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How To Detect And Correct Over-Optimization
By Patrick Hare
Expert Author
Article Date: 2010-02-22
What is overoptimization? In the world of SEO, over-optimization refers to the idea that your site has been heavily manipulated for search engine rankings. Normally, an over-optimized site is easy for a person to detect, and even easier for a search engine algorithm to spot.
Some symptoms of an overoptimized site include:
- The site has a title that exactly matches its H1 Tag.
- Keyword density on the site is very high. Usually, you can spot this by reading the content out loud and hearing the same phrases repeated. In the distant past, high keyword density led to good rankings, but currently it is best to keep a keyword's density below the 7% range. Some experts will even quote 3%.
- Keyword appears in the title more than twice. (Keyword stuffing anywhere else is not good either.)
- Multiple identical backlinks with the exact same anchor text.
- Multiple pages, usually based around all 50 states or 100 major cities, where the only difference in on-page content is the name of the city or state. This is easy for search engines to spot. Content on every page should be original.
One way to see if the search engines are penalizing you for overoptimized content is to do a search for your top keyword in Google preceded by the allinanchor: operator. This should show you where your site would be ranking based on its inbound link profile. If your site's regular ranking is more than a couple of spots below its allinanchor score, and your keyword is prominent in the homepage title and content, you may very well be overoptimized. In any case, you should really consider tinkering with your site content to bring it up to current best practices.
In many cases, over optimization is done by people who have started on the path of DIY SEO, but who are overzealous. Whether or not there are specific "overoptimization filters" in the search engines, there are algorithms for page quality and original content, and an overoptimized page is not going to carry the same level of quality as a natural looking page with useful content. Therefore, it is best to avoid overoptimization at the outset, but if you're revisiting an old SEO project that may be tripping some search engine filters, a bit of pruning and editing may create a cohesive profile that a search engine will find useful and acceptable. In some cases, a streamlined site can rapidly move to its rightful place in the rankings, which means that fixing overoptimization can be one of the cheapest ways to get better search engine rankings.
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About the Author:
Patrick Hare has been managing online and offline marketing projects since 1999. From 2005 to present, he has been with Scottsdale Arizona's Web.com Search Agency (formerly Submitawebsite). Patrick provides Search Engine Optimization and Marketing advice to in-house customers and Web.com Jacksonville’s web design group.
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