30 Sep
Over-optimization implies that the UX or readability of your website has suffered from your SEO strategy. An over-optimized website is a site that took SEO a step too far.
Over-optimization basically involves making too many SEO improvements (especially all at one time), which leads Google to question why your website has so many things going on at once.
It isn’t natural, and it will create a red flag for Google bots and for those visiting your website. Thinking about SEO is great, but you have to make sure you’re still keeping your website natural and relevant. Fortunately, it’s easy to avoid over-optimization if you know some of the signs to look for in an over-optimized site.
What is over-optimization?
A website is over-optimized if the techniques aimed at ranking high in the search engines harmed the quality of the site. In such a case, visitors of the website will have a different or worse experience. If texts become hard or annoying to read: you’re probably stuffing them with the keywords you want to be found on. If there are uncountable numbers of links on your website: you’re probably trying to over-optimize your anchor texts.
Reason for over-optimized text
Keyword stuffing is the most obvious way to over-optimize your website. Of course, using your keyword a number of times will help with your ranking. Google will understand what your post is about and rank it accordingly. Over-optimized text, however, is unreadable. If you put your keyword in every (other) sentence, your text will become terrible to read. Nobody wants to read a blog post about pink ballet shoes if every sentence contains the keyword [pink ballet shoes]. Even people who are genuinely interested in pink ballet shoes will get annoyed.
How to fix an over optimized website?
You can only “fix” a problem if you realize there is a problem in the first place. Over-optimized content doesn’t just refer to “too many” keywords. It could simply mean that you have dumped a keyword in a place where it isn’t meant to be, making the content sound weird. If while reading the content, it sounds awkward, out of place, or fake, users and Google will find out. Google algorithms, Penguin, and Panda can easily detect over-optimized content. So, don’t try to fool them. With that cleared, it’s time to de-optimize your optimized content. Here are a few things that you can do.
Step 1: Recognize the Over-Optimized Content
If you are planning to fix your website with regards to SEO, you need to see where the problem lies. For this, you have to thoroughly check each and every page of the website and find the culprits. Some things that you must pay attention to are:
- If there are any unnecessary keywords in the content
- Keyword-rich anchor text for internal links
- Any backlinks to low authority websites
- A footer with too many keywords
- Non-branded URL
An in-depth website audit will give a good idea of where you went wrong.
Step 2: Analyze to form a Strategy
Once you find the problem, the next step is to do some analysis and research. Note down the content issues you found and make a list of the keywords that are actually important. If needed, do detailed keyword research to find the best-performing keywords for your specific content.
Basically, your content needs to be in line with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Google favors relevant and informative content. So, all you have to do is remove overstuffed keywords or deceptive content and provide some relevant content that makes sense while following Google’s Guidelines.
Step 3: The main part – de-optimization
Of course, the more over-optimized your content will be, the more time it will take for you to de-optimize it. But if you do it right, nothing can stop your site’s ranking from skyrocketing. There are two ways you can go about the de-optimization process – scrap out the faulty content and start afresh or improve the existing content as per the Google Guidelines. Do either of them or a combination of both. Just remember the pointers we mentioned above, and you’ll be good.
Step 4: Review your work & progress
After the dirty work is done, you need to check your progress. After all, you have to make sure if all the hard work is paying off or not. One thing that will help you is using the tool Fetch as Google. Use it directly from your Search Console account and it will help Google to see the most informative and valuable content on your site and subsequently improve its ranking. Further, this will also help in speeding up the process of content indexing. Lastly, to check if your search visibility is going up, you can use a rank checking tool.
Consequences of over-optimization
Google’s Panda update aimed at all those sites with over-optimized content. If you are taking the optimization of your content a little bit too far, you are thus risking a Panda penalty. If Panda hits you, you’ll notice a sudden drop in your rankings. Over-optimizing your content could, therefore, backfire.
Over-optimizing always leads to a bad UX. Your text will not be easy and fun to read if you stuffed it with keywords. A text that’s full of links is not attractive either. Over-optimized texts will receive less social media attention. If your visitors get annoyed, they will be less inclined to buy something or to return to your website.
Top signs you’re over-optimizing your blog
Below are some of the top things that Google looks for when determining if a website is over-optimized for SEO and therefore not for readers. If you’re doing any of the following, it’s important to revert back to more natural practices ASAP.
