A close look at what over optimization really is

[brinked]

I will not share my entire story about how I came into the SEO world, but lets just say that in order to have any type of success in this industry, I needed to overcome what turned out to be over optimization penalties.

Since then I have pretty much made a living at buying established sites that suffer from obvious on site over optimization, fixing them up and profiting big time. One site I paid $12,000 for and within 2 weeks it was recovered, making a good $400-$600/day. Thats what type of money people can be missing out on with a simple over optimization penalty.

But what exactly is over optimization? More importantly, what is Google's latest update all about? While I do not have the answer to everyone's questions, I have a lot of experience with over optimization and I think I might just be the most qualified person in the world when dealing with this type of penalty.

I know a lot of people feel vulnerable right now and that is why I am making this post. Looking over on the google help forums, many of the issues I am seeing have blatant over optimization problems on site. One lady had a site that offered free widgets for kids. How do I know this? When I went to her site, "free widgets for kids" was in the domain name, the page title, and every other sentence on the home page. I did not dig any deeper in her site and I am not saying this is the exact cause for her punishment, but I am pretty sure it is. If you read her content, it sounds spammy and unprofessional and I have no idea how this site managed to elude over optimization penalties earlier.

In any case, here is a list of over optimization factors. Some are tried and proven, others are semi proven and some others are just strong theories.


1. Keyword/phrase over usage. Known by seo experts as keyword stuffing. This is also the most commong form of over optimization and also the easiest to recover from. When you are trying to rank for a specific phrase, you want google to find that term. Many webmasters will do this by placing the same term in the page title, url's, meta tags, body text, anchor text, header tags etc etc. It is important NOT to do this. Google will know what the subject of your site is without having to repeat the same phrase over and over. That just gives a poor user experience. Not only that, google will know you're trying to game the system. You could possibly overcome this by strong content and a good backlink profile, but it will likely still hold you back in some way or another.

2. Redirects. I seen a major competitor just lose its number 1 position after holding it steady for 3 years. This site was not only number 1 for this industry, but its also one of the top 500 most popular websites in the USA. It is a huge huge brand and it has just dropped to position #7 after being #1 for 3 years. One thing I noticed about them is they redirect several domains to their main site and they have bought out competitors over the years and just redirected them to their main site. Be careful not to redirect too many sites to your main business, and if you do, make sure to follow recommended procedure as offered by google.

3. Same/similar anchor in back links. This is an oldy but a goody. The best backlink profile is a well rounded, diverse and natural looking profile that has links coming from many types of venues. If all of your links come from blogs, that looks pretty artificial, what are the odds that all of the sites linking to you all happen to be blogs? Top that off with if these blogs link to lots of other unrelated sites, it wont take google's algo too long to detect that. Aggressive reciprocal links can hurt you as well.

4. Same Niche same server - This one I truly believe in, or it could be me just being paranoid. I always believed that having 2 websites on the same server in the same or similar industries will cause 1 or both of them to be punished. For this reason, I leave no trail for google to connect any 2 of my sites together unless they are completely unrelated. I make sure to have different whois info, I never use GA, adsense or any other means for google to connect two similar sites. I have no concrete proof of this one, but its something I feel strongly about.

5. Doorway/thin affiliate - Is the main goal of your site to get people to another site? Then google may just decide to drop your site and favor the source site since that would provide a better user experience. Counter this by offering something truly unique.

6. Link schemes/cheap backlink packages - Quite simply, dont waste your time. This does more harm than good and even if you do get a good ranking fast, it will fade soon enough. Any back link package is truly ridiculous and you are playing with fire. If you see any package that is offering you more than 100 links for less than $10, you should stay far far away. it also goes unmentioned you should stay away from ANY back link building schemes that include gaining mass amounts of backlinks in a short period of time. Links are votes and should be earned.

This list was rushed and not proof read so take it as it is. I hope this insight can help some people. These are just the 6 most common factors that I see webmasters suffering from. Best of luck.

[Zivush]

Correction.
I learned the hard way that this could be perceived as a bad practice for Google - not necessarily for the readers.
Another example –
Sometimes it is impossible to find variations to a term. Especially when:
1. You want to compare term-A to term-B and there’s no other option but to repeat.
2. The term is unique/key term, like health term or financial term.

@tenster
I am not sure the algorithm has yet to tell the difference between keyword stuffing and a decent reuse of keywords.
Hoping they are comparing page A to page B for the same term (keyword).

