[Guide] Dealing with Over Optimization - The Sky Isn't Falling!

Lethal post and rep given.......what you are really saying is move towards the light?

keyword density has no impact for me upon rankings. I'm sure over-optimisation of the KW would, but as long as its in the core places plus a couple more, its all good.

LakeForest said:

Better to keep it under 5% now. Some say even under 3%. And some say even under 2% or 1%.

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I try and aim for 1% I've heard people who have aimed for 10% and it's really a headsmacking moment.

RAYRAY7 said:

Well meaning advice, but Google is now opening the door to nuclear SEO war. Lately, backlinks can be used to dethrone your site from ranking well for some keywords.

While you might be a fair player, some SEO practitioners would win at all cost. Since Google now penalizes any site with too many backlinks, watch for DIRTY tactics to begin!

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Google isn't going to use "dirty tactics" they provide a service to their clients of providing the bet results to their search based on algorithmic data. If there is always an algorithm, then there is always SEO. Many big companies and legitimate sites practice SEO just like we do, Google isn't out to eliminate search, what they are out to do is eliminate crap quality. If you truly provide a good service, or have quality content and link building there is no need to worry.

Also your comments about too many backlinks is ridiculous, it should be clear to everyone now that Google is about quality check, not quanity check.

BLIXX said:

Great post, but I'm not sure I follow how or why the removal of WMT and GA would affect one's own evaluation of, discovery of the reasons behind, and subsequent resolution of a penalty: Google already knows the problem, they're the one's who send the messages. Further, only aggregated GA data is sent to Google and is anonymous or ultimately only used as aggregate data - never at the single-site level to in any way affect the organic search results for the site with GA installed. You seem like a reasonable guy, though, and must have put this bit in here for a specific reason - can you elaborate?

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Sadly this is one I can't explain as well as I would like to, but it's just one of those things that seems to work and has passed the test of time. As far as GA I'd be skeptical if it only shares aggregate data after the recent Google account privacy changes technically webmaster tools and all other aspects of Google have the right to view your GA data.

As far as removing WMT it's really just to get off their radar, recover for a bit and then force a full re-crawl instead of just a partial one. It helps you jump back quicker and allows you to avoid too much re-crawling while re-building which could find things that result in further penalties. Some people go so far as to block crawlers entirely with a robots.txt while they re-build; I wouldn't do this unless you are a big site that gets crawled multiple times a day/week anyway.

manny521 said:

What about if you have a brand name, what percentage of anchor text should this include?

In your example, you use McDonalds, I would think a large portion of anchor should include this as well.

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Great question and one I totally forgot to address. I would say that if you are in the case where you have a brandname it should appear in both:

35% Various other Keywords
25% Click Here/Here/(variation)

I would actually go so far as to give it 1% of it's own. Now this obviously depends on the strength of your brand name, such as if you were a brand people would cite as an article source you would want to drastically increase that number.

Try and think how you would use someone's brand name if you were typing out 100 different styles of article for them. You wouldn't often hyperlink it but there are maybe a few occasions where you would.

warjam1945 said:

Lethal post and rep given.......what you are really saying is move towards the light?

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At the end of the day I serve corporate clients for SEO so I have always preferred whitehat methods. They are more reliable, longer lasting and over time show a better impact. Too many whitehatters this over optimization update is no big deal as it is what we were doing anyway.

Do what works for you but, yes, in the long run quality is going to win out.

Windmill said:

keyword density has no impact for me upon rankings. I'm sure over-optimisation of the KW would, but as long as its in the core places plus a couple more, its all good.

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I would hazard that since that is only one factor you could probably manipulate it quite a bit before seeing results. Just because you have 6% instead of 1% doesn't mean it's the end of the world as there is so much else involved.

Isn't 1% just too low? I'm not too sure, but still, seems like it may harm the other way.

Winchester said:

After reviewing the backlink break down of some high ranking sites that I knew did hardly any (if any at all) SEO the link break down pretty much resembled:

• 10% Primary Keyword
• 35% Various other Keywords
• 25% Click Here/Here/(variation)
• 30% Raw link

Use your primary keyword (in our sample case "Tasty Burgers") no more than 10% of the time. You would want to use at least 5 - 10 variations of your keyword 35%. These variations should relate in some way to your primary keyword but still be different. For our sample they make look like this:

• Delicious Burgers
• Yummy Burgers
• Best Burgers
• Burger Combos
• Cheap Burgers

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First of all, well done for the effort you put to write this post.
I have a few objections though!

