Ethical SEO: 10 Best practices for morally-sound optimization

Luckily, morally sound SEO almost always coincides with more meaningful and long-term organic results and a greater ROI for a company. Today I will be jumping into not only what it takes to have morally sound search engine optimization, but also how to stay clear of any black hat SEO tactics that could be damaging a company’s authority without them even noticing.

What Is Black Hat SEO

Immoral SEO, otherwise known as black hat SEO consists of tactics that look to manipulate search engines and go directly against Google’s guidelines. The following are some of the main black hat SEO strategies that Google deems immoral:

1. Spamming webpage links across the web

2. Keyword stuffing webpage content

3. Use of private blog networks

4. Forum and social bookmarking

5. Cloaked Content

6. And more…

Understand that Google can and will ban or severely punish websites/companies that participate in any of the black hat tactics above. Not to mention, participating in these tactics hurts the way customers/clients view a company.  Read on if you’re interested in learning how to practice ethical SEO and get your site to the first page of the SERPs.

 

Best SEO Practices – Understanding SEO

Google’s algorithm considers over 200 ranking factors when it comes to organic search engine results pages. These factors can be broken down into three categories: Technical SEO, On-page SEO, and Off-page SEO. Before I jump into the best SEO practices, let’s gain a basic understanding of these topics.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO revolves around the technical aspects of a website such as a link structure, website crawlability, and structured data markups. Technical SEO works to help Google clearly understand the content on a website so it can be placed accordingly in SERPs.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO consists of optimizing all of the on-page content on a website for targeted keywords. This includes internal links and URLs, headers, meta descriptions, image ALT text, and more. 

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is the most expensive and time-consuming aspect of SEO but also the most significant. Off-page SEO involves the optimization of all guest posts, backlinks, and profiles that lead back to a business’s website. 

 

10 SEO Best Practices

Now that we have developed a basic understanding of each SEO category let’s go into the 10 best SEO practices to optimize for technical, on-page, and off-page SEO. 

Best SEO Practices – Technical SEO

Site Speed

Optimizing a website’s speed should be a huge priority for any business, despite the industry. With people’s short attention spans, you don’t want to risk any click-backs from users because the site was taking too long to load. Checking a website’s speed is simple, a free tool GTmetrix not only shows a website’s speed but uncovers the underlying factors that are affecting it. Google recommends a load speed is 3 seconds or less for best results. Using tools like Autoptimize and WProcket is also great for clearing the cache which can help improve your page speed as well. 

URL Structure

There is nothing Google’s crawlers love more than simplicity. I have found that keeping URLs short, simple, and keyword optimized to be best practice. Make sure to consider the following when it comes to creating URLs. 

1. Use -(hyphen) to separate words

2. Integrate a page’s keyword

3. Stay between 1-4 words

4. Keep characters lowercase

Website Security

Having a secure website is a must! Nowadays Google will give a non-secure message to any user navigating to an HTTP website. Having HTTPS on the other hand not only gives a better user experience but provides that website authority over all non-HTTPS websites.

 

Best SEO Practices – On-page SEO

Keyword Optimization

Optimizing webpages is key to boosting rankings within Google SERPs. That being said, I suggest optimizing each webpage on your website for one specific keyword. Have that keyword appear once per every one hundred words, especially toward the top of the page, and ensure it appears in the page title..  To determine the best terms for a particular landing page, make sure to conduct extensive keyword research.

On-page Blogging

Using a blog to produce relevant and high-quality content that has both internal and external links helps bring traffic to a website and boosts it in Google’s search engines, while also building credibility. On top of this, it’s also a great way to build a contact list using email opt-in sign-up forms.

Multi-Interface Friendly

Having a website that is friendly for both mobile, desktop, and even tablet users is a great way to put your best foot forward. Depending on the business industry it is very likely the majority of visitors will be coming from mobile devices, making it extremely important your website performs as needed. 

Bonus Tip: On-page SEO consists of a ton of different variables, which makes it pretty difficult to keep track of. Using a plugin like YoastSEO makes keeping track of on-page SEO performance effortless and I highly suggest it. 

 

Accessibility

Keeping your site accessible not only allows users with any kind of disability to browse your site without issues, but it also helps you rank on Google. Accessibility involves the functionality of your site, the CSS and design of your site, and more.

Best SEO Practices – Off-page SEO

High-Quality Backlinks

Morally sound SEO doesn’t mean backlinks, it means high-quality ones. Trust me when I say this is good for business too. High-quality backlinks mean high-quality visitors that associate your business with trust and authority, which ultimately leads to a greater number of conversions. Although it may be cheaper and easier to get backlinks from a website with a low DA – domain authority it won’t get anywhere as much quality traffic. Leveraging directories is also another great way to get great backlinks, however, make sure they are well-managed. I suggest getting backlinks from websites that have a DA of at least 25 and are ranking for >200 relative keywords. SEO tools MOZ and SEMrush are two great ways to check if backlink prospects meet the requirements.  

Guest Posting

Guest posting and backlinks usually go hand and hand but I felt the need to elaborate. Backlinks can be any link that leads back to a webpage whereas guest posting involves off-page blog posts. Guest posting on industry-related blogs is a great way to show off expertise, persuade, and sell an audience. When guest posting It is necessary to optimize that post for 1-2 keywords plus include plenty of external links and backlinks within the post. Finding places to guest post is relatively simple, just search the following:

1. “niche submit a guest post”

2. “niche guest post”

3. “niche accepting guest post”

4. “Niche write for us”

If it still poses difficult to find guest posting prospects I recommend using SEMrushes link-building tool to get prospects or submitting guest posts on general business blogs. 

Anchor Text

Optimizing anchor text isn’t the most important thing in the world, but it certainly doesn’t hurt your SEO performance. Anchor text is the text that the link is placed within. When optimizing anchor text look to make it a keyword or a keyword synonym, however, don’t do this if the text doesn’t match up to the link destination.

Backlink Audits

If a business has had a website for some time, likely, backlinks have already been created naturally. For this reason, any toxic backlinks must be removed so that Google doesn’t punish the company’s organic rankings. Identifying toxic backlinks is made easy via SEMrush and removing them is as simple as contacting the site owner to remove the link or adding all toxic links to Google Disavow Tool.