Over optimisation penalties

[realmaverick]

It seems, some of my pages are being hit by over optimisation penalties. Now to figure out how to tone it down.

The website is for downloading widgets. It's got many great ranks. The pages are dynamic and so titles, h1 are done via variables.

At present the title + H1 are 100% match for the keyword. In addition breadcrumbs home > widgets > big widgets > big blue widgets. All of which being pretty much 100% match for target keyword.

Also, in a gallery, say you're viewing "big blue widgets" there are tabs that link to "small blue widgets" and "medium blue widgets". Again using 100% match anchor text.

None of this was done really for SEO. More for usability. But it appears it's recently negatively effecting SEO. After having a couple of pages, that were ranked number 1, now way at the back of the top 1,000, with un-targeted pages ranking in their place, though to a lesser rank.

I am going to mix up the <h1> tag so that it doesn't match the <title>. I am going to remove the 100% match anchors in the tabs and make them just "small", "medium" and "large".

I don't really want to touch the breadcrumbs, because Google uses those in the results and they make perfect logical sense how they're setup.

What other changes would you suggest, to help prevent these pages being filtered?

Thanks a lot :)

[tedster]

I wouldn't suggest anything thing more at the moment. See what just this much change brings you. And I agree with you about not touching the breadcrumbs.

A couple related questions:

1. How did you decide this was an over-optimization penalty?
2. Did you do any link building recently, especially the kind that focused on the same anchor text?

[deadsea]

Is this somehow related to your server move?

[Reno]

None of this was done really for SEO. More for usability.

That's how many of us built our sites, not to scam them or anyone else, but rather because it was simply the right way to do it. In Google's warped world view, that unfortunately can come back to bite you, so let's hope that is not the case here.

Tedster's advice is on the mark for now ~ you should not have to dumb-down your website unless you are 100% certain you got hit with the most stupid penalty that penalty-hungry Google imposes. If after your review you are convinced that it's still the correct way to do things, then be patient and see if something else is more likely the culprit. What you don't want to do is dig yourself into a deeper hole by trying to comply with their idiot attitude.

......................

[Robert Charlton]

What about other text on your pages?

Can you add some descriptive content that doesn't parrot your keywords, but does introduce unique and related vocabulary that's really about the subject of each page... something that in some small but genuine way informs or enlightens about your widgets?