To
understand why Google can consider certain websites over-optimized,
it is important to factor in the criteria that Google uses to
rank websites.
When fully indexing a website, Google does not just look at the optimization
of the target website; it also compares the website with all the
other websites that belong to the same niche / category / keyword
range. Through this comparison, Google can then figure out the
following:
- Is
this website “way more” optimized than the
current top ranking websites?
- In
the past, have over-optimized websites been discovered as spam
websites?
- What
are the trends / acceptable limits for well-optimized websites
in this niche/keyword range?
Since
Google is automated, it cannot do what we do – look at the webpage
and determine if the purpose is spam or delivering truly useful
information. Instead, the search engine uses historical
trends to predict what the acceptable limits of over-optimization
are, and how likely over-optimized websites
are to be found out as spam.
In
other words, your website may be red flagged
as being a potential spamming website even though your only fault
might be that you were “perfect” in optimizing your website while
your competition was left far behind.
Google
takes both on-page and off-page optimization into account when
checking for over-optimization / spam, and as such it watches
out for over-optimization in all ranking factors – your backlinks
and your tag optimization (meta tags, title tags, header tags)
being most important.
A
lot of what I am talking about becomes invalid if one tries any
overt search engine spamming technique , such
as stuffing your pages with keywords, white on white text (something
I talked about in the first few lessons) or backlink spamming
(building too many backlinks with the same anchor text in a short
period of time.
But
it is also possible that you have followed advice and still have
your website penalized for over-optimization. The real question
then is:
How
can you avoid such penalties ?
[ ......follow the arrow sign and read ( Part.4 ) ]