You make the assumption that a good link profile has variations which sounds correct but in order to rank you need anchor text and specific anchor text. Yummy and Cheap burgers are different things especially now that Google goes into the semantic path.

For me,its more like "you need X quantity of anchor text to rank" but you also need a diversified anchor text diversification. So by diversifying, you would need to increase the number of links you build . Thats my assumption of course.

Winchester said:

The last 30% of your link building should be focused on using raw links as the anchor. Once again it is important to remember that everyone types differently so even your raw links shouldn't always be the same. For our example:

Code:

mcdonalds.com
mcdonalds.com/
www.mcdonalds.com
www.mcdonalds.com/tastyburgers.html
http://mcdonalds.com
http://mcdonalds.com/
http://www.mcdonalds.com/
http://www.mcdonalds.com/tastyburgers.html

As you can see we've managed to link to the same site in a lot of different ways, and since this is the anchor text it really doesn't make a difference as to where it goes.

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Thats not correct. Basic canonical urls knowledge is that http://www.site and http://site are two completely different things. For the rest of the urls you might be using,I would say that if you dont have anchored links in your different version of page (Page B with Anchor Text for Page A), buildings links for Page B is useless and destroys your relevance. You need to flow the anchor text so internal structure is important.

nYXem said:

Isn't 1% just too low? I'm not too sure, but still, seems like it may harm the other way.

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Sure it could get too low, it also depends on the keyword we are talking about. If I write 100 words about "tasty burgers" how many times does it seem reasonable to mention it! Fiddle around with it find out what works in the context.

bakxos said:

First of all, well done for the effort you put to write this post.
I have a few objections though!

You make the assumption that good link profile had variations which sounds correct but in order to rank you need anchor text and specific anchor text. Yummy and Cheap burgers are different things especially now that Google goes into the semantic path.

For me,its more like "you need X quantity of anchor text to rank" but you also need a diversified anchor text diversification. So by diversifying, you would need to increase the number of links you build . Thats my assumption of course.


Thats not correct. Basic canonical urls knowledge is that http://www.site and http://site are two completely different things.

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bakxos - Don't worry I understand canonical urls, if you would take a closer read you will see I am talking about changing those on the anchor only and not the actual location the link to. Also it is important to note that if 1000 were to write you a hyperlink that was strictly your raw link, you would indeed see that both appear naturally. This will no doubt be pushed more and more, and google is more than capable of dealing with www. and http://site accordingly.

Now as far as your objection to yummy burgers and cheap burgers being different this is true, but not everyone has one opinion about a service/site/etc. People are going to link to you saying different things. Some people might think McDonalds has yummy bugers, others might just comment that it has cheap burgers. These are related in the fact that they are burgers, but you are right in saying that the keyword "cheap burgers" does not help the keyword "yummy burgers" as much as the keyword "tasty burgers" might help it but that is not the point. The point here is to advance your SERP standings by SEO that looks natural and diverse.

If you were McDonalds and asked 100 people to describe your restaurant in an article would they all be the same? Would they all talk about the same topic? Would they all be positive? Not at all.

So while you are right as far as the concentration on that keyword goes, you are missing the bigger picture about making your SEO seem more organic - that is the end game here. 'Cause the slaps are coming and I don't plan to be one of them.

I understand what you are saying and to be honest, this is how seo should be. A chaotic marketing campaign just as human behaviour and organic links are.

Anyway,thanks a lot for the post mate

Good post.

Good information!

I keep telling people to beat the new Google algorithm, you need to use several anchor texts, keep keyword density under 1%, and avoid Webmaster Tools.

bobbylove321 said:

Good information!

I keep telling people to beat the new Google algorithm, you need to use several anchor texts, keep keyword density under 1%, and avoid Webmaster Tools.

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I've never found a need to avoid the Webmaster tools unless I've been struck with a penalty. It provides great insights and control for any campaign and I think it's a must to have on a site until any penalties are applied.

