Google Over-Optimization Penalty: Tips to Avoid it
This year at SXSW Matt Cutts broke the norm and decided to pre-announce a Google update targeting over optimization. This has sent the SEO world into a panic with people rapidly changing their sites in an effort to tone down their SEO efforts other people have called BS on the over optimisation penalty. Either way can you afford to take the risk?
Below I have outlined the key factors that Google are likely to analyse when assessing website over optimisation.
Spammy Title Tags
If your title tags are a list of keywords it’s time to change them to something a little more readable, for example if you’re a UK SEO Company and your title tag reads “UK SEO Agency | UK SEO Company | SEO UK Services” chances are you are going to get slapped by Google. Now I know what you are thinking “But if I change my title tag now I will end up on page 3 or worse?” it’s possible that you will lose rank for some key phrases once the tag is changed, but stuffing all those keywords in your title tag looks spammy as hell and is going to give you poor CTR. A much nicer page title would be “BrandName a UK SEO Company / Agency” and then build a separate page for SEO Services instead of trying to include all your content on the home page.
Meta Description
The same applies to your Meta Description make sure it’s readable by a human. Google no longer uses the Meta Description in it’s ranking algorithm however it’s going to throw a switch if it’s stuffed with keywords and again, if it looks spammy it’s going to affect your CTR.
Back Link Profile
If your backlink profile is made up of scummy bought links, comment spam, spun articles, link networks and other evils then you are in trouble. If possible I suggest you go back through and try to remove the poor quality links, if it’s not possible your best option would be to build some good quality links to even our the % of bad quality links.
Here are the key areas to avoid:
- Links from sites that have been penalised
- Link networks / Building link networks
- Comment spam (especially automated
- Forum signature links from bad forums / don’t use exact match links
- Reciprocal links (swapping links with people)
Excessive Exact match Internal Anchor Text
If your site is using multiple occurrences of the exact match anchor text from a WordPress plugin or similar then you are better off linking manually and varying your anchor text slightly. It also does not help when you have several instances of the same anchor text linking to the same or different pages on your site. Typically Google will only count the first anchor text link to that URL and linking to multiple pages using the same anchor will help confuse the engines as it will send mixed signals on which page to rank for the chosen keyword.
Link Filled Footers
If the footer of your website is filled with anchor text links to your internal pages then it’s probably time to rip them out. Not only does this look spammy it’s almost like saying to the engines you are ramming a load of SEO internal anchor text links to your content in the footer. A much better option would be to place the links in the content of your sites pages this will show the engines you care more about the content on those pages than simply placing them at the bottom of the page.
Excessive Pages Targeting Similar Ccontent
If you have pages targeting almost the same keywords that virtually mean the same thing then you should work on consolidating these pages. An example would be a page targeting “Mobile Phone Shop” and another page called “Cell Phone Shop” both meaning the same thing to the user but two pages have been created to capture search traffic on both phrases, probably with targeted anchor text pointing at them. My advice would be to 301 the similar pages and combine the content, not only will this help get you off Google’s radar it most likely increase rank & traffic.
Blocks of Keyword-Heavy Text
When writing keywords into your content don’t write out the page and then slap a paragraph at the top full of keywords you are targeting. Spread out your keywords and phrases throughout the page so it provides the user with quality content and does not look like spam that no one wants to read.
Focus on User Experience
Don’t write content specifically for search engines always make sure it’s going to benefit the user and does not look like a keyword spammy / manipulative site, the last thing a user wants to see is a bunch of text that hardly makes sense placed on your page in an effort to trick the engines into ranking you for those keywords.
When in doubt always read things over in your head or even out loud to a friend or work colleague. If you can’t read it without it sounding stupid, drop it.
Keith Sudbury
Consultant at Lion SEO UK – If I am not doing SEO I can be found drinking Tea! Other interests are Linux, Programming & Blogging.
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13 Responses to “Google Over-Optimization Penalty: Tips to Avoid it”
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I don’t understand this tip Keith
Link Filled Footers
If the footer of your website is filled with anchor text links to your internal pages then it’s probably time to rip them out. Not only does this look spammy it’s almost like saying to the engines you are ramming a load of SEO internal anchor text links to your content in the footer. A much better option would be to place the links in the content of your sites pages this will show the engines you care more about the content on those pages than simply placing them at the bottom of the page.
Surely it is VERY common to have lots of admin pages for a site listed in the footer – giving site visitors easy access to your policies, organisation, FAQs, terms and conditions, and so on.
I can’t see why Google would regard this as spam. Even the site for this blog has got exaples of such links.
Steve Masters Reply:
May 1st, 2012 at 4:19 pm
I believe the problem is not footer links in themselves but collections of keyword anchor text links that are clearly designed to pass rank for the keyword.
For example, if you have a list of links in your footer that are navigational aids, pointing to key pages such as “contact us” and “products”, that would be normal.
What would be spammy is if you have links such as “mobile phone offers” and “mobile phone best prices”, with each link going to pages that don’t really match the anchor text. That’s clearly there for keyword ranking and not for navigational purposes.
How do you disallow incoming links from crap sites?
Like WordPress using Powered by WordPress in the footer of all their default themes or westhost using there links in all WordPress default themes for new one click installations.
Brad – It’s not possible to block incoming links from bad websites. From what I understand, bad websites linking to you can affect rankings but it shouldn’t make or break your website, as it is one consideration amongst hundreds of factors.
so the meta tags are sort of a negative marking, will not help you but could count against you ?
Steve Masters Reply:
May 2nd, 2012 at 11:29 pm
Meta tags are still important but now they must be more natural and more relevant to the context of the page. Keyword stuffing meta titles is a trigger that you are just trying to get keyword ranking rather than trying to help your reader.
Where’s the best place to find out which sites link back to a site?
Google Webmaster Tools
SEOMoz have a great post on it http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-survive-googles-unnatural-links-warnings-avoid-overoptimisation?
The search engines want to provide users with the best experience. So, you should focus on the users to attract the search engines. Write content for them first, and optimize naturally for the search engines second.
Yes, all is about the content and proper keywords, write content for the users, on your own – Google pays special attention on any duplicate of the content, it should be full of proper keywords – so first the right keyword research and then tracking positions by keywords – also is good to compare the results with competitors- these are the actions that will bring you exhaustive knowledge of all your SEO doings and this knowledge shoul help with working on content. To tracking position I use Colibri Tool I recommend this one because of it’s functionality – and really it’s competition features are the absolutely top of the pops in SEO tool!
_ You said comment spam is bad either,
what about really commenting on blog posts asking info (like i’m doing here), and in the meantime pushing one of yr keywords in the name field?? Without ofcourse making 1000s of them a day. Think i’m at 5 per day max.
I dont use every blog i find on the net, but if i’m commenting somewhere, i usually push one of my sites (which btw are normal business sites).
_ Bad links are they counted in for that much?
Lets asume i have a) a few normal sites & b)a lot of crappy adult sites, …
if i link those crappy penalised adult sites to my competition, it would mean i could kill their ranking ? And if i’d a message board to them or to some subdomains, …. best part would be, they would never be able to remove them
So I just make sure i got a few reaaaaaaaaaaal bad adult sites, link them to all my competitors on page 1, and they got a problem? Seems a bit unfair.
Really nice post.
SEO is good in future