What are the 4 Types of SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) aims to put your website in SERP rankings when someone searches for relevant keywords. It may seem easy but in reality, SEO covers a lot of grounds, and there are many variants of it. Different types of SEO depend on the approach, the main focus, and related industries. There are around 15 types of SEO combining every approach, focus, and industry. This is crazy, right?

Now, don’t get intimidated; we are here for you. We have prepared an in-depth breakdown of every type of SEO. Are you ready to learn about the world of SEO? Buckle up because it will be a long ride.

There are mainly 4 types of SEO, depending on your approach and strategy. These strategies work behind every other type of SEO, as you need to choose from one of these to rank your website. They are:

1. Black Hat SEO
2. White Hat SEO
3. Gray Hat SEO
4. Negative SEO

Let’s see what they are and how these SEO approaches work.

Black Hat SEO

You can already guess from the name that Black Hat sounds bad. You’re right! Black hat SEO is the unethical approach of SEO that tries to manipulate the search engine to rank your website. It includes keyword stuffing, cloaking, using hidden text, and even building spammy backlinks. It will bring you quick and short-term results, but it won’t last for long.

It may look tempting as you get quick results from it, but be aware that it comes with significant risks. If caught, the search engine may give you penalties or lower your rank. It gets worse as the search engine can even ban you from the SERP in extreme cases. Black Hat SEO techniques may give you some quick traffic, but no way it is a good choice for long-term and sustainable success in ranking.

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO is the method that follows the guidelines of the search engines. There has always been a debate about black hat vs white hat SEO, where white hat SEO wins every time. It focuses on the quality and relevance of the content, in-depth keyword research, enhancing site speed, optimizing meta tags, building high-quality backlinks, and all other ethical approaches.

Unlike Black Hat SEO, it brings slow and stable results that last for a long time. It will provide you with sustainable growth, avoiding shortcuts that will eventually put your business in danger. It gets better as White Hat SEO increases the user experience, helping you build a loyal community.

Gray Hat SEO

Gray Hat SEO stands in the middle ground of Black Hat and White Hat SEO approaches. It doesn’t go against the search engine regulations directly but doesn’t follow the guidelines either. It pushes the boundaries of What Hat SEO to the limit, using slightly over-optimizing content, clickbait headings, and even sometimes building low-quality backlinks.

It doesn’t have the risk of any immediate penalties but can affect your rankings in future search engine algorithm updates. Still, Gray Hat SEO is a risky method that focuses on quick results without immediately risking your website’s rank and reputation. Quick results don’t matter if you suffer a significant loss in the end, right?

Negative SEO

All the other SEO tactics are focused on improving your own website, right? But negative SEO is the exception here. The target of Negative SEO is to damage the rankings of your competitors instead of improving yours. This method includes creating spammy backlinks to competitors' websites, duplicating their content on other websites or platforms, posting fake and negative reviews, and even hacking their websites. In short, you will do anything you need to damage the reputation of your competitors and get them penalties from search engines.

It is the dark side of SEO, where you focus on destroying rather than building. It is a malicious practice that directly goes against search engine guidelines and ethics. The worst part is you may even face legal consequences for using negative SEO.

Overall, considering every SEO approach and strategy, white hat SEO is the optimal and safe way to enhance your business.

According to the specific aspect you focus on improving a website, there are 3 types of SEO.

1. On Page SEO
2. Off Page SEO
3. Technical SEO

Let’s learn in detail about these SEO types.

On Page SEO

On Page SEO works on every web page of a website to improve their search result rankings and drive relevant traffic. The main focus is the web page content and everything related to it. In this approach, you need to optimize keywords, content, headers, URLs, meta tags, and internal linking. It ensures that you upload high-quality content that adds value to the readers. It will make your content appealing to both your target audience and search engines.

There are several tools that SEO experts use for on page SEO activities.