[tedster]

I am not sure the algorithm has yet to tell the difference between keyword stuffing and a decent reuse of keywords.

I'm sure there are still false positives from time to time. But I think they're doing a pretty good job ever since they created their phrase-based spam detection process [appft1.uspto.gov].

As I read that patent, it means, for one, that keyword spam detection will end up DIFFERENT for specific keyword phrases (certain markets and website taxonomies.) So the stuffing threshold will be set by a statistical values that are seen across a large number of sites in any given niche. Articles will see a very different threshold than point-of-sale pages. It just the way that process works.

[Martin Ice Web]

What is the keyword density that is triggering an over optimization penalty?

In my niche is a website that didn´t show up before penguin/panda and it has 80% keyword density. 100 of internal keyword link. Exact domain name and is a .biz domain. It is holding numerus #1-#10 spots on many different search terms. The ranked site are very similar but do rank.

[deadsea]

80% keyword density means that 8 out of 10 words are the keyword. As in "Spam spam spam we have spam spam spam spam spam!"

Really?

[Martin Ice Web]

if you do not count the common words for ecom ( like chipment, basket, payment, imprint ) then you will come near 80%.

Counting all words:

Keyword found 2 time(s) in 8 Title words (Density: 25.00%)
Keyword found 4 time(s) in 16 Heading(s) words (Density: 25.00%)
Keyword found 8 time(s) in 43 Alt tag(s) words (Density: 18.60%)
Keyword NOT found in Image Filename(s) (17 words)
Keyword found 27 time(s) in 118 Linktext words (Density: 22.88%)
Keyword NOT found in Bold text (37 words)

[seogenx]

Over Optimization - let's say its start with keyword stuffing first. In title, meta description, site content and so on. Links repeating more than a time in page with same anchor text. For off site - more and more low quality links pointing to your website.

[gouri]

@Zivush,

Thanks for the response and the suggestions.

An example of optimized page could be -
Say, the page title is "blue widget"
Instead of appearing like a a machine-made content, use variations of the phrase (or sometimes 3rd form):
blue color widget, widget of blue color, the widget, it, this widget, this, that color, blues widgets, blue for xyz widget, blue ABC widget, widget with blue color.

For the keywords variations that you mention, should those be used in the title tag or are these suggestions for the body text?

You may also put links to 'other colors' to become the source of information on that widget: red widgets, green widget, etc etc.

Should the 'other colors' link be from the blue widget page?

@seogenx,

Over Optimization - let's say its start with keyword stuffing first. In title, meta description, site content and so on. Links repeating more than a time in page with same anchor text.

Can you tell me when you say 'links repeating more than a time in page with same anchor text' are you saying, for example, two links from the body text of Page B with the anchor text 'Widget Building Advice' going to Page D or one link from the body text of Page B and one from the body text of Page C with the anchor text 'Widget Building Advice' going to Page D? Or if you are saying something else, can you please tell me?

Thanks.

[Zivush]

@gouri
These were my SEO power secrets for a long time :-) but I am happy to share:

For the keywords variations that you mentioned, should those be used in the title tag or are these suggestions for the body text?

The main keyword you target, blue widget, should be on the title tag and H1, while keywords variations are for the body text.
Depending on the monthly search volume for each keyword, you may target other key-words variations putting them on H2, H3 headers.
Make it easy for the search engines to send traffic for that keywords-rich page.

(You may also decide to create another page, for any keyword with high search volume, to optimize that widget completely.)

Should the 'other colors' link be from the blue widget page?

Of course.
A reader may be interested to learn more about other colors. That's how you increase page/visit and time on site.
Search engines favor sites that bring wide spectrum of information on a certain topic (widget) and that's how authority sites are structured.

[gouri]

@Zivush,

Thanks for the advice. I am going to try to include keyword variations of a couple of phrases that some of my pages are targeting in the page's respective body text.

The main keyword you target, blue widget, should be on the title tag and H1, while keywords variations are for the body text.

Is it ok to use a keyword variation in the h1 tag? For some of the phrases that I have in h1 tags, a variation would fit well.

[tedster]

Yes - some variation between the title and H1 is common and not a problem.

[MikeNoLastName]

<Google betrayed them because it seems like they changed the rules. Well, they sort of did, but they changed rules that we SEOs had reverse-engineered, not the rules that they actually recommended. >

Ahem, I definitely recall reading or watching a fairly recent (last year or two) interview with Matt Cutts wherein Matt was reviewing a webmasters page and made an offhand comment to the effect of "...why use 'it' [on the page] when you can use the specific term 'Widget'." Sure sounded like he was specifically recommending keyword stuffing to me!

