4 Types of SEO: Strategies You Need to Know Before Starting Your Campaign
Before you start optimizing your site, it’s important to understand the various types of SEO available to your business. This includes the good and bad techniques. Understanding these different strategies and techniques will help you create a campaign that drives better organic results for your business.
We’ve put together a video to help you gain a better understanding of 6 different types of SEO.
On this page, we’ll also cover four types of SEO and four techniques associated with SEO. If you need help optimizing your site for SEO, call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist.
Let’s get started!
4 main types of SEO
When you’re developing your SEO campaign, it’s important to understand the different types of SEO your business can use — and ensure you choose the type of SEO that will drive the best possible results for your business.
Here are four main types of SEO techniques you will come across:
1. White hat SEO
White hat SEO techniques are the best way to improve your SEO ranking over time and optimize it. These are the tactics that Google recommends you use to help your site rank better in the results. They abide by Google’s search engine guidelines and drive positive results for your business.
These techniques include:
- Creating high-quality content: High-quality content brings valuable leads to your page that are interested in your business. This helps improve your ranking to help you reach more interested traffic. You can create multiple types of industry-related content, including blogs, ebooks, videos, and infographics.
- Optimizing HTML: Cleaning up your site’s code will help your site perform better. This includes practices like cleaning up messy code, eliminating white space, and reducing unnecessary text. This will help your site perform better.
- Sharing on social media: Social media helps you drive traffic to your site. You can boost your website’s engagement and drive leads to your page. It helps you improve your ranking.
- Making your site user-friendly: If you want to keep leads on your site, it must be user-friendly. This means creating an appealing design, a well-structured navigation, and making your site engaging with photos and videos.
White hat SEO techniques take time to produce results. The results, however, are worth it. You will have lasting growth and continue to help your site perform better in the search results.
You will know if you’re doing white hat SEO techniques correctly if your site’s ranking is impacted every time Google updates their algorithm. When you properly practice white hat SEO techniques, you may see a drop in your rankings when the algorithm changes. This doesn’t indicate you are using bad techniques, but rather, indicates you are using white hat techniques properly and will need to adjust.
It takes a little bit of time to adjust, but you can easily get your site right back on track. White hat SEO techniques are the best way for you to improve your site’s ranking in the search results for the long haul.
2. Black hat SEO
Black hat SEO techniques exploit search algorithms to get higher rankings.
Some businesses use black hat SEO techniques because they drive fast results. People want the immediate gratification without putting in too much work. The downfall, however, is that black hat SEO ends up hurting businesses in the long run.
There are numerous tactics that fall under black hat:
- Link spamming
- Keyword stuffing
- Cloaking
- Hidden text/links
- Using irrelevant, popular keywords
- Over optimizing HTML headings
- Copying content
- Buying links
These are just a few tactics that companies will use to optimize their site. While these tactics do improve ranking, it does not last. Google catches on to these techniques and if you’re caught, your site will suffer severely.
Search engines will punish your business and even ban your site from appearing in relevant search results. Since Google only wants to produce relevant search results, it will ban people who take a short-cut to try and get to the top of the rankings.
3. Gray hat SEO
Gray hat SEO is the middle ground between white and black hat SEO. This technique isn’t quite good for your site, but it isn’t listed as bad. Hence why this is a “gray” hat SEO tactic because it falls into a gray area.
These SEO techniques aren’t banned by Google, but they aren’t considered an acceptable way to obtain leads. Gray hat SEO techniques are risky, but marketed as the “affordable solution.” Companies that offer gray SEO techniques reduce their costs because they are using questionable methods.
Here are some examples of gray SEO techniques:
- Clickbait articles
- Spun content
- Link exchanges
- Paid reviews
These are tactics businesses will use to improve their site’s performance in the search results. Gray hat SEO techniques aren’t quite banned by Google, but they aren’t the best way to help your site grow. It can lead to negative effects that hurt your business rather than help it.