• Google Search Console: This tool monitors website performance, suggests improvements, and identifies crawling issues.
• Yoast SEO: It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins used to optimize content, increase readability, and optimize meta tags.
• SEMrush: The best tool for keyword research, website audit, and content optimization suggestions.
• Ahrefs: This tool provides valuable insights on technical SEO issues, backlinks, and keyword optimization.
• Screaming Frog: A crawling tool that identifies on-page issues like duplicate content, broken links, and meta tag errors.
• GTmetrix: This tool helps improve the user experience of websites by analyzing page loading speed.
• PageSpeed Insights: A tool by Google that also helps optimize website speed for on-page SEO benefits and user experience.
• Moz Pro: This tool is useful for keyword tracking and link-building and with on-page recommendations.

Off Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to the activities that focus on outside the website to improve its search results. The main focus of off-page SEO is building website authority and recognition using external factors. This process includes obtaining high-quality backlinks, brand mentions, and social media marketing. 

An ideal off-page SEO strategy includes guest blogging, influencer outreach, and online reviews. These efforts establish the credibility and trustworthiness of a website for search engines. It increases the chances of ranking higher in the SERP. In a nutshell, off-page SEO drives organic traffic from external sources and boosts the domain authority of a website.

Several tools will come in handy while working on Off-page SEO.

• Ahrefs: This tool is also helpful for Off-page SEO, helping in backlink analysis, link building strategies, and competitor analysis.
• SEMsush: It contributes to Off-page SEO by identifying opportunities for optimization, building links, and providing backlink audits.
• Moz Link Explorer: This tool is really helpful in monitoring domain authority, tracking backlinks, and competitor link analysis.
• Google Alerts: This tool will help you track where your website is being mentioned across the web so that you can find bad mentions.
• Majestic: This tool is mainly focused on backlinks and comes in handy for deep link profile analysis and trust flow metrics.
• BuzzSumo: It helps promote content and outreach by identifying trending content and influencers.
• HARO (Help A Reporter Out): It acts like a bridge between you and journalists who are looking for expert opinions, providing you with a chance for media coverage and valuable backlinks.
• NinjaOutreach: This tool can develop your link-building efforts and is designed for influencer outreach and building relationships.

Technical SEO

You can guess from the name, this branch of SEO handles technical stuff to improve website performance and visibility. People often get confused between On-page vs. Technical SEO; we will clear out your doubts. It makes sure that the website is easily crawlable by the search engines and that they can index it properly. It also focuses on improving website loading speed, mobile friendliness, optimizing website architecture, and fixing broken links. It also ensures website security through HTTPS, implementing schema markup in the HTML codes, and proper URL structure. Technical SEO is essential for long-term SEO performance, improving search engine accessibility and user experience.

Here is a list of tools that you can use to ensure proper technical SEO of a website.

• Google Search Console: Helps with technical SEO by monitoring indexing issues, site health, and crawl errors. It also provides insights into how Google views your site.
• Screaming Frog: It crawls your website to identify technical SEO issues like broken links, missing meta tags, duplicate content, and so on.
• GTmetrix: This tool will analyze your website performance and speed with suggestions on improving user experience.
• PageSpeed Insights: This tool comes from Google and measures your site speed and performance on mobile and PC. It will offer you detailed insights for performance improvement for both platforms.
• Ahrefs Site Audit: Another great site audit tool that will identify technical SEO issues like crawling errors and broken links.
• SEMrush Site Audit: This tool is popular for in-depth technical SEO audits, providing reports on key factors like site architecture and internal linking.
• Moz Pro: It offers crawling and audit tools that can identify and fix technical SEO aspects like redirect chains and canonicalizations.
• Schema Structured Data Testing Tool: It will validate if you have implemented proper schema markup (structured data) on your website.

Apart from strategy and focus, there is also a wide variation of SEO based on the industry or platform you are targeting. The list keeps getting longer as new platforms start to emerge. Here are the most common other types of SEO you may come across:

1. Local SEO
2. E-commerce SEO
3. Mobile SEO
4. Image SEO
5. Voice SEO
6. Enterprise SEO
7. Youtube SEO
8. App Store SEO

Let’s see what these SEO types are and how they benefit your website rankings.

Local SEO

Local SEO is a must for area-specific businesses like restaurants or hospitals. These types of businesses focus on customers from their surrounding areas. The interesting fact about local SEO is you don’t need a website to put your business in front of your target audience. You can optimize your GBP profile to do the magic. When your potential customers search for any service or product you provide, Google will show them your business up front. 