RAYRAY7 said:

Well meaning advice, but Google is now opening the door to nuclear SEO war. Lately, backlinks can be used to dethrone your site from ranking well for some keywords.

While you might be a fair player, some SEO practitioners would win at all cost. Since Google now penalizes any site with too many backlinks, watch for DIRTY tactics to begin!

Click to expand...

I've seen that this is or will be working soon... but honestly, I doubt that Google will let that work for long. They will realize that if they allow 'dirty pool' to nuke a site out of competition, that only those using BH techniques will be using them to waste those above them... making white hat techniques 100% obsolete. Even big G will realize that isn't a good situation...

OldSalt said:

I've seen that this is or will be working soon... but honestly, I doubt that Google will let that work for long. They will realize that if they allow 'dirty pool' to nuke a site out of competition, that only those using BH techniques will be using them to waste those above them... making white hat techniques 100% obsolete. Even big G will realize that isn't a good situation...

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Despite what you may think it is still ridiculously challenging to perform any form of negative SEO; especially without just strengthening the competition when they bounce back later.

First, awesome thread. A mist read for anyone that is experiencing challenges with SEO and Google's recent changes or just getting started in SEO.

Winchester said:

Despite what you may think it is still ridiculously challenging to perform any form of negative SEO; especially without just strengthening the competition when they bounce back later.

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I agree. Google is well aware that some will try the negative SEO approach, but even with Google's recent changes, negative SEO still won't work in the long term.

Also, there seems to be some confusion with some about being penalized. The only way I have ever seen a site be penalized is if they were caught blatantly violating Google's TOS.

Google's recent changes are basically just devaluation of certain linking methods i.e. blog network links.

Yukinari84 said:

First, awesome thread. A mist read for anyone that is experiencing challenges with SEO and Google's recent changes or just getting started in SEO.



I agree. Google is well aware that some will try the negative SEO approach, but even with Google's recent changes, negative SEO still won't work in the long term.

Also, there seems to be some confusion with some about being penalized. The only way I have ever seen a site be penalized is if they were caught blatantly violating Google's TOS.

Google's recent changes are basically just devaluation of certain linking methods i.e. blog network links.

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A valid point Yuki, perhaps a better way for me to phrase this thread is its not about penalties but rather things that are being devalued and how to watch out for them, and over come them.

That's very useful info, man, thank you so much for sharing, also going to bookmark it if that's cool?

Great question and one I totally forgot to address. I would say that if you are in the case where you have a brandname it should appear in both:

35% Various other Keywords
25% Click Here/Here/(variation)

I would actually go so far as to give it 1% of it's own. Now this obviously depends on the strength of your brand name, such as if you were a brand people would cite as an article source you would want to drastically increase that number.

Try and think how you would use someone's brand name if you were typing out 100 different styles of article for them. You wouldn't often hyperlink it but there are maybe a few occasions where you would.

Click to expand...

I have read other people say brand name anchor text could be as high as 30% to look natural...I am not sure if this is true, but I have been adding a lot of brand name anchor text along with naked url's...along with other anchors such as "click here"...etc...

I have seen a few keywords bounce back, but its still early as I got hit on Feb 17th so I am thinking another 1-3 months of doing this, I hope to tip the scales back in my favor...

Also, I have increased my social signals 1000%...this seems to help too...

Great in-depth guide. Will surely help me a lot for someone trying to understand and built backlinks. Thanks a lot.
Awesome:thumb:

Winchester, first of all thanks for the in depth and thorough post you have made.

I have a couple of questions I hope you may be able to answer.
Firstly, you mention that for Client A's primary backlinks you went searching for business archives to add these whitehat links in. My question is, what is the best way to search and find these sites. Also when you find them do you have certain criteria to use them, ie PR of the site in question.

Also, I am very interested in what you have said about recovering from the webmaster tools warning. I have had this on a couple of sites now. While Google tells me to remove the links that could be considered spam, for me this is impossible as I outsourced a lot of the work and the suppliers have all said that they no longer have login details for the backlinks so I am stuck with them.

Am I reading you right when you say remove webmaster tools and analytics and continue to build backlinks (higher quality and stopping what I believe to of caused the warning) and then add back in the webmaster tools at a later time.

Thanks

This is really gud, you nailed it ... i learned something from this thread... i might going to apply some of this ... thanks