[gouri]

Yes - some variation between the title and H1 is common and not a problem.

@tedster,

Thanks.

I think that I'll have keyword variation in the title tag and h1 tag on some of the pages.

[Zivush]

Yes - some variation between the title and H1 is common and not a problem.

I forgot to mention it.
Actually, I am a frequent user of the Wordpress plugin called SEO title tag.
This plugin makes it easy to edit the title tags and the h1 headers for each page across a the all site.
However, hold on, I rarely change the target keyword on the title tag and h1 (I don't want to confuse Google :-) rather use these two valuables tactfully and not always.

The most common use is: Making an attractive sentence in the 'title tag' to get the page noticed by searchers, while making the h1 a short version of that sentence.
Am example -
Title tag: Sure-fire [[kw] for A B C] you wouldn't want to miss.
H1: [[kw] for A B C]

or when you build series of pages:
Title tag: [[kw] for A B C]
H1: PART 1:- [[kw] for A B C]
When a reader lands on a page, he knows to navigate back and forth.

[adder]

In my niche is a website that didn´t show up before penguin/panda and it has 80% keyword density. 100 of internal keyword link. Exact domain name and is a .biz domain. It is holding numerus #1-#10 spots on many different search terms. The ranked site are very similar but do rank.

Ok, let's elaborate on Martin's example by adding a real-life case study with a similar problem.

* An EMD site widgetry.tld wants to rank for a single-word keyword "widgetry". It is a medium-difficulty term in its home country which is a non-English market in a big European country.

* The site is obviously over-optimised. Homepage keyword density for "widgetry" is 6.65% and the other keywords on the density list is simple "noise" - words like; you, me, and, for etc... (whereas normally you'd also have variations like gadgetry, gizmos, thingies etc).

* Internal linking structure: the navigation has several dozens of links to sub-categories worded like: Widgetry Option 1, Widgetry Option 2 etc.

* Url structure: widgetry.tld/widgetry-option-subcategory/widgetry-product-type

So the url string will always have the keyword repeated 3 times!

* I've already found 100 low-to-medium-weight phrases that the site ranks for in its native Google.tld. It hasn't achieved any meaningful #1 positions yet but by ranking #5 - #10 for a string of good "sales" terms, it is by all means making some money.

* The spike in traffic occured some time between October and November 2011 although the site didn't add anything new during that time. I've looked at screenshots from 2010 and the site hasn't changed the content.

* Links-wise, the site has achieved links from 31 sites :) If we look at the anchor texts, 12 are branded, 12 are exact, 3 - longtail and 4 are variations. The link sources are mainly directories, bookmarks and only a couple of medium-authority sites.

* The results page for "widgetry" looks like this:
#1-#4 - massive international sites with millions of pages
#5 our spam example
#6-#9 variously-sized competitors of #5
#10 - niche articles compendum with a massive link portfolio

So the question is why and how? After seeing so many Penguin victims, I simply don't understand how was this site not taken down by Penguin? My only possible guess would be that it's the fact that 30% of it's anchor text is kind-of branded.

[gouri]

Yes - some variation between the title and H1 is common and not a problem.

@Zivush, @tedster,

If I have 'Gray Widget Tools' as my keyword phrase and it is in the title tag along with other words, is it ok to have only 'Tools' in the h1 tag along with other words?

The reason I ask is that 'Gray Widget Tools', in addition to being mentioned in the title tag, is also mentioned several times in the body text and mentioning the whole phrase flows with the content well. In the h1 tag, if I mention 'Tools', I think that people would understand what I am referring to and with mentions of 'Gray Widget Tools' several times on the page, I think that the search engines would know what 'Tools' is referring to.

I don't want to over optimize.

Would this be ok?

[Zivush]

@gouri
A reader (not directly from Google) who navigates to that page in your site reads the h1, he doesn't see the title tag.

[gouri]

A reader (not directly from Google) who navigates to that page in your site reads the h1, he doesn't see the title tag.

@Zivush,

That's true.

I am also asking from an over optimization perspective. I don't want to mention the keyword phrase 'Gray Widget Tools' too many times and using part of the phrase, 'Tools' along with some other words, I think, would sound better than a variation of the phrase (e.g. 'Widget Tools of Gray Color' for the h1 tag that I working with).

Do you think that I can do this? It wouldn't be this way on all the pages, it's for some of them.