This SEO method works on your GBP (Google Business Profile) optimization, managing online reviews, building citations in local directories, using and optimizing location-specific content, and much more. 

Google shows business in the area for certain quarries like searches with “near me” phrases. They will show a bunch of businesses on the results page in the “Local Pack” section. The main objective of local SEO is to drive foot traffic, or customer calls to your business, potentially boosting your sales and business awareness. Now, you should understand why local SEO is important. Here are some of the major aspects local SEO focuses on:

• Google Business Profile Optimization accurate business details, categories, and contact information
• Using and optimizing local keywords in the content
• Managing and responding to online reviews across various platforms
• Ensuring consistent business information in various citation platforms
• Create dedicated location-based web pages on your website if you have several outlets or offices
• Building high-quality backlinks from local sources like local news or blogs and establishing local business partnerships
• Ensuring consistency of NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) across all online platforms

E-commerce SEO

The name is pretty self-explaining in this SEO sector. This SEO is specially tailored for e-commerce businesses to establish a strong digital presence on the internet. The main objective of E-commerce SEO is to increase your targeted website traffic, potentially increasing your sales and revenue. 

It focuses on optimizing the product and category pages and overall the whole website for relevant keywords. An ideal E-commerce SEO strategy must focus on improving product descriptions, improving site speed, optimizing images, and so much more.

It also adapts to some of the technical SEO aspects, like implementing schema markups, canonical tags, and URL structures. It makes sure that the search engine can crawl your website and rank it properly. A proper and effective E-commerce SEO strategy will bring you targeted traffic, boosting your conversion rate through the roof. Here are some of the key factors E-commerce SEO works on.

• Using targeted and relevant keywords in meta descriptions, title tags, and in the content body
• Creating detailed product descriptions that are rich in accurate information with high-quality images
• A clean and sorted category page for easy navigation and ensure it is optimized for relevant keywords
• Making sure the site has a proper architecture that loads fast on both mobile and PC to increase crawlability and user experience
• Implementing schema markup to provide the search engine enough and clear idea of your page content for better rankings
• Creating clean site URLs, including your target keywords and no unnecessary parameters
• Having a strong internal linking strategy that guides the readers through your website properly
• Make sure that the e-commerce website is fully responsive and optimized for mobile phone usage
• Improving site speed and making sure it loads fast on all devices
• Build brand authority and awareness by posting relevant blogs, guides, and product related content to support SEO objectives
• Obtaining high-quality backlinks to build a strong site authority to improve search engine rankings
• Ensuring the best shopping experience on the website to reduce bounce rates and boost conversion rate

Mobile SEO

Mobile SEO represents the SEO approach that optimizes websites for smooth performance for mobile phone users. It also makes sure that the website ranks well in mobile search result pages. According to Statista, there are 6.47 billion mobile internet users. So, the vast majority of your target customers will visit your website through mobile phones. That means if your website has poor performance on mobile phones, you are in big trouble.

A proper mobile SEO strategy will make your website responsive for all device and screen sizes with faster loading time, proper viewpoint configuration, resizing and minimizing popups, and using a mobile-friendly design. In addition, it works on optimizing content, buttons, and images for touch interactions. An effective mobile SEO will ensure the smooth performance of your website across different devices. Here are some of the key factors mobile SEO works on:

• Implementing a mobile-friendly design for a smooth performance
• Optimizing images, using browser cache, and minimizing server response time to make the site load faster
• Creating a user-friendly interface that is properly sorted and easy to understand so that the user can navigate through your website easily
• Making sure that the contents on your website is optimized for mobile screens and it is easy to read in all the different screen sizes
• Too many popups are frustrating and have a negative impact on the user experience, so reduce popups
• Ensuring proper local SEO, as most mobile users look for location-based services
• Making sure that the mobile version of the website is also optimized for search engine rankings
• Ensuring the search engines can effectively and easily crawl the mobile version of the website

Image SEO

Image SEO represents optimizing your website's images for search engine visibility and enhancing user experience. It makes sure your website loads faster, and the search engine can crawl through your website easily to index them properly. 

