If you are the type of internet marketer that relies on drowning your audience in a deluge of spam or is obsessing day and night on how to circumnavigate Googles ranking algorithms, then it might be a good time to take a deep breath, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself if this is the kind of person that you want to be remembered by.

These are the tactics of Black Hats, ones that rely on overwhelming users, of corralling them into a spot where they have nowhere else to go but in the marketers desired sales point.  Has it been effective in the past?  Yes.  Is it the right thing to do?  That depends on you.  But, there is another way.  The White Hat way.

Quality over quantity

The focus of White Hat SEO is to stay within the guidelines set in place by the search engines in their terms of service.  This includes the use of bots, spamming and other questionable practices.  The White Hat way is actually easier to adapt than you might think.  Make good stuff.  That’s it.  Produce quality content that you would be proud to share and proud to show your mother.  Because if you like it and she likes it, then chances are that other people will also want to share it with their friends and family.  Can you imagine showing your mother a book with strings on every other line that run to a product she should buy?  She wouldn’t like that, you wouldn’t like…so why do it to others?

Spend time where it counts

You can spend your days and nights trying to cheat SERP (search engine results page) algorithms.  You can do this…it is a free country (if you’re in a free country) after all.  But the real question is should you?  What if Google suddenly unveils an algorithm powered by an AI (which you can be sure is already under development)?  There goes your hours and hours of algorithm sidestepping.  There is a better way to spend your time.  Create amazing and valuable evergreen content that can go viral.  Why spend time and energy trying to touch every single person out there? Find your online tribe, show them that you know what you’re talking about and deliver.

Learn evergreen skills

White Hat SEO forces you to develop real skills, lasting skills and value-based skills in order to be successful whereas Black Hat SEO just forces you to spend tons of time on backlinking, bot purchasing and algorithm cheating.  By being a White Hat you learn how to build email lists, write attractive copy, build critical relationships with your audience and customers.  These skills are part of a group of skills that are known as Evergreen skills.

These skills are not dependent on any system but you to be implemented or executed.  If techno-apocalypse happens tomorrow, you can walk away with these skills in your pocket and apply them to the real world.  It pays to implement White Hat SEO, you just have to look at the long game to see its real value.

Author:

Hi I’m Glen Maguire, I own Clickthrough (http://www.clickthrough.co.nz/), an Auckland based Website Design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Digital Marketing company. We service a range of Auckland, NZ and overseas clients. Clickthrough web design is a 100% New Zealand owned company.