a pullout sidebar on the SERP, giving your biz that much more exposure.

You can check out our complete guide to optimizing your Google Business Profile, which includes:

• Creating a verified GBP page for your company (and profiles for each location)
• Garnering authentic online reviews from customers
• Responding to these reviews using location-based information
• Using Google Posts in your account (which allow you to share news and messages on your profile)

Other ways to optimize for local SEO

This guide walks you through all the local SEO strategies necessary to thrive in your community. But here’s a quick overview:

• Publish location-specific content
• Add separate location pages to your site
• Make sure your NAP (name, address, and phone number) information is consistent and accurate across the web
• Create listings on other third-party sites and local listings (i.e. Angie’s list, Apple Maps, and Yelp)
• Post local content regularly

6. Auditing, analytics, and monitoring

Ongoing analytics and monitoring is essential to your SEO performance.

Even if you don’t currently have an SEO marketing strategy in place, an SEO audit gives you visibility into how your website currently ranks on search engines, what optimizations to prioritize, and how to get started.

You can learn how to conduct a full audit with our SEO audit guide or download our quick checklist. Here’s an overview:

SEO audit checklist

Technical SEO:

• Check on-site structure
• Review technical errors (like robots.txt and XML sitemap issues)
• Test site speed
• Analyze on-site user behavior
• Check indexed pages
• Review mobile friendliness

On-page SEO:

• Conduct keyword research
• Determine audience personas
• Ensure target keyword (and negative keyword) lists are updated
• Review content strategy
• Identify any thin, duplicate, or outdated content
• Pinpoint broken links or redirects that need updating
• Analyze your backlink profile
• Disavow any backlinks if needed
• Review your internal linking strategy

Off-page SEO:

• Review your Microsoft and Google Business Profiles (if applicable)
• Check any profiles on third-party websites
• Ensure all info in off-page directories is updated
• Review social media profiles for accuracy and completeness
• Competitor analysis

SEO tools for audits and monitoring

Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools crawl your site for new and existing errors, technical issues, and help easily monitor how your site is performing on the respective search engines.

Here are some of our favorite SEO tracking tools:

1. Google Analytics

A free tool to help you understand how people use your website.

2. Google Search Console

Another free tool from Google that gives you insight into how Google views pages on your site — from organic traffic volume to search terms that drive traffic to your site.

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs suite of tools monitor metrics like domain authority, keyword ranking, search visibility, and backlink portfolios.

4. ConversionIQ

ConversionIQ is HawkSEM’s proprietary platform, designed to take your SEO tracking beyond metrics — like search traffic and keyword ranking — so you can focus on advanced measurements like lead scoring and lifetime value (LTV).

5. Mangools

Mangools is particularly helpful for finding and monitoring backlinks to boost the authority (and rank) of your site.

6. Moz

Moz allows you to easily conduct an SEO audit and track metrics like top-ranking keywords, domain authority, and backlink portfolio — similar to Ahrefs, SE Ranking, and Semrush.

7. SE Ranking

Another SEO auditing and tracking tool, SE Ranking helps you track metrics like search visibility, search volume, SERP features, and keyword rankings across your site.

8. Semrush

Finally, Semrush also monitors keyword performance, backlink portfolios, and search visibility in addition to writing and research tools that can streamline your digital marketing strategy.

KPIs and metrics

When conducting an SEO audit and monitoring your site performance, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the volume of data. Not sure what exactly to track or which KPIs to value most?

Here are some core KPIs to keep in mind:

• Organic sessions
• Organic bounce rate
• Average page views per session
• Domain authority/rating
• The number of keywords or search terms ranking in the top 3 results (above the fold, first page)
• Keywords or search terms ranking on page 1 (in spaces 1-10)
• Keywords or search terms ranking in spaces 11-50

The metrics prioritize will depend on factors like your goals and how long you’ve been actively implementing your SEO efforts.

SEO best practices

If you keep up with the SEO marketing strategies listed above, you’ll be in good shape to start climbing up the rankings. But to beat out your competitors, you’ll want to remember some best practices and advanced strategies.

Our guide outlines these 15 best practices:

1. Amplify authority with SME expertise
2. Engage your audience with interactive content
3. Monitor SGE results
4. Connect paid search and social with your SEO strategy
5. Improve your website’s user experience
6. Optimize title tags and meta descriptions
7. Plan regular SEO audits
8. Create a keyword and content marketing strategy
9. Embrace video marketing
10. Optimize your loading speed
11. Monitor and encourage reviews
12. Create content hubs, pillars, and clusters
13. Examine your structured data
14. Build authority with backlinks
15. Optimize images

Advanced SEO Techniques

Voice search optimization

When people use voice-activated tools like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant, they tend to use more natural, conversational, and question-based phrases compared to traditional search.

Voice search optimization ensures your content matches this tone so voice search tools can more clearly understand you.

In other words, it’s all about adapting to how people speak — and understanding how your target audience would search for relevant information via voice in addition to typed search.

International SEO

International SEO is the process of optimizing your website for different countries and languages.

This typically means creating content in multiple languages and updating your keywords for each market — as well as ensuring search engines know which website to display depending on the searcher’s location.

One way to do this is using hreflang tags. These HTML attributes are used to specify the language and geographical targeting of a webpage, which helps search engines understand which version to show to users.

Additionally, geo-targeting involves delivering content to people based on their geographic location using IP addresses, GPS data, or location-based keywords as a signal.

SEO for ecommerce

The ecommerce market is competitive.

Pair that with the added steps of creating a Google Merchant Center account, product page optimization, and product variations, SEO for ecommerce businesses is extra challenging.

This guide walks you through building an ecommerce SEO strategy to stay ahead of the competition.

