What Is White Hat SEO?
White hat SEO is a practice of search engine optimization that follows search engine guidelines to help improve a website’s rankings in the organic search results. White hat SEO does not engage in spam methods to manipulate the ranking algorithms.
White hat SEO techniques maintain the integrity of a website while naturally building expertise, authority, and trust (or E-A-T) for the domain, which are key ranking factors for Google’s algorithm. White hat SEO also helps produce long-lasting rankings and search engine visibility because it doesn’t participate in spam practices that can lead to a manual or algorithmic penalty.
White hat SEO strategies include:
- Publishing high-quality content that attracts organic backlinks.
- Following good on-page SEO practices like keyword prominence, not keyword stuffing).
- Optimizing internal links with keyword-rich anchor text.
- Increasing page speed for faster loading times.
- Improving Core Web Vitals.
- Claiming local Google Business Profiles and Bing Places listings.
- Producing helpful content that matches user search intent.
Visit the SEO Glossary
Go to the SEO Glossary to find more terms and definitions that relate to the field of search engine optimization.

The Editorial Staff at SEO Chatter is a team of search engine optimization and digital marketing experts led by Stephen Hockman with more than 15 years of experience in search engine marketing. We publish guides on the fundamentals of SEO for beginner marketers.