Over-Optimisation Penalties
It may not come around soon but at some point Google will be introducing a new penalty which will target websites which have been over-optimised and therefore user experience is damaged. If you are over optimising a particular website then your internet marketing strategy needs to be addressed.
Rumours have emerged about a new penalty which Google could penalise sites for in regards to over-optimisation. It isn’t a matter of is it going to happen it’s simply a case of when it will happen. Google do not want to show searchers sites which are spammy they want high quality sites to present in the top ranking positions.
What can you do to ensure your site isn’t over optimised?
Brick technology web design, Lancashire presents the top six items which could in the nearby future result in a penalty against the site from Google for attempting to spam through over optimisation:
Titles
When writing up titles for pages many would make the mistake of trying to pile these full of keywords. Yes it is important to include keywords within your titles but the important thing is that they need to sound human; they need to be readable by a human being.
Writing for instance “web design, web design company, Brick technology web design” yes it has been saturated with the keyword “web design” however in reality a human might read this and think its suspicious, spammy and therefore very manipulative.
Tonnes of sites actually have spammy titles for a whole range of pages, news content and for Image Alt Attributes. The reality is that you may rank in the search engines but the click through rate will be poor because the real human is suspicious.
Internal Links
It is important for site navigation that you do include links to other pages of your site within say text paragraphs and news articles. However, the problem comes when you have manipulative internal links which are all instances of the same keyword or phrase repeated and all featuring the exact same anchor text links linking to the same page.
In SEO everyone knows that if Google comes across two links on your page and these actually link to the same destination page then it will only count the first one when it comes to ranking the target page. This is part of the Google Algorithm and therefore it is of importance that your first link is the most important one.
Not only does linking to the same destination page through similar or the same keyword or phrase look spammy to a human but it also gains attention from the search engines which will then take action. You need to make internal links sound natural.
Link Filled Footers
We still see these on a regular basis; footers which have been filled with various links. This is wrong and better use of the footer could be made in order to send people exactly where you want them to be and directly to the important parts of your site.
In the majority of cases links which have been put in place to fill the footer with say keywords or phrases will not gain any click through. It looks spammy and should the new Google Penalty come in then sites will be penalised for cruddy link filled footers.
Piling links into footers used to be the old way of carrying out SEO and getting traffic to the site. However, link footers haven’t been used now since around 2002! Since then SEO practices have become more advanced and link filled footers need to stay in the past.
Text Content Blocks
These are what we still see a lot of; companies which have beautifully designed websites and their content is engaging, informative and readable by humans and then you just get this one paragraph which doesn’t make any sense.
Text content blocks which have been built and implemented just for search engines are not a good thing. Not only do they make visitors question the credibility of you and your website because it’s all a load of gobble-de-gook!
Rather than have these paragraphs write one which incorporates your keywords and phrases but make sense to a human being as well. It is important that you remember humans will be accessing the site and so although it is important to rank in search engines it’s also important that your site and its content are user accessible and user friendly.
Backlinks from Penalty Likely Sources
Getting backlinks is one of the main factors of SEO but getting backlinks from penalty likely sources is something which is hard to control but should be avoided at all costs.
Keep an eye out when backlinking for sites which say items such as “network links” and “private link networks” as these are the types of sites which will interlink you together with other sites and Google will recognise this and will penalise you because it indicates to them that you are being spammy.
With reciprocal links too you need to be careful because in reality emails which are frequently sent around about link exchange can be enticing but once again Google find the sites out and penalise everyone who has exchanged links in this way.
Numerous Pages for One Keyword or Phrase
You may have a keyword search term of “Media Production” and so you would create a landing page for this and write some engaging but informative content. Then sites go wrong when they create other landing pages for the same item all interlinking with one another. It is confusing for the user and once again it looks spammy.
Say if you created another page such as “Production of Media” this would be exactly the same as “Media Production” it is pointless to create and it would be better if you focused your efforts on one landing page.
What you need to therefore do is create the one landing page and then include all the similar keywords and phrases throughout the text whilst keeping it sounding natural.
In conclusion to over optimisation:
The bottom line is that it is obvious that ranking on Google is important and Search Engine Optimisation plays a huge part within this. However, there is absolutely no point in ranking if you do not want to then provide visitors with good, informative information and relevant products or services.
You want to rank so that visitors come to your site and like the brand. If they do this then they are likely to come back, tell their friends, and share your products