With backlinks being one of the leading Google ranking factors, link building has become very popular with every industry. Most marketers are desperate to grow their brand’s backlink profile and will do anything to gain authoritative links. However, there is a fine line between how you should and shouldn’t build your links, and it can drastically impact your Google rankings. That’s where white-hat link building comes in.
What Is White Hat Link Building?
White hat link building is an SEO approach that uses search engine optimization techniques to drive traffic to a site. Unlike the other link-building strategies, white hat aligns with Google’s webmaster guidelines and is least likely to generate a Google penalty that affects a site’s search engine rankings.
White hat strategies can be slower than other link-building forms, but they focus on long-term search engine optimization results.
White Hat vs. Black Hat vs. Grey Hat Link Building
White, gray, and black hat link-building strategies aim to help a site rank.
- White hat link building is an ethical and honest way to optimize your site. It follows Google’s guidelines, but it might take longer to work. It involves developing original, high-quality content, legitimate link-building through relationships or guest blogging and creating a valuable user experience on your website. This approach will help Google find, index, and rank your site.
- Black hat link building: This strategy works faster than the white hat form but goes against Google guidelines and is more of a short-term plan. With this strategy, you use tactics that can work until they don’t.
The tactics employed here may bring some wins, but they also come with high risks, as Google can penalize you for using them. Therefore, if you plan to achieve long-term goals for your business, it’s best to avoid these strategies altogether.
Some Black hat backlink techniques include spamming blog comments with links to your website, purchasing low-quality backlinks, and writing low-quality guest posts.
- Gray hat link building uses techniques that are not strictly against Google’s guidelines but are outside what would be considered best practices.
For instance, if you contact an authoritative site and request them to link your site and ask for a fee, that is considered gray hat link building. Requesting a site to link to your site is a white-hat outreach strategy, but it’s against Google’s guidelines to pay for it.
5 Benefits of White Hat Link Building
1. For better website ranking
Besides following search engine rules and policies, white hat linking guarantees safer and solid ranking results. Although the results are slower and may take longer on the surface, they will become steady over time.
The best way to get a better ranking is to create insightful content. You can invite guest bloggers to create content for your site to attract traffic and build relationships with people in the industry.
2. Build Brand and Site Authority
White hat link building will also help you build your brand and site authority. Since Google uses backlinks to signal that your site publishes high-quality content and is relevant, the links tell Google that you are the authority in the space.
The more authority you have, the more likely search engines will rank your website for keywords associated with your niche.
Additionally, a white hat helps you build trust with Google, which then helps build trust with your audiences or potential clients. These links can also help provide third-party credibility.
3. Drive More Traffic to Your Website
Despite helping you rank higher in SERPs, the White hat will also help you increase traffic to your website. You select a network of sites that direct audiences to your website when you build high-quality links.
When recognized as reliable sources, these sites transfer their authority and audiences to you. Google notices this, and the SERPs reflect that. Having a higher spot on SERPs means better site exposure, which could boost traffic and expand your customer reach.
4. Save Money
Seeing results with black hat SEO takes a short time, but it uses much more resources than the white hat method. With the White hat method, you will require less Money and more time because search engines do not need to update security parameters regularly. Think of this strategy as a long-term investment.
5. Improve Your Relationships With Other Websites
In most cases, you are required to reach out to other website owners and content managers to request for ask for links. Outreach is an opportunity to network and contribute to other people’s sites through guest blogs. You can continue to build upon all white-hat linking strategies with your new relationships.
For instance, if you have a great relationship with the manager or owner of a popular website, they will be willing to feature your site on their website or link to your content. This will help increase your website’s reputation, and you will likely rank on SERPs.
10 Techniques for White Hat Link Building In 2024
1. HARO Links
Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a free online service for journalists and bloggers to receive feedback from the public. It enables them to connect with experts on issues relevant to their reporting. With the proper techniques, HARO can help you obtain high-quality backlinks and build brand awareness for your PR efforts, regardless of your niche.
As the source, you must only sign up for daily queries from other bloggers or journalists looking for experts in different fields. Then, you will have the chance to respond to any queries that interest you. This will likely result in high-quality backlinks from seriously high-authority websites.
Acquiring backlinks via HARO is considered a white hat technique since it’s an honest way to get relevant links from high-quality sources.
How to Use HARO for White-Hat Link Building
- The first step is to go to www.helpareporter.com and sign up for an account as a source.
- Look for queries that match your expertise or niche.
- Reply to queries that are relevant to your niche.
- Create replies that are original, informative, and on-topic.
- Have a link to your website in your signature.
- Observe the responses you submit and respond to any questions from journalists.
2. Niche Edits
Niche edits or curated links are links from other websites in your area of expertise that mention or link to your site. These links point back to your site, improving your overall link-building strategy. Niche editing involves obtaining permission from other site owners and authors to link your site’s content to theirs, achieved via a contextual backlink.
There are usually three types of niche edits. The most organic type is the white hat approach. In simpler terms, this means manually reaching out to other site owners to exchange content value for a free link.
Even though this process is time-consuming, there is a high chance of building lasting relationships with fellow bloggers, enabling you to approach them again in the future with much ease.
How to Use Niche Edits for white hat Link Building
- The first step involves finding websites or articles relevant to your niche. You can use SEO tools such as Ahrefs to see what sites link to your competitors.
- Then, analyze and evaluate the relevance, authority, and traffic of the site you have picked. This will help you determine which sites or owners fit your link well.
- Reach out to the webmasters for your link placement. It is advisable to send them a personal email pitching your link.