Actually, it falls under the wings of technical SEO, but the importance is significant enough to be discussed separately. A proper image SEO includes compressing your images, descriptive file names, and using alt texts. 

The images you use must be in a mobile-friendly format like JPEG or PNG. It also makes sure that you use image sitemaps to help the search engines crawl and index the visuals. This method not only helps your website load faster but also contributes to ranking it in web and image search results. Therefore, you get more targeted traffic to your website. Let’s look at what image SEO works on to improve your website performance.

• Using descriptive file name of the image using relevant keywords to help the search engine understand the contents of the image
• Using keyword-rich alt text to images for proper indexing and accessibility of the search engine
• Reduce image size to minimize the loading speed of your website
• Ensuring the images are properly displayed and responsive for all screen sizes, especially for mobile phones
• Image SEO makes sure to use proper image formats for the optimal balance between file size and quality
• Focuses on creating image sitemaps, making it easy for the search engine to index all the images on your website
• Using lazy loading tactics only to load images when they are needed, boosting your overall site loading speed
• Using keyword-focused and descriptive headings to provide the search engines with more context about the image

Voice SEO

Voice SEO is specifically dedicated to people who use voice search on search engines. Voice searches are generally a bit different; the queries are longer than traditional text-based searches. The use of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant is getting more and more popular, so you better adapt to the changes.

Voice SEO is focused on natural language and question-based queries in search engines. This process includes optimizing for long tail keywords, providing clear and informative answers to FAQs, and ensuring the contents of the website are mobile-friendly. That is because people who use voice searches are typically on mobile phones. This type of SEO will help your business catch the voice search-driven traffic and improve the visibility of your website. Here is a list of aspects voice SEO covers:

• It targets natural, long-tail keywords that are based on questions and mimic the talking style of the people
• Optimizing your website content to appear in featured snippets of the search result page because most of the voice search answers come from it
• Making sure that the site is mobile friendly as almost all of the voice searchers use mobile phones
• Optimizing local SEO for “Near me” searches, as a big portion of voice searches are based on local intent
• Use schema markup (Structured Data) so that the search engine better understands your content and shows it in the voice search results
• Make sure that the loading speed of the website is minimal, as voice search prefers answers from fast-loading webpages
• Provide clear and direct answers that are short and on point to the FAQs, as they are more likely to be selected for voice search results
• Structure your content properly to make sure that it is easy to read for the readers, and use FAQs to address common questions properly

Enterprise SEO

Enterprise SEO works with large-scale organization websites to rank them in the search engine. These types of websites are heavyweight and have a complex architecture with a huge amount of content. In some cases, they may have multiple web properties. It requires a highly advanced strategy and profound experience to work with such a complex website and a vast amount of content.

You will have to manage a large volume of keywords, work in a highly competitive optimization scenario, work with complex technical SEO aspects, and finally match the SEO efforts with the company goals. Enterprise SEO is focused on automation, integrating SEO with other departments like IT or marketing, and maintaining a brand presence across various digital platforms. In the end, it will bring organic growth, build reputation & brand awareness, and improve your online visibility of large enterprises. The following list contains the key aspects enterprise SEO focuses on.

• It handles large-scale keyword research and management in highly competitive niches, including long-tail keywords
• Crafting, optimizing, and managing a huge amount of content while ensuring a consistent brand voice, content quality, and reader requirements
• Make sure that the site loads fast, is crawlable, mobile friendly, has a proper architecture, and is optimized for other technical SEO needs
• Utilizing various tools and automation tactics to track keywords, reports, and optimization easy and efficient
• Enterprise SEO aims to combine efforts from various departments, like IT, marketing, business development, and content teams, to ensure collaboration and fast results
• Utilizing advanced SEO tools and analytics to track growth opportunities, performance, and make data-driven decisions
• Maintain a strong and consistent presence of the company in various web properties, subdomains, and even local content
• Building a high-quality linking strategy and utilizing digital PR in order to improve reputation and authority
• Managing online reviews and brand perception on a large scale and maintaining search visibility
• Optimizing the website for both local and global search results, ensuring your company is visible to both local and international searchers

YouTube SEO

YouTube SEO is the process of ranking a channel or its content for relevant searches. It is getting more and more important with the rise of content creators on YouTube. It is a great platform for anyone to build brand recognition.

