Over optimization Penalties in Google – Myth or Reality? - Conclusion: A website that is “overoptimized” is not optimized at all

Over optimization Penalties in Google – Myth or Reality? - Conclusion: A website that is “overoptimized” is not optimized at all

So is it really true that too much optimization can get you penalized, even banned, from the search engine results pages (SERPs) on Google, Yahoo! or MSN? I believe the answer to this is no, simply because the word “optimization” by its very nature means that your content is represented to search engines and human visitors in the best possible light for both constituencies.

If there is too much repetition of your keyword in all of the relevant text, tags and components and not enough true content either on any given page or on the pages that connect to it, then the “optimized” page becomes a liability rather than an asset. This makes sense. It is an excellent way to filter out sub-par sites that offer content of no real value.

Now that I’ve said all this, please keep in mind that this is a speculative article based on my own experiences and the experiences of others as posted in various SEO forums. The best way to find out what your specific next steps are is to perform some analyses of your own. My high level recommendations to anyone who feels that their page is being penalized for optimization is to take a look at their page compared to the pages that rank well in the given search engine. Look at the top ten or twenty results and analyze on-page factors as follows:

1. What is the density of the targeted keyword?
2. What type of language is being used to support the keyword (e.g., if it is a used car Web site, are there terms such as “certified pre-owned vehicles” cropping up)? Yes, this will require you to actually read the well-ranking page.
3. What type of language is present on the rest of the website? Does the keyword show up often on other pages that are listed in the given search engine?
4. What type of sites link to the top-ranking page?
5. Who is linking to your site? Are these contextually-relevant links?
6. Write down any glaring discrepancies. These discrepancies can be turned into a list of next step SEO tasks for your own site.

Yes, this is time-consuming, and although there are tools available to help with this type of analysis (http://www.gorank.com/ provides an excellent free keyword density analyzer), it is nevertheless a painfully slow and detailed process. However, if you are trying to get your site to show up for your coveted keywords, then it is worth it to perform this type of research yourself, or hire someone to do it for you.

One final note

Any SEO worth his or her salt will preach the importance of good, relevant content and the value of writing for your visitors, not for the search engines. This is certainly true, but it is also important to consider the structure of your site and the connectivity of the pages and terms on every page. Building a site with thematic relevance naturally precludes the possibility of any type of search engine penalty. It’s also great for usability.

Build your site so that it makes sense to visitors, the navigation and link structure are intuitive and every page is easy to get to via a site map and a well-planned internal linking structure. Don’t waste your time getting links from sites that are not topically relevant to your own. While this may have been a successful tactic in the past, it is clear that reciprocal links from relevant sites carry more weight than ever before.

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