How to recover from over-optimising keywords

[mandos123]

I have been gone from SERPS several weeks, I have tried to understand what's wrong or what's happened. I have removed all the duplicate content, made new unique posts, continued backlinking, but after I read: Google Penalty Check | Google Penalty Recovery Advice
I have realized that it might be keyword over-optimising. My top keywords are gone from SERPS, since some of them are still ranking on other sub-pages. What should I do to recover? What should be a normal mydomain.com keyword density? And how long does it take to recover?

Any recommends or suggestions are very welcome!

[mandos123]

Originally Posted by Daniel Wilson

I had the same problem as you and on Panda update page fell of the top positions.

Anyway, you should make titles for humans not for search engines. I haven't really bothered to change all that but I guess it was a lesson learned.

Thanks

I will try to reduce my top keywords density, because It's very easy to see from G webmaster tools that all the main keywords are gone and the other keywords have gone up a bit. I will also change snippet and titles

[Cyber Rankings]

Hi Mandos

When link building i use the main keywords 40% of the time and long keywords the over 60%.

I also leave a few comments that are not keyword optimised. Remember it needs to look as natural as possible. On average i target 10 main keywords and 400+ long tail keywords per page of my websites. Even thought this may seem a lot it means you can get insane amounts of traffic from just one good article.

[mandos123]

Thank you for your answers. Any other suggestions? I would like to know if anyone else has gone off serps because of the keyword density?

[westportclan]

I have a site that I also think has a too high keyword density caused by the footer links all containing my keyword plus a location. The site disappeared from the rankings about 10 days ago but is still indexed. I have only just reduced the on-site keyword density and will add some links and hope that G soon ranks my pages again. I'm not sure there is really anything else I can do??

[yukon]

Chances are you've changed/deleted something on your site (URLs, etc...) & Google is looking for lost pages, that were once there when they indexed your site/pages in the past.

Canonical tags will deal with duplicate content on the same site (blog post page / Category page, etc...).

[mandos123]

I have also used too much same anchor text for my backlinks?
What's the best way to change them if I'm not sure where are my backlinks. Just making more with other anchor text? Or trying to change them by looking them up via backlink checker?

[C Rebecca]

It is very clear that your website was penalized for over optimization. It is very obvious that you won't get back to your old rankings.

So, start optimizing your website in an ethical way and hope you will get your position back soon.

[mandos123]

My site is quite small (20 pages indexed) so I quickly lowered the keyword density, changed image ALT tags (too much main keyword in it). Added new content to the MAIN page, change snippets, post titles, and URLs. Re-submitted my sitemap.
I think I only have to wait now (if this was the issue).
Thank you for your help

[JRemington]

Originally Posted by mandos123

My site is quite small (20 pages indexed) so I quickly lowered the keyword density, changed image ALT tags (too much main keyword in it). Added new content to the MAIN page, change snippets, post titles, and URLs. Re-submitted my sitemap.
I think I only have to wait now (if this was the issue).
Thank you for your help

How do you actually know for sure that this was the real reason for your drop in the rankings?

And, give an example, how many times did you mention your main keyword in your title, description, intro and body?

[mandos123]

Originally Posted by JRemington

How do you actually know for sure that this was the real reason for your drop in the rankings?

And, give an example, how many times did you mention your main keyword in your title, description, intro and body?

I have 20 pages indexed and this is what I was doing Well I'm giving an example (not my keyword) : "Cheap men watch" (16 times in first page) "Cheap men watches" (10 times in first page) "Cheap men watch" 2 times in snippet for 10 indexed pages and "Cheap men watch" in titles of 12 indexed pages + I had alt 5 pictures with alt tags "Cheap men watch" You will probably laugh, but yes, this is an example how SEO goes bad So I guess this was the issue, ofcourse there could be several other factors, but I think it's that.

[JRemington]

Originally Posted by mandos123

I have 20 pages indexed and this is what I was doing Well I'm giving an example (not my keyword) : "Cheap men watch" (16 times in first page) "Cheap men watches" (10 times in first page) "Cheap men watch" 2 times in snippet for 10 indexed pages and "Cheap men watch" in titles of 12 indexed pages + I had alt 5 pictures with alt tags "Cheap men watch" You will probably laugh, but yes, this is an example how SEO goes bad So I guess this was the issue, ofcourse there could be several other factors, but I think it's that.

Ok I get you, thanks for sharing that.

Yes I'm not surprised you got hit but you can and should still creep back up the rankings and you've done the right thing.

Yet, I've only included about 5 of my keyword phrases per page and 1 image and 3 of my sites got hit. Wtf is all that about? Seriously, I have 100 pages of original content, regular backlinks and get hit 70% down.

[cflmarketing]

Mandos123, did your site ever recover? If so how did you do it and how long did it take? I'm in the same situation right now.