[Zivush]

You can do everything but a reader wouldn't recall which widget you're talking about unless S/he digs inside this page :-)
(And I assume you weaken the main kw you're targeting for if not written in H1.)

The title tag is for search engines.
H1 is the title for the readers and for the search engines to value.

Regarding kw density that's my best assumption:
There's a big difference between reusing kw of 2 words and reusing kw of say 5-6 words.
Repeating a long-tail too often is a bad practice even for the readers, while 2 words kw can be considered a "term" and may pass the radar.

All in all, treat you site as a book with chapters (categories) and topics. If a reader can understand easily the meaning, by mentioning part of a phrase, so does Google. The only difference between a book and a site is that in a site, any page stands by itself.

[gouri]

You can do everything but a reader wouldn't recall which widget you're talking about unless S/he digs inside this page :-)
(And I assume you weaken the main kw you're targeting for if not written in H1.)

The title tag is for search engines.
H1 is the title for the readers and for the search engines to value.

@Zivush,

I agree that I should try to include the keyword phrase in the h1. If I don't, I am not sure that the reader will know what I am referring to.

I also agree that the title tag is for search engines, but I just wanted to mention that the reader can see it at the top of the browser and this can help to give them an idea of what a page is about. But I am going to take your advice and try to include the phrase in the h1 because a reader will probably look at the top of a page to see what is going to be discussed.

Also, thanks for the advice on repeating shorter phrases and using more caution when repeating long-tail ones.

[gouri]

I am working on a website where the navigation text is Building Widgets Guide and Building Widgets Guide is also the anchor text of an internal link from another page to this page.

On the actual page, in the title tag I have Building Widgets Guide, part of the meta description is ....my guide to building widgets and a part of the h1 is ....author's guide to building widgets.

Could this be over optimization? These phrases have good rankings, but the page that this page links to (there is a link in the body text) was receiving a lot of traffic and was then, I believe, affected by Panda and Penguin. If this is over optimization, is it possible that the phrases that are over optimized are not affected, but the traffic of another page is affected?

[Zivush]

What's the platform that you are using? Is it Wordpress?

[diberry]

Thanks for this, brinked. I've been reading you for years, and really appreciate your expertise on this topic - which is one I certainly don't understand well enough.

Brinked, you keep mentioning incidents where you fixed a penalty issue, and withing days/couple of weeks, your rankings came back. That suggests that if I make a change and my rankings don't come back within a couple of weeks, I still haven't addressed the real problem Google has with my site. But is this still true post Panda and Penguin? The usual assumption has been that you can't possibly see recovery until those algos get re-run. Also, there's the patent about changing a site's rankings just to confuse the webmaster so they won't know which changes are working (or not). Do you think we should always expect to see a quick rankings return if we've made the right change?

If all of your links come from blogs, that looks pretty artificial, what are the odds that all of the sites linking to you all happen to be blogs?

Actually, in any tight niche where you get a lot of bloggers chatting about a topic no one else cares about - say, Mommy blogging or a specific tech niche - it's not unusual to have a strong majority of backlinks coming from other bloggers. One would hope Google can figure that out, though. Just sayin'.

Several of my clients have bought out their competitors and we're redirected the old sites to my clients' sites; it's never been a problem. I have two I oversee now and it's still not a problem. This happens quite often in some of the niches where I am active.

Thanks, netmeg, because I was just going to point out that buying out competitors and NOT developing their business is a standard offline procedure from time immemorial. The online equivalent would be a redirect, and it would be about getting actual customers, not improving ranking.

[tedster]

withing days/couple of weeks, your rankings came back. That suggests that if I make a change and my rankings don't come back within a couple of weeks, I still haven't addressed the real problem Google has with my site. But is this still true post Panda and Penguin?

If you have a Panda or Penguin problem, then your rankings will only recover when there is a Panda/Penguin update or data refresh. Those two named sub-algorithms are sort of isolated modules in the total algorithm.

Other than that, if your ranking problem is something else then, yes - you can see recoveries in a short period of time at almost any time.

[brinked]

Brinked, you keep mentioning incidents where you fixed a penalty issue, and withing days/couple of weeks, your rankings came back. That suggests that if I make a change and my rankings don't come back within a couple of weeks, I still haven't addressed the real problem Google has with my site. But is this still true post Panda and Penguin? The usual assumption has been that you can't possibly see recovery until those algos get re-run. Also, there's the patent about changing a site's rankings just to confuse the webmaster so they won't know which changes are working (or not). Do you think we should always expect to see a quick rankings return if we've made the right change?

