In the latest article I posted on Steamfeed.com, “Winning with White Hat SEO in the Post-Penguin Era”, I explain how to implement a clean SEO strategy that complies with all the new Google anti-webspam restrictions and creates a long-lasting competitive edge for your website.

After undoing (or hopefully, avoiding) all Black Hat techniques described in my previous post “Black Hat SEO: What It Is And How To Avoid It”, such as optimizing your website for SEO and not users, building inbound links from multiple unrelated websites, and manipulating cracks in Google’s algorithms for short-term gain, you should concentrate on ethical tactics that help gain strong and long-lasting search-engine rankings.

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Building Long-Term Authority: Some Keys to Success

Here are some efficient White Hat SEO principles you can apply:

• Use the Google Authorship tag to build authority, improve click-through rates, and gain faster indexing of your website.
• Expand your social sharing potential, especially on Google+.
• Write guest blog posts on authoritative sites and use their reputation to reach a wider audience and gain valuable inbound links.
• Seek out real partnerships with trusted websites for your inbound links.
• Leverage your expertise to build an affiliation network and gain referrals from influential people in your target industry, including new social media contacts.
• Build your local search presence by creating Google Places and Bing Local profiles and getting listed on high quality local business directories like Yelp, Foursquare, and Local.com.
• Focus on user experience rather than solely on SEO-oriented improvements, by fixing errors, improving page loading speed, embedding video, and adjusting your site according to user satisfaction surveys.

Most of these methods are faster to implement than Black Hat techniques and will help you build a long-lasting presence on search engine results pages (SERPs). Check the full article for more insight on how to Gain Top Rankings With White Hat SEO.

Steamfeed.com is a website covering advanced topics in all areas of marketing with some of the top experts in the industry. See all of Brien Shanahan’s articles on Steamfeed.