This is a Guest post by Dean Wood. If you like to write for us, do read our Guest Author program.
Google is currently in the process of creating a system that penalizes over-SEO-optimized sites. GoogleBot is going to become smarter; abusers will be out, especially those that use too many keywords and too many links. Google search bots use more than 500 different signals to judge page usefulness and user behavior. Your page will rank high if it’s useful to users, so no need to go nuts over on page SEO factors.
1. Avoid Keyword Stuffing Titles And Headings
If your keyphrase is used all over, from page titles, to H1, H2 and H3 headings and anchor text, GoogleBot will see it as keyword stuffing. Use different keywords and keyphrases throughout your site.
![Google-Over-Optimized-website]( "Google-Over-Optimized-website")
2. Limit Your Internal Links
Internal Linking is a must-do, if you want to expose your most important pages. There’s no set limit on links yet from Google; however, 10 links per page seem normal, for any blog site. But 25, 30 or more?
3. Monitor Your Content For Keyword Density
Whether you use writers, guest posters or write your own content, watch those keywords. If you’re using writers, train them on proper SEO practices. Be specific about how many keywords you want and where you want to place them.
4. Hire A Good Internet Marketing Service Partner
If you’re not sure if your site is over optimized or not, best to hire a good internet marketing company to do those checks for you. A professional group stays on top of Google’s latest rules; such a group can optimize your content without destroying content quality.
5. Do An Alternative Keyword Analysis
Common keywords don’t help you succeed; they may bring down your SEO campaign. Make sure that your internet marketing company runs an alternative keyword analysis to find cheaper but effective alternatives.
6. Don’t Use The Same Anchor Text To Get More Links
GoogleBot is very savvy; it can distinguish between paid and organic links. If you’re earning way too many links through a particular anchor text, Google will consider it as spam. For example, if your anchor text is ‘iPhone apps’, try ‘apps for iPhones’, ‘top must-have iPhone apps’ and so on.
7. Avoid Using The Same Word Combinations
A search bot crawls your page and finds too many sentences loaded with the same keyphrase and keyword combinations. Result? Your search rankings suffer. Write interesting content using similar words, synonyms and phrases that offer the same meaning. Don’t use a particular sentence and phrase combination more than once on a page.
8. Don’t Overuse A Keyphrase In Multiple Areas
When search bots crawl your pages, they will understand which keyphrases you’re targeting. So don’t go and include the same phrase in your page URL, image alt text, anchor text, body, title tag, headers, meta-keywords and meta-description and so on.
9. Don’t Use Too Many Keyphrase Variations
If you’re creating 30 or 40 keyphrase alternatives, it’s just as bad as using too many occurrences of a single keyphrase. Keep your keyphrase variations to a minimum as well – 5 or so per page should do.
10. Don’t Over-Optimize Irrelevant Keywords
Your keywords, though few, should relate closely to each other. It’s a bad practice to try and optimize the same page for keywords that are not related to each other. Identify the keywords that best represent your page’s value and target them. You also can do Image Optimization rather then irrelevant keywords.
11. Use The Keyword Analyzer Tool
Search engines generate a special metric called KeywordRank by accounting how many times a keyword is used on a page. Use the Keyword Analyzer Tool to keep your important keywords’ KeywordRank within the green area. The ranking can be low for non-important keywords. Check your landing pages as well.
12. Avoid Duplicate Content
Duplicate content does not raise a red flag with Google – not yet, at least. However, they can bring down your PageRank. Reorganize your link structure to avoid duplicate content. Specify your Canonical URLs and use a tool such as 301 Redirections to ensure this.
13. Check For Similar Content In Different Pages
Having a similar structure across your website is natural. Menus, footers and headers tend to be the same across pages. However, repeating a piece of long text such as a news announcement or so on multiple pages can flag your pages for increased similarity percentage. Use the Duplicate Content Tool to get the exact percentage of similarity between your site’s pages and try to achieve a below 40% similarity. (Check How to show Links only on WordPress Homepage ? )
14. Avoid Optimizing Multiple Pages With The Same Keywords
Using the same keywords in different pages can affect your page ranking because of internal page competition. Use targeted keywords for each page and avoid using the same for multiple pages.
15. Listen To What Your SEO Plugin Says
If your plugin warns you that a particular page’s keyword density is high, listen to it. Look for advanced plugins that can help you optimize your site better.
If you feel this is too much of information then check SEO Cartoons and feel refresh.