Each case is different, obviously. Given my experience and everything that we know especially with panda refreshes being monthly, I think its safe to say that you should see a recovery within a months time if you in fact took steps to correct whatever issues google did not like.

I have always seen strong evidence of google confusing webmasters. In fact, I remember that about 3-4 years ago when I would attempt to recover from a penalty, I would actually get excited when my rankings got worse because this usually means that it would get better after that. There were also times where I didnt mind a negative impact because any movement was better than just sitting in a penalty not moving at all. I have not seen as much of this recently as in years passed, but I would think they still do this sort of thing, depending on which penalty it is.

As far as how long should you wait after making changes? I would give it 2 months top. And then go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate your site as a whole.

Actually, in any tight niche where you get a lot of bloggers chatting about a topic no one else cares about - say, Mommy blogging or a specific tech niche - it's not unusual to have a strong majority of backlinks coming from other bloggers. One would hope Google can figure that out, though. Just sayin'.

You are correct in a sense. But even in those cases, people read blogs and then it goes into social networking as people tweet those blog entries. It is not really a problem to have most of your links on blogs, what is more important is the type of blogs. Obviously penguin was designed for that exact scenario where people were gaming the system by gaining links that were placed on blogs that were put up for the only intention of providing backlinks.

[gouri]

What's the platform that you are using? Is it Wordpress?

@Zivush,

The text is written for each page of the site and elements such as the title tag, heading tag, meta description are also written for each page.

Wordpress is not used and I don't think that I am using another similar platform.

Does this help to determine if I am over optimizing?

[Zivush]

@gouri

Could this be over optimization?

How could anyone know? It's only assumptions based on our experience.

Again, KW usage has never been and never will be a math science. Just use your common sense and try to diversify when possible.

I mentioned Wordpress because Wordpress may create an issue of over-optimization when using (site-wide) exact anchor text of an internal link . Many WP blogs have:

• Category links on sidebar
  
• Tags links on sidebar
  
• Popular Posts on sidebar
  
• Recent Posts on sidebar
  
• Related Posts (under posts)

etc etc.

For example, you mentioned "Building Widgets Guide". I am sure "Building Widgets" carry more search volume than "Building Widgets Guide".
There's also another equivalent (a synonym) "Building Widgets - Guidelines" or other KWs, such as: "How to build widgets", "How should I build widget", "step by step guide to ...", "widgets building" or "guidance on building ..".

Therefore, in the navigation area you can use the strongest KW "Building Widgets" and in any other place (site-wide or from related pages) use "how to build widget".

[gouri]

@Zivush,

The text is written for each page of the site and elements such as the title tag, heading tag, meta description are also written for each page.

Wordpress is not used and I don't think that I am using another similar platform.

Does this help to determine if I am over optimizing?

@Zivush,

Thanks for the suggestions above.

One thing that I wanted to mention is that the anchor texts for the internal link and navigation link are also created by me.

I read what you said about keyword usage not being a math science, but does this influence your opinion in terms of could this be over optimization?

[Zivush]

@gouri
I think the term over-optimization is misleading and may be the cause of this confusion.

For me, using the same keyword in anchor text of links is actually not over-optimization, it is rather under-optimization.
If you have the ability to control the anchor texts and don't utilize it to diversify, you are losing a great chance of optimizing a page for other key words. You are making it less competitive.
Less competitive pages are the type of pages you find in many article farms.

In Wordpress, the issue of internal links as I described above is so extensive that if one doesn't have some php knowledge (and SEO skills), it can't be fixed.

Again, this is my way of working on my sites. I have never sold SEO services to anyone.

[gouri]

If a page is over optimized for some of the reasons that brinked mentioned in No. 1 in the opening post, does it affect the value of internal links coming from that page?

Are the rankings of keywords of the pages linked to from the over optimized page affected?

If the over optimized page is improved, does the value of the internal links on this page improve and can the rankings of keywords of the pages being linked to improve?

I would appreciate your thoughts.

[Zivush]

The answer is Yes. Think of it as a food chain. When one part is weak, all the other parts suffer as well.
A year ago Matt Cutts suggested hubpages to break up their site into “subdomains,”
See - [webmasterworld.com...]
They did it, and some other content farms followed this suggestion too.
It worked for several months and they all made a partial recovery, however in one of the Panda rounds they were hit hard again (and again, in every Panda iteration since).
The reason it didn’t work for a long time is because the sub-domains still have links to other internal pages of their site.