3. Guest Post-White-Hat link building
Guest posting or blogging is another white hat SEO strategy that will help improve its SEO ranking score and visibility in the SERPs and drive targeted traffic to your website.
A guest post is a piece of content you create for a site with a similar niche to yours to be featured there and get your word out. Your post will contain a section about the author, where you can link to your sites.
However, it would be best to link with credible websites with high domain authority. You can use free link-building tools to find the best sites or contact respected publications.
How to Use Guest Posts for White Hat Link Building
- Find good link-building opportunities from sites in your niche
- Contact the webmasters and craft a pitch that’s impossible to ignore
- Write a high-quality guest post
- Add contextual links to the post and homepage link in your author bio
- Reply to comments on your post
4. Broken White-Hat link building
Broken link-building is another effective and impactful white hat link-building technique that can help you earn high-quality and relevant backlinks from other sites. It involves finding a dead page and requesting linkers to switch the links to a working page on your site. The idea is that they will do this because they don’t want to send audiences to a dead resource.
How to Use Broken Link Building
- Find broken pages with backlinks. You can use Ahrefs’ free backlink checker for this.
- Identifying or creating high-quality content that is worth linking to
- Conduct outreach to persuade a site owner to replace the dead link on their page with your page link
5. Press Releases
Press Releases or PR Link Building uses public relations approaches such as press releases and media pitching to get valuable editorial links that direct back to your site. This white hat SEO backlink-building approach is a critical component of a Digital PR strategy that will result in measurable and consistent high-quality traffic coming to your site from relevant links.
The goal is to present your site as a thought leader and pitch to influential online publications. This strategy can be used to extend your content marketing strategy, aiming to generate publicity.
How To Get Started with PR Link Building
- Identifying the target audience for your digital PR strategy
- Research the content you will create to leave a mark on the audiences
- Create relevant and high-quality content
- Outreach and promote your content. Here, you can reach out to website owners, publishers, bloggers, influencers, and journalists to help generate enough buzz around your content.
6. Link Magnets
Link magnets are content assets created to acquire links. Instead of producing high-quality content and waiting for someone to link to you, link magnets incentivize other sites to link to you. This is an excellent strategy for attracting quality links, driving traffic to your site, and ranking higher on the search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Unlike the spam-oriented black hat link-building tactic, this white hat approach helps you acquire more links organically with minimal outreach. This saves time and helps get links from web pages that typically wouldn’t link to you.
Tips for making your site a Link Magnet
- Write outstanding blog posts and place valuable resources on your webpage.
- Create a section for news, trends, and tips on your page
- Run an affiliate program for people in complementary businesses
- Blog about issues that are controversial and people are passionate about
- Create a forum on your website for your visitors to exchange ideas.
7. Content Promotion
Most of the white hat link-building strategies we have mentioned are low-volume approaches, but content promotion is quite the opposite. If you follow off-page SEO practices, you can quickly place many links on your site, resulting in a high volume of referral traffic and quick brand growth.
With this approach, you will create and publish unique content on your website. Then, reach out to several online media outlets, such as news stations or magazines. Then, request that they cover your content on their website. This strategy will showcase your brand’s expertise and help to build its authority in your niche.
Content Promotion Tactics and Tips
- Know who you’re creating content for
- Research and create content that is relevant to your audiences
- Research Your Competitors and tackle their best-performing topics
- Promote your content
8. Commenting on Authority Blogs
Blog commenting is a simple yet effective strategy that lets others know about your site. It involves publishing blog comments that link to a site or post. You can include the links in the comment or as a link behind your name.
When you leave a relevant and insightful comment on a blog post, you create a noteworthy connection with the site’s owner and the audience. Blog commenting helps you build online relationships with webmasters with authority sites, who then share backlinks to your site.
Tips on How to Write Comments for Your White-Hat link building Strategy
- Add valuable stuff to the conversation.
- Comment early
- Don’t over-promote yourself.
- Do you disagreeable or agree with the comments
- Please include links to external references where they will be most helpful.
9. Reciprocal White-Hat link building
Reciprocal linking is another simple white-hat link-building tactic. It occurs when two or more site owners agree to link to each other on their sites. This kind of linking makes up a large portion of earned backlinks because you are trading outbound links for inbound links to your website.
However, you must know that not all sites are willing to engage in this kind of linking, especially if your site lacks authority.
How to Use Reciprocal Linking for White-Hat Link-Building
- Make sure the link is to relevant content
- Ensure the linking content adds value
- Check SEO metrics of the linking site
- Build authentic relationships
10. Podcasts Features
Lastly, Guest podcast features are a perfect way to get more white-hat links for your website. Since most brands and companies use podcasts, it shouldn’t be hard to find one you can feature.
The good thing is that you don’t need to feature in podcasts only within your niche. You could also feature in podcasts that concentrate on your job role, demographics, life events, etc.
When asked to feature in a podcast, request a free backlink in the podcast notes in exchange for your time. You could also use this and mention your brand as you speak.
Ways to Find a Podcast for Your White-Hat Link Building
- Use Google to search for the “best of” lists.
- Use a podcast newsletter.
- Use social media platforms like Twitter to search for a specific topic.
- Using niche podcast discovery apps
Final Take: White Hat link building Strategy
Gray and black hat link-building strategies are tempting since they are speedier and require less work. However, white hat strategies are the best ethical option for a long-term strategy with no risk.
Hopefully, this guide has given you a better understanding of white hat SEO and provided insight into some link-building techniques you can use.