A lot of business owners build websites to increase their revenue. Their goal is to convert a mere internet user into a customer. This is the reason why most business owners try their best to have their websites on the first two pages on search engines. There are several ways to optimize your site so it will appear on the search engine results page (SERP) and one way of doing so is through whitehat backlinking.

Before we proceed into knowing more about backlinking, we must first learn what backlink stands for.

What is a Backlink?

A backlink is a link from another site that is directed towards your website. This backlink has a significant impact on your website’s results on the search engines. Backlinks are considered one of the essential elements that can affect your website’s ranking on search engines.

Although the search engines consider other factors in displaying results, it has been widely known that backlinks can greatly affect the search results. Nobody knows for sure how the search engines decide the rankings; However, we know for certain that backlinks play a huge part in it.

Because of the role it plays, people have used backlinking in several ways. Today, there are two known types of backlinks that are used by digital marketers around the world. These are:

• Whitehat Backlink
• Blackhat Backlink

What is a Whitehat Backlink?

Whitehat Backlink refers to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practice of driving traffic to a website through SEO techniques that follow accordingly to the search engine’s policies and rules. Its main goal is to guide people accordingly to give them a smooth user experience so these people will eventually convert.

Whitehat Backlinks takes a lot of time before you could reap its fruit. The good thing about this is that, as time progresses, your website will grow stronger. Whitehat backlinks are a good investment that can last for a long time.

Suppose you have a website about your photo studio. Now, you want other people to see your website so they would hire the service that you offer. If you want to use the Whitehat Backlink strategy, you first should make sure that your website is well optimized in a way that your page visitors will understand what’s written in it. Then, you will search for a website and ask them for a backlink through a guest post.

The organic traffic that you drive from the search engine will most likely convert because your site is built for your page visitors.

Common Techniques for Whitehat Backlinking

If you’re planning on using whitehat link building techniques for your website, here are three whitehat backlinking strategies to help you get started:

• Directories
  You can easily find business-oriented online directories on the internet. During the site ranking process, search engine bots crawl on these business directories. The search algorithms find the same contents as an excellent sign of credibility which will rank your business profiles higher.

• Blog Guest Posting
  As mentioned earlier, one of the things you should do if you want to get started with backlinking is to research. Look for sites that are relevant to your niche. If you’re selling organic fruits on your site, look for websites who offer the same products as you do. Once you have done your research, make a shortlist of the sites, whom you think are in need of guest posting.

• Join Online Communities
  Another way to help you earn high-quality backlinks is through building a good relationship with the people who have the same content as you have. Through building relationships, you can easily share or ask for a link from their unique content. Joining Facebook groups, forums, online communities, and answering queries by establishing yourself as an authority also helps strengthen online relationships.

What is a Blackhat Backlink?

Contrasting to the Whitehat Backlinks, the blackhat backlinks refers to the use of Search Engine Optimization practices through underhanded methods. This includes the aggressive use of SEO strategies, tactics, and techniques that is more focused on the search engines and not on the people. Most of the time, people who use blackhat backlinks don’t follow the rules and guidelines the search engines provide.

People opt for this type of backlink because they want to have a quick return for their investment. Although you get quick results if you use blackhat, this doesn’t mean that people will easily convert and become your client or customer. Especially because it’s not customer-centred, as opposed to whitehat SEO. Now, if you’re thinking of using this type of strategy, you will be posting a huge risk for your website. This includes getting banned from the search engines.

Let’s go back to our example earlier, suppose you have a website for your photo studio and you want to it to be ranked. Now, because you want to see the results as soon as possible, you decide to opt for a blackhat backlink. Let’s assume that your website rose up the search engine quickly and you began driving traffic on your website.

However, because your page is not designed for people, the traffic that your website gets doesn’t really convert into revenues. Aside from that, page visitors jump out of your website as soon as they land because they don’t find the contents on your site relevant.

Common Techniques Used for Blackhat Backlinking

Here are three of the common blackhat backlinking techniques used by a lot of blackhat digital marketers:

• Cloaking
  This refers to having the search engine record a content that’s different from what the searcher expects to see. Cloaking works by showing the search engine spiders a different face and displaying another face for the website visitors.

• Paying for Links
  Link building is never an easy task, especially if you’re still new. You would have to go through a lot of rejections before your request is accepted. Buying links makes this task less unbearable. However, Google Webmaster is completely against this. Google’s goal is to give the users the most relevant results. However, with buying links, the results could be changed and be manipulated. If you get caught, you’re website might get a permanent ban.

• Spam Comments
  You may have encountered getting comments that are completely irrelevant, which contains a link. These spam comments are created with the thought of getting free backlinks. Although this technique renders no SEO advantage for you, especially because links that are gained through this way is strictly ‘no-follow’, this is still one of the most used techniques used by black hat digital marketers.

Takeaway

We all want to be on the first two pages on the search engines because it means more traffic and more opportunity to pitch our products to the page visitors. Optimizing a site for search engine is not an easy task. It’s a lengthy process that takes time, money, and effort, however, it’s not impossible. Start planning now, then, get to work.