4. Negative SEO
Negative SEO is a unique situation for your business. It isn’t perpetrated by your business, but rather, someone else. You will see negative SEO scenarios between businesses and their competitors.
When you see a business using negative SEO, they are trying to hurt their competitors’ reputations. Companies use gray and black hat techniques to cause harm to competitors’ businesses. They implement these techniques to decrease a business’s rank so they can improve their own.
There are a few strategies companies will use with negative SEO:
- Building unnatural links to a competitor’s site
- Posting negative reviews
- Hacking websites to modify content
The intent with negative SEO is to harm other sites for personal gain. It is hard to control this because other companies are damaging your site. When you’re running your SEO campaign, you must constantly monitor it to ensure that there aren’t any unusual or unexpected spikes/drops in activity or performance.
These are four of the most common techniques you’ll run into when you’re optimizing for your SEO campaign. Want to learn more about SEO techniques? Give us a call today at 888-601-5359 to see how we can help you drive results with your SEO campaign!
P.S. Explore SEO.com by the WebFX team, your ultimate DIY SEO tool for keyword research, competitor analysis, and mastering all four main types of SEO. Whether you’re a consultant, freelancer, or contractor, SEO.com is the ultimate toolkit you need. Try SEO.com today at no cost!
4 types of SEO to drive results for your business
SEO is a huge topic in the digital marketing world, and it encompasses numerous strategies. Let’s take a look at a few SEO strategies.
1. On-page SEO
On-page SEO is the most common strategy that businesses focus on for their sites. To put it simply, on-page SEO refers to changes you make on your site that positively impact its performance.
One of the most common on-page SEO optimizations is keyword optimization. When users conduct searches, they use keywords to generate a list of relevant search results.
To help valuable leads find your business, you need to conduct keyword research to discover the keywords and phrases people search online to find your products and services. For example, a wastewater treatment plant practicing SEO might target keywords related to purchasing recovered metal.
Then, you can incorporate those keywords in key places on your site like your page titles, meta descriptions, and headings. In addition, you can create custom content to address the keywords.
By targeting keywords related to your business and creating valuable content, you can help your business appear higher in search results — and ultimately, you will earn more leads and revenue.
Another on-page SEO strategy is optimizing URL structures. When users are on your page, you want to help them remember your page. A customized URL structure will help you optimize your site and make it easier for your leads to remember your site.
Which site URL is more memorable to you?
www.gamingnetwork.com/category-246445/productID-39284 or www.gamingnetwork/playstation/games/madden18
With the first URL, site visitors won’t immediately know what to expect on the page. It’s just a mixture of numbers and words. The second URL clearly indicates what your audience is viewing.
These are just a two of the most popular strategies companies use to optimize for on-page SEO. Some other strategies include internal linking and optimizing meta descriptions. The key thing to remember is that on-page SEO involves optimizing elements on your site.
2. Off-page SEO
What is off-page SEO? Off-page SEO involves optimizations to your site that don’t happen on your site. These are external factors that influence your site’s performance.
One of the biggest off-page SEO factors is social media sharing. When you share your site link on your social media pages, you can’t control how your audience interacts with your links on your social pages. This is an external ranking factor that can help your site perform better.
It’s important to note that social signals don’t directly impact your SEO. They have no direct effect on improving your ranking but can lead to behaviors that help improve your ranking.
When you share your content links on your social profiles, you have the potential to earn links for your page. People can share your link on their own profiles and help drive traffic to your page. Driving relevant traffic to your page can help improve your site’s ranking.
Some other off-page SEO factors include reviews and backlinks. These things drive traffic from other places to your website. They aren’t things you can do on your site to optimize it, but rather, are external factors that influence your ranking.
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO involves optimizing the backend of your site to help it run properly and improve your site’s ranking. These are elements that are on the backend of your site. You can have a beautiful looking site, but it won’t matter if the technical aspects of your site aren’t optimized.
