What Is White Hat Link Building?

Know how to incorporate a killer linking strategy? Here’s everything you need to know about white hat link building so that you’re getting the most out of your SEO best practise linking.

By Shannon Mugford

Jul 23, 2021

In the wondrous world of SEO, there are various linking strategies that can support your visibility on Google SERPs. Before we talk about the benefits of this best practise approach, let’s quickly address what type of links can kick your competitors’ butts. By delving in deeper into the types of white hat link building techniques and how they can benefit your business, you may just learn the key to pushing your site from page 50 to page 1 on Google.

Types of White Hat Linking Strategies

The main two types of white hat SEO link building strategies are internal and external linking. Internal links are those that specifically target other areas of your website only. If you have an eCommerce website, for instance, product pages may link to similar items, or a blog may link to similar blogs or an entire category page.

On the other hand, external linking is to other domains. An example of when external linking is used would be through blog research. If you’re quoting a statistic, it’s a great opportunity for you to link back to the source of this information. Just remember, linking to reputable and non-spammy websites is the nack of external link building, you don’t want to associate your website with untrusted sites- especially if they’re unsecure!

What’s so great about these linking strategies, you ask? Internal links help Google bots crawl your website. With an effective internal linking strategy, your domain will be a breeze to navigate through for Google and your organic visitors.
Now that we’ve just about covered best practises in link building, it’s time to think about how to use them right. That’s right, there are many ways that you can mess up your linking strategy, and this can cause Google to become confused when trailing through your pages, which in turn, will put your website in their bad books.

The Benefits of White Hat Link Building

To spare confusion, a white hat link building strategy works to drive traffic to your site, thus gaining you conversions. As a fantastic SEO technique, your business should always, and we mean always, be thinking about internal and external linking within every existing and new page on your site. However, you must remember that ‘White Hat’ isn’t just the name given to linking strategies, but all SEO practises that abide by Google’s guidelines.

So, without further ado, let’s take a peak at one of our clients’ pages in which we have used best practises on.
We have taken this snippet from Joshua James Jewellery, one of our first clients here at Soshell. As you can see, this is a fantastic representation of internal linking. By using anchor text such as ‘Swarovski’ & ‘Nomination’, you’re already giving Google bots an idea of where they will be heading once they click on the link. It always helps determine the ranking of the page as those without anchor text, also known as naked anchors, can be seen as spammy.

Opposingly, let’s look at an external link example. Here’s another snippet from an International Women’s Day blog post found on Joshua James. Here, the blogger has used anchor text again to reference 2021’s IWD theme which is ‘#ChooseToChallenge’. As this is a world-celebrated occasion, it is important for the external link to direct to a reputable website that can offer further information on it. Secondly, a quote made by a third party has been linked. These are great examples of external links using best practices.

Black Hat Link Building

So, we’ve covered white hat link building techniques, but what about black hat link building? Black Hat linking, as you guessed it, goes against Google’s guidelines. By trying to cheat the system through keyword stuffing, paid for links, poor quality but link driven content and spamming blog comments, Google will deem you as a pest on their search engine. Therefore, ranking high will be a very tough mission for you.

While these tactics are technically quick wins, meaning you can have a longer lunch break knowing that a fast turnaround is underway, they almost always backfire. To put it bluntly, you will be wasting time and effort to create poor quality content that’ll put you right in Google’s doghouse. While it’s not against the law, your site can be given severe penalties, leaving your rankings at risk, therefore an immense drop in your conversion rate.

Ahrefs for Link Building

Ahrefs, a tool that we know and love here at Soshell, is a great platform for you to be able to assess your link health for your website. While you may be white hat link building, there may be missed opportunities or areas where you have lost links and become broken. Check out Ahrefs backlink profile tools to find out more.

Need help with your linking strategies?

As a white hat link building agency, we know what it means to create the highest quality content that’s going to put you straight into Google’s good books. With our SEO team’s skills and experience, you can stay confident that your rankings and conversion rate will reach for the stars. We’re an eCommerce SEO agency that always uses the best and up to date practises in the industry to ensure maximum return. Get in touch with us today to find out more about our white hat link building service at [email protected] or through our online form.