SEO trends and predictions

Here at HawkSEM, we’re serious about SEO. And we get a little nerdy about what’s trending — and how it might impact the future of search. Recently it’s been hard to escape the buzz of AI and machine learning in SEO and the rise of zero-click searches.

Which leads up to some notable SEO statistics:

1. More than 61% of desktop searches and 34.4% of mobile searches now result in no-clicks
2. 75% of marketers believe AI-enabled search engines will positively impact their blogs
3. 30% of all mobile searches are on location
4. In 2024, Google is reported to have more than 91% of the search engine market share worldwide
5. More than half of U.S. consumers say they research products using a search engine before deciding whether or not to buy
6. 39% of marketers say optimizing on-page content based on keywords was their top SEO strategy
7. Google search, Google Image, and Google Maps account for nearly 93% of global traffic

SEO FAQs

How do search engines work?

Google (along with all other search platforms such as Bing) has a search engine algorithm that takes hundreds to thousands of different aspects into consideration when a user enters keywords or a query.

That’s why, when we say “search engine optimization,” we’re talking about setting up your site to show search engines that your brand is relevant, trustworthy, and legitimate in relation to your industry.

You can learn about the process and guidelines Google adheres to make sure their algorithm “meet high standards of relevance and quality” here. However, search engines keep marketers on their toes by regularly rolling out tweaks and updates without much (or any) advanced notice.

Since it launched, Google has gone from making only a handful of algorithm updates every now and then to rolling out thousands of changes each year.

These updates come with varying levels of impact on the search engine results page, or SERP, according to Search Engine Journal.

Key factors that help determine which results will appear for your query are:

• Meaning of your query
• Relevance of web pages
• Content quality
• Usability of web pages
• Context and settings

SEM vs. SEO vs. PPC: How do they compare?

SEO and PPC (both of which we put under the search engine marketing or SEM umbrella) are vital components of a successful digital marketing strategy, each offering unique benefits to businesses seeking online visibility and increased website traffic.

Here’s a quick refresher on what each one entails:

Search engine marketing (SEM)

SEM is a broader term that encompasses both organic SEO and paid advertising. While SEO focuses on organic results, SEM combines paid advertising to gain immediate visibility on search engines.

The most common form of SEM is using Google Ads, where advertisers bid on keywords to display their ads on relevant search queries.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO is a long-term, organic strategy aimed at increasing a website’s organic visibility in search engines. The primary objective of SEO is to enhance the website’s relevance and authority, thereby attracting more organic traffic.

Pay-per-click (PPC)

PPC is a specific payment model used within the broader SEM strategy, where advertisers only pay when a user clicks on their ad. PPC advertising allows businesses to bid on specific keywords or target audiences, with the cost determined by the competitiveness of the chosen keywords.

By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can make informed decisions and develop a comprehensive marketing plan to help you achieve long-term business goals.

White hat vs. black hat SEO

“White hat” and “black hat” are SEO techniques marketers can leverage when optimizing a site. Basically, white hat SEO techniques are ethical, Google-approved methods that are looked favorably upon by search engines.

White-hat techniques include publishing high-quality content that speaks to a human audience, implementing a long-term SEO strategy, and including alt tags with your images.

Black hat, on the other hand, refers to methods that attempt to trick search engines by making a site appear more legitimate than it is.

These common SEO mistakes include keyword stuffing, creating blogs for the sole purpose of generating links to other sites, and hiding “invisible text” in the code of your website in an attempt to game the algorithm.

Black hat methods are frowned upon by search engines. While it’s not against the law to use them, they can get your site flagged for violating guidelines or prevented from appearing in search results entirely. Plus, black hat techniques often result in a poor user experience with your website.

Then there’s “grey hat” SEO. These are SEO methods that, while not currently against search engine guidelines, could become viewed as black hat in the future. This includes posting fake reviews, offering incentives for online reviews, and purchasing expired domains for the sole purpose of linking or redirecting to your site.
Looking for strategies to grow your organic traffic? We’ve got 14 right here. 

Why does SEO matter?

SEO marketing is what gets websites to show up higher in the organic search engine results when people look for relevant products or services. With effective SEO, more people find your site, resulting in more conversions.

Don’t believe in the power of SEO? Just read these case studies.

Should you hire an SEO agency?

For many businesses, keeping up with the SEO strategies and best practices needed to succeed is too heavy of a lift in-house. However, hiring an SEO expert can seem just as daunting of a task.

This article walks you through how to hire the right SEO expert.

How much does SEO cost?

SEO pricing is typically between $3,000 to $10,000 per month for fixed rates, $500 to $1,000 per month for local SEO, and $5,000 to $30,000 for one-time projects. You can learn more about SEO costs here.

How do Core Web Vitals affect SEO?

In 2021, Google officially rolled out Core Web Vitals. Basically, this is a new set of ranking metrics that take things like speed, responsiveness and visual stability of pages on your site into account.

As the search engine itself explains, “the Core Web Vitals report shows how your pages perform, based on real world usage data (sometimes called field data).” Core Web Vitals are made up of three specific measurements: Largest Contentful Paint (loading), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness), and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability).
Core Web Vitals are graded on a scale of pass, needs improvement, or fail. The way your site scores can impact how you’ll rank on the SERP.

The takeaway

Search engine optimization is important when it comes to ranking on the SERP and growing your reach. But at the end of the day, the goal of a search engine is to connect users with the answers they seek.

As long as you (or your chosen SEO agency) follow the above tips — and have a fast website with high-quality content that’s engaging, unique, current, and helpful — you’ll be well on your way to boasting successful, strong SEO.

This article has been updated and was originally published in January 2020.