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---- Fear of Over-Optimisation Penalty ...

le_gber - 12:53 pm on Apr 14, 2005 (gmt 0)


Hi,

first of all this is not a rant or any similar 'my competitor does this' kinda post, it's facts based, so can we try to keep it that way.

There's been a lot of post written about the fear of over-optimisation penalty, but I want to put everybody's mind at rest - THERE IS NO OVER OPTIMISATION PENALTY.

Common fear of Over-Opt. often appear when you want to do something with your site that you wouldn't necesseraly be able to justify if you were to follow one or the other guidelines given by the W3C: use of keywords in comments, use of multiple wordy and linked h1's, multiple keywords in img alt attributes, etc.

Let's try to weed out some of your fears.

The site used in this example ranks no1 on G for a lot of very competitive keywords (20/30+ Mil). It's also in the top 10 on all three major player in the SE market (organic listing), so maybe we can learn from them. The site 'tested' always returned the same page in for the tried keyword so the examples below apply to this page.

  • comments with keywords in it - there's no proof of it being read by search engines and comments should be used to make your site clearer - so if you want to use them, why not
  • multiple H1's, although not structurally correct (according to W3C), it doesn't seem to have a negative effect on a site ranking
  • wordy H1's (20 words or so), although long and painful for screen readers (especially if you have many), it doesn't seem to have a negative effect on a site ranking
  • linked H1's, again no negative effect can be seen
  • text - a lot (1500+ words on the homepage) - this seem to match what we know about search engines, they love content
  • PR - very good for a site on this topic (7) so again work on your backlinks
  • meta keywords and description - G displayed the meta description in the SERP for all the searches I did and so did MSN - so work on you meta description
  • text manipulation using CSS - this doesn't seem to have a negative impact on the site
  • too many links per page - again no proof of that having a negative impact - on the site 'tested' there is 250+ links sharing an average of 6 words each (yes that's almost a whole page of link)

    As always, discussions about what other people do is very difficult. It can sound like a rant or a complaint. This will not help.
    It can also sound like finger pointing - 'he' doesn't follow the W3C guidelines, I do and I am nowhere near the no1 spot. This will not help either.

    I am not condamning this company, they do offer the services that they rank well for. They are also prepared to take some 'risks' that I am not (if there is no over-optimisation penalty - are these really risky method?).

    So what are my options? I can take it upon myself to try to find alternative keywords, or I can be prepared to take those 'risks' as well. I choose the former.

    Anyway, I hope that those of you who were thinking of optimising your site but feared the over-optimisation penalty will have had found the peace of mind to do so, thanks to this post. I wish you good luck here.

    Leo

    [disclaimer]these are facts noticed on a unique site that is doing well, if you try and do the same on yours and get banned - don't come and blame me ;)[/disclaimer]

    I also want to add that it's not worth stickying me to get the site URL - I won't give it to you :)

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