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

Winchester said:

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.

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I think removing GA and WMT appears to work as opposed to having a causative relationship to overcoming a penalty/link devaluation; analagous to when 2 mutually exclusive backlink campaigns are being performed simultaneously, and the resultant SERPs improvement is next to impossible to trace-back to which of the campaigns had the greater impact, if any impact at all.

As far as Google having the right to 'view' one's GA data, I think that is both true and untrue depending upon the application of the word 'view'. I'm looking at this from a legal/transparency standpoint: Were Google not using explicit, specifically constructed language that in no uncertain terms says that GA (and no other user tool) is used at the single-site level to determine the rankings of the site upon which Google products are installed, it would certainly be logical to go ahead and assume that they, in fact, do. What Google views is viewed algorithmically/programatically, so yes, they do have the right to 'view' the data in that capacity for use in the manner they elucidate (e.g. to integrate use of other product offerings, such as Conversion Optimizer, as but one example). In short, and from a legal perspective, Google would have to spell-out, in equally certain terms, that one's Google account data "CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOUR PARTICULAR WEBSITE IN THE COURT OF GOOGLE." And I promise - if Google were using Google product data at the single-site level and not disclosing it, and in fact was using deceptive language with respect to how such data is indeed 'viewed' and ultimately used, Google as an entity would not survive the onslaught of litigation leveled against them - at least not for long.

As concerns WMT, the faculty to control the crawl-rate of one's website (up to and including a complete manual dismissal of Google bot) as well as the capacity to submit either single URLs, or site-wide re-crawls from that single submission, are actually some of the better features of GWT that webmasters otherwise have little to no control over, lest they use GWT to those ends.

I just think the removal suggestion is a blemish on an otherwise stellar post, and feeds into the 'eye-of-Sauron-Google-is-watching-you-whilst-you're-masturbating' neurosis that infects so many of these conversations, on so many different forums. Ultimately, I think it moves people away from concentrating on hard data, and hard evidence since paranoia is easier to fixate on since it's easy and enables people to toss their hands in the air and declare defeat.

Google's accumulated untrustwortiness with Webmasters, SEOs, and industry professionals is certainly deserved. Having said that, this is not something Google earned by way of being master smoke-and-mirror artists, uber-intelligent manipulative adepts of the human psyche, or even by way of misinformation. Google has earned its 'F' with all of us because, A.) Google is at no level of the organization intellectually equipped to appropriately deal with the very people that give them 'their' Web; and B.) There is nothing about Google that is not dictatorial: Google's edicts - far more often than not - have no adequate redress, for us or Joe the Websurfer. Google is unaccountable for things they truly should be holding themselves accountable for; everyone but Google sees this.

Anyway, Winchester, great post.

I like the breaking the year down into quarters, thanks given

Great post.

But do you have any case study to back it up

This is a good post, really , however ........ does it mean I can blow my competition by blasting their sites with 1 anchor text variation links?

Google is really a master in the art of confusing people

I have several sites with my exact main kw consitute to about 80% of total of my anchor text variations and they are not affected at all (still sits in top 10)

or maybe not affected yet?

bookmarked .another quality post from OP .looking forward for something on social media like this

Lots of replies here - I'm going to run through most of these tonight thanks for all the positive feed back

@mohitjmehta - Thanks, I have covered a lot of topics in my time here but never really wrote one on social media - I'll look into it!

nYXem said:

Right. The other day, a guy told me about 1% keyword density and I though he was joking, guess what, he was not

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Was that me?

Damn you Winchester for posting this great thread the day before my exam.
There're some points here that I really really want to discuss about, but I'll get to them as soon as my syllabus is finished or after the exam.

Corrupt said:

Damn you Winchester for posting this great thread the day before my exam.
There're some points here that I really really want to discuss about, but I'll get to them as soon as my syllabus is finished or after the exam.

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Sorry! I know! Smack dab in the middle of exam season!

I look forward to your discussion but I just simply won't engage you or answer any of your questions until tomorrow at 5pm. That way you can focus on your exam!

Great post; and good breakdown of the anchor text. As for keyword density, I have always kept it right asround 2% and been fine...

natorob said:

Great post; and good breakdown of the anchor text. As for keyword density, I have always kept it right asround 2% and been fine...

