What is white hat SEO?

White hat SEO refers to the set of search engine optimization practices, techniques and strategies that focus on a human audience rather than solely trying to rank well in search engines. White hat SEO methods follow the search engine guidelines and aim to provide value to users.

Some key principles and examples of white hat SEO include:

Content Creation

Creating high-quality, original, relevant content that helps users find answers, solve problems or meet their interests. This could include blog posts, guides, videos etc.

On-Page Optimization

Optimizing page elements like titles, headings, and meta descriptions with target keywords naturally without keyword stuffing or cloaking.

User Experience

Having a fast, mobile-friendly website with good navigation to offer a positive user experience.

Link Building

Acquiring backlinks through ethical means like guest blogging, creating linkable assets, and outreach to relevant sites.

Technical SEO

Ensuring a site is crawlable and indexed properly by search engines through sitemaps, robots.txt, fixing errors etc.

Local SEO

For local businesses, optimizing Google Business Profile, citations, and reviews to rank better locally.

The core intent behind white hat SEO is to follow search engine webmaster guidelines and provide value to human users, not just try to game the system for rankings through deception.

In contrast, black hat SEO involves manipulative practices like cloaking, keyword stuffing, using link farms, scraping content etc. which violate guidelines and can get your site penalized.