Over optimization has been a penalty for a while now, but many websites still haven’t recovered from it, or are still making the same mistakes and wondering why they aren’t ranking. Search engines work hard to keep spam out of their SERPs (search engine result pages), and if you over optimize your page it will work against you. Careful attention to balance must be made, so that your website meets search engine ranking factors, but maintains enough unoptimized content at the same time.
How to Prevent Over Optimization – Check Website Readability, Vary Keywords and How They are Used
The easiest way to make sure that you can avoid the over optimization penalty is to read your website content. If keywords stick out to you like a sore thumb, they will to your visitors, as well as search engines. You can usually fix this by adding more content to your webpage and not optimizing it. It is also a good idea to vary how you use your keywords, as well as which keywords you choose. You will also want to take a look at your inbound, internal and outbound links to make sure that your link profile is nice and clean.
Tips for Maintaining Balance to Avoid Over Optimization – General Guide
There are some things that can be done to ensure that you meet search engine ranking requirements, without overdoing it. Note, this is just a guide, every website is unique and there is no one “SEO formula” that will work for every website. There are many different optimization techniques that we do in order to rank for keywords without over-doing it. Here are some common things that may help you decide where and how to place the primary keyword of a particular webpage:
- Add it in the first and last paragraph of your webpage, in bold
- Add it in the beginning of your metadata
- Add it on the page in italics
- Add it on the page in an inbound link
- Add it in the page in an outbound link
- Use supporting keywords in additional paragraphs that match the primary keyword’s topic
Contact Us If You Think You Have Been Hit by the Over optimization Penalty or for Help Preventing It
Since we are an SEO company, we pay close attention to search engine ranking factors, both known (public) and unknown (found through various tests we have ran). If you think you have been hit by the over optimization pentalty or want to avoid it, you can contact us via email, by phone at 604-779-8438, by online chat or leave us a message.
Can you use personal blogs for inbound links? I was told they are meant to be the best but unsure if they still work post penguin.
Hi Sabrina. Yes inbound links are important because they keep people on your site, but more importantly, link relevant content together. Search engines crawl links throughout your site and it helps them to understand how different pages relate to one another. When placing internal links, you can add keywords to them within reason to help certain pages rank for certain keywords. It is important to keep a balance of anchor text in internal links, just like outbound and inbound. You also need to make sure the amount of links on a page isn’t too much in comparison with the amount of content you have. Hope this answers your question!