One of the biggest technical SEO aspects is page speed. When users visit your page, they don’t want to wait forever for it to load. If you want to see the best results with your page, you must ensure it loads quickly.
You can monitor your page speed with Google PageSpeed Insights. If you use this tool, you must make the changes on your site on your own. For businesses that don’t have the technical knowledge, there is the option to hire a digital marketing company and use their page speed services.
At WebFX, our team of 200+ experts can help you optimize your page speed to help your site perform better. Check out our page speed services and give us a call at 888-601-5359 to find out how you can
Another important technical SEO factor is mobile friendliness. With the rise in mobile searches, it’s important that you adapt for the mobile user. You want to provide your audience with the best experience on your site.
You can optimize your site for mobile by implementing a responsive design. This ensures that your website adapts to fit a user’s device. It provides a better experience for them.
These are just two of the biggest technical SEO aspects that influence your site’s performance. If you want your business to perform well in the search results, you must optimize the technical end of your site.
Learn more about optimizing your site for technical SEO in our guide on how to do a technical SEO audit.
4. Voice search SEO
One of the newest types of SEO optimizations is voice search. Voice search SEO has become one of the most popular ways to conduct searches. With devices like Alexa, Google Home, and Siri, voice search will continue to grow.
Voice search SEO requires optimizing for the right keywords. You must optimize your site for words that your audience will verbally use. This includes slang words.
When you optimize for voice search SEO, you must optimize to deliver information quickly. Users conduct voice searches to get quick answers. This means you must structure your content to make it easy for Google to pull the information.
There are many ways to optimize your content to make it easier for Google to pull the information. You can create bulleted lists to make information easier to see. Putting the most important information first to answer a query will also help.
In addition, you’ll also want to consider slang. If there is a certain way that people search for information surround your business, use that slang to help direct leads to your page.
These are four of the main SEO strategies that companies use to help them drive valuable traffic to their website.
Additional SEO Services
In addition to the above listed SEO services, there are many other types of SEO you can invest in for your business
- Local SEO: If you’re looking to drive in more local people to your business, Local SEO will help. This SEO strategy helps you focus on using strategies that help you reach local customers. It’s a great method for getting more traffic through your business’s door.
- Ecommerce SEO: Ecommerce SEO focuses on helping ecommerce businesses reach customers better. This method helps you focus on driving valuable leads and conversions for your retail business. If you sell your products on Amazon, you can also add Amazon SEO services as part of your ecommerce SEO plan.
- Enterprise SEO: Enterprise SEO helps you improve your online presence and compete for more competitive keywords. It’s a great method to use if you have numerous competitors that are using similar keywords to your business.
These are a few more SEO services that your business can invest in to help you reach more valuable leads and earn conversions.
WebFX is an award-winning SEO company
There are many different SEO services that you can focus on for your campaign. All of these different aspects will help you improve your campaign and reach valuable traffic for your business. At WebFX, we have over 28 years of experience creating SEO campaigns that drive valuable results.
We’re a full-service digital marketing company that specializes in SEO campaigns. Our team of over 500 experts will help you create a campaign that drives valuable results for your business. We’ll help you create a customized campaign that drives results.
If you’re looking for an SEO company that drives results, look no further than WebFX. In the last five years, we’ve driven $10 billion in revenue and 24 million leads for our clients. We know how to create campaigns that help you grow your business.
Want to know what it’s like to partner with us? Just ask our clients! Check out our 1,100+ client testimonials that attest to the great work we do for them!
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If you’re ready to start optimizing your SEO campaign to drive better results, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist.
Plus, we have offices all around the globe! For example, we offer London SEO solutions, along with offering SEO services in Harrisburg,PA and Ann Arbor, MI, and many more, and we can’t wait to help your business too!
We look forward to hearing from you!
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Optimize Your Website Faster with SEO.com
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Try it for Free