YouTube SEO involves several to-do’s, like using relevant keywords in the video titles, video descriptions, and tags. You also need to make engaging thumbnails and encourage interaction with the viewers like like, comment, and share. In addition, you also need to optimize the video length, use transcripts, and use a playlist to enhance the visibility of your video. The main goal of YouTube SEO is to increase the watch time, engage more users, and boost channel authority to rank a video higher in the search results.

So, how does YouTube SEO work? Here is a list of aspects YouTube SEO focuses on to improve the visibility of a channel.

• Using relevant keyword-rich video titles that match search queries and increase discoverability
• Writing video descriptions in detail and optimizing the keyword usage to give more context to the search engine, helping it rank higher in YouTube and Google searches
• Use proper tags in the video to help YouTube categorize the video properly
• Create appealing video thumbnails to attract more people to click, increasing video watch rates
• Boost video ranking and channel authority by encouraging likes, comments, and shares of the users
• Optimizing video length and maximizing video quality to boost overall watch time, which is a major ranking factor on YouTube
• Using captions and transcripts for improving user experience and SEO benefits
• Improve session times and overall watch time by organizing videos into playlists
• Keep the channel active by uploading videos regularly, helping better rankings over time
• Finally, one of the most important factors is creating high-quality and engaging content that resonates with the user's expectations

App Store SEO

App Store SEO, widely known as App Store Optimization (ASO), is the process of optimizing mobile apps to rank higher in app store search results like Google Play Store or Apple App Store. It is significantly important for the software firms that work on mobile app development. The higher your software ranks in an app store, the more downloads you get.

ASO focuses on several factors, like using relevant keywords in the app title, description, and tags. You also need to optimize the visual elements like app icons and add screenshots in the description to attract more people. App Store SEO also includes managing app ratings and reviews, increasing download rates, and ensuring the users about regular updates. The target of app store SEO is to improve the visibility of the app and drive user engagement inside the app store environment. Now, let’s look at what aspects App Store SEO covers.

• Using relevant title and subtitle in the app title and subtitle
• Strategic use of keywords in the app description and metadata for better visibility
• Writing clear and concise app descriptions that are keyword-rich and explain the features and functionalities of the app
• Design an eye-catchy app icon that stands out in the list of apps in the search results as the icon is the first thing that a user notices
• Use high-quality screenshots and videos to help users understand the functionality of the app, contributing to the download ratio
• Encourage high ratings, respond to every customer feedback, and regularly suggest updates according to the user needs
• Optimizing the app content for various countries and regions so that you can reach a wide range of audience
• Monitoring session lengths, retention rates, and in-app usages because they influence the app store ranking of it

The bottom line is SEO covers a wide range of components and industries. As digital marketing keeps evolving and new platforms keep emerging, the list of SEO will keep getting longer. The good news is that the suitable SEO type depends on your business industry, company goal, and target audience. 

But whatever the type is, there is a lot of work to do in order to establish a strong presence in the online segment of your industry. Additionally, every business has unique targets and visions. So, you need to build unique strategies from scratch for every single customer. Without profound knowledge and experience, it is impossible to achieve.

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How to report Black hat SEO to Google?

To report black hat SEO, first, you need to gather evidence. Then go to Google’s spam report page, sign up, fill up the form, and submit it to report the issue. If the problem is about unnatural paid links, you can use the Google paid links report form to submit the report.

How black hat link building will destroy your SEO?

Black hat link-building will destroy your SEO because it violates search engine guidelines and leads you to penalties or even de-indexing of your site. If any of these happens, you are in a big trouble. So, avoid black hat SEO practices at all costs.

What is the intent of black hat seo tactics?

The main intent of black hat SEO tactics is to manipulate search engines by violating the guidelines to rank a website higher in the SERP. These tactics prioritize short-term quick benefits over long-term sustainable rankings, risking your entire business in the long run.