1. Non-relevant keywords
You should never try to rank for keywords that are not relevant to your article. Although a topic may be highly searched, this is not going to help your conversion rate (because once people view your site, they are immediately going to notice that your content is not what they are looking for).
Google takes all of the keywords that you use across the entire domain into consideration when it indexes your site. Therefore, too much content or keywords that are unrelated will detract from the overall strength of the site in the SERPs. You absolutely need to focus on your niche that way you are ranking for the correct topic.
2. Link type
If you have never built a website from the ground up, you may not realize that there are hundreds of different link types that can be built. Unfortunately, many times people focus too heavily on one particular link type over another and this typically leads to an unnatural looking link profile.
You want your website to look as natural as possible, which can happen if you attract a wide range of link types from many different types of sites. A few of these link types include social network links, in-content links from other websites in your industry and links earned from other websites across the web.
3. Non-branded, keyword-dense URLs
Some webmasters choose to hyper-optimize URLs instead of creating a healthy and balanced brand name. While choosing a domain with a ton of keywords sounds smart, it is actually placing you on high alert for an over-optimization.
Do not create a URL simply for its keyword value because your brand name is too important to be compromised by making it a keyword. The best thing to do is to have your brand name in your URL.
4. Keyword-rich anchors for internal links
Internal linking is good; however, internal linking by using keyword-rich anchor text is bad. Anchors that use the exact URL of the destination or anchors that use keywords are a red flag in Google’s eyes. The occasional anchor that matches the URL exactly may contribute to positive SEO, but if you start doing this too much, you’re setting yourself up for penalization.
Ultimately, using keyword-rich anchors begins to ruin your link profile because again, like all of the other items on this list, they are not natural. Your link profile is the most important component of your SEO, so don’t make the easy mistake of keyword rich anchor text.
This practices used to be acceptable, but Google cracked down on anchor text a few years ago and made it clear that keyword rich anchor text is not natural.
5. Pointing all internal or external links to top-level navigation pages
A strong link profile has links pointing to deep internal pages as well as the home page. A healthy ratio is 1:1, or 50% of the links pointing to deep internal links. Over-optimization occurs when webmasters themselves create a ton of links to their homepage or to main navigation pages like “Contact Us,” “About Us” or “Our Services.”
You want to create internal links, but you don’t need to point the links to these pages. You should actually aim to strengthen your link profile by pointing to deep internal links.
6. Backlink velocity
Building too many backlinks too quickly looks suspicious to the search engines, so slow down! It is far more important to build quality links at a slower rate until your site overcomes Google’s trust barrier. Most experts put the maximum number of links that should be built in a day at no more than 30-100, depending on your site’s industry, audience and traffic levels (and I would recommend even less). The best thing to do is slow down and re-focus on building quality links over quantity.
7. Keyword-stuffed footer
Website footers are another place where over-optimization occurs. Google devalues footer links and, because of their position, they receive minimal crawler recognition. When you design your footer, do so with the user in mind. Your footer isn’t a sitemap or a place for putting keywords. Rather, it may just simply be used as a nice closure to a page – a simple, but navigable spot at the end of a webpage that signals the end.
8. Content creation
I’ve saved the best and most commonly made error for last. When you are creating articles for your blog, you need to be very careful of over-optimization. Do not “write to keywords or bots.” You should do your best to maintain a natural voice, and the only way to rank well in the SERPs is to build content around strict keywords. Thus, write on topics that involve your niche, but do not go out of your way to write specifically to the keyword.
It is true that occasionally this kind of content wins and ranks highly for the keywords it targets. However, before you run out and try creating your own over-optimized keyword-filled content, remember that Google’s job is to provide the best possible search results to its users and that good quality content is always going to win out in that consideration in the long run. So, be sure to write your content to appeal to your visitors and not just the search engines.
In the end Google bots aren’t gaining anything from your content, your visitors are. If you want people to be returning to your site, and to have a high conversion rate, you need to be pleasing your audience with your content.
Wrap up
There are a lot of ways that you can “over-optimize” your SEO. Over-optimization ultimately happens when you focus far too much on technical SEO. While you want to do your best to be mindful of things like keywords, sometimes you can over do it.
Not to worry. If your website is a victim of over-optimization, it’s easier to remedy than you might think. Start by assessing your website’s main purpose. Is it design, marketing, or SEO? These priorities are not mutually exclusive in fact, they’re interdependent. But you should maximize your efforts in one area and prune back in the others.