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As mentioned before there is not yet a penalty for anything except ToS violations, so most of this is discussion of optimal rates and how to avoid any negative penalties in the future should they be added.

AdnanMahmud said:

OMG nice method. Just need to test 'em up

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I have tested these methods but that was on the budget of a corporate client so for obvious reasons I can't disclose that data in anyway I can only show you what I've learned.

Before I posted this I started a case study of my own. I am going to give it upwards of a month though before I even start posting about it to really get all the details worked out and make sure the experiment focuses as much as possible on isolated factors of SEO

Hey Winchester. Can you reply to my pm or email? I sent you an email and pm you for over 3 days and didn't get any reply! You said that you will deliver the report it in 1 weeks but it have been over 3 weeks and I didn't get any report or reply.

I addition, you have closed the Wikipedia thread so I don't know what to do. I have no choice but try to reach you here! Please reply me!

Fantastic post OP! + rep

So much details and so easy to understand.

Thanks a million And Have Blessed One.

Great read. Thanks for putting this together.

dizen said:

I have several sites with my exact main kw consitute to about 80% of total of my anchor text variations and they are not affected at all (still sits in top 10)

or maybe not affected yet?

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I would say not effected yet or not that competitive. For long lasting results, competitive results and anything to withstand upcoming "over optimization" changes diversity is crucial.

dizen said:

This is a good post, really , however ........ does it mean I can blow my competition by blasting their sites with 1 anchor text variation links?

Google is really a master in the art of confusing people

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Nope, Google will never give you that gun. If you wanted to do that you'd probably target only bad sites which Google would likely have a method to detect. Where as if you take the risk to only ever target good sites, then when your competitors keyword diversity spreads out a little more (or some other factor is modified) you've actually made them stronger.

wanabee2 said:

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

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Hi Wanabe,

As far as criteria in primary backlinks I don't focus on PR, I basically look for popular sites in a related niche that one would expect a business to appear on naturally. Some of the directories I take the time to manually list in do not have a PR at all, that doesn't mean they don't have an authority.

I basically do strings of searches such as in client A's case it was:

Canada Business Directory
Technology Business Directory
Business Services Directory
Canada Technology Business Directory
So on and so forth

I look through them for ones with good traffic (plus I will make the effort for ones with a good PR but I won't set a minimum). If they have enough traffic that Google crawls them more than 3-4 times a week then they are probably worth it for me. It's all about keeping good authority with a natural spread.

As far as not having access to your sites webmaster tools there is an easy way to resolve that. You just have to remove the validation method from the site and re-validated it with your own account. There are a few different ways this could have been done:

Method 1 - File Validation:
In your websites directory their should be a file called something like:


Simply delete this file and add whichever knew one Google webmaster tools assigns you.

Method 2 - DNS Entry:
Open your URL's DNS controller and look for any text value field with


Remove the entry and then re-add the site to Google Webmaster tools

Method 3 - Meta Entry:
Open up your index.html and look in the header of the file for something like:


Then once again simply re-validate your site and you'll be good to go.

There is also the slim chance that they validated the website through Google analytics (although this is a new feature) if they did that simply remove their GA code and start again.

Regarding all the Keyword Density posts:
Stop thinking about it. Seriously. I've NEVER bothered with keyword density and all my sites rank quite well.
The few points you need to consider are:
1) The shorter the article, the higher the keyword density will be. That's just natural.
The longer the article, the lesser the keyword density, but the LSI keyword occurrence will be a lot higher.
2) As long as the article has a good flow in it, and are written for the user and not for SEO, don't worry about the keyword density.

Ever seen a site rank for a keyword without mentioning it once in the article or article title, but mentions it only in the image alt tags and the title? Check out "dxbseo". Not a tough one at all, but it's ranking at #2, above dxbseo's facebook page, youtube videos, and twitter.

The point of this post is: Don't worry about keyword density. Add it in the title, desc, url, h1, alt tags, and do mention it in your article, but don't try and force a specific percentage. Like I said, I keep it around 1-1.5%, but then, I prefer bigger articles, not 500 word ones, and I include LSI keywords.