Over-Optimization tool?

by 21 replies
25
HI Warriors,

A long time client's search traffic has dropped by about 20% since March 20th - about the same time Google latest algorithm change hit. What I am looking for is advice as to if there are any tools I can run his site through to figure out the problem areas are in terms of 'over-optimization'.

For the record, I can state to an almost absolute certainty that this is an issue with on-page elements. I have come to the conclusion that I may need to 'de-optimize' his site a little.

Any advice is much appreciated.

MJ
#search engine optimization #overoptimization #tool
  • Post the link and we can give advice.

    But look for things like keyword being mentioned too many times, crap content that isn't helpful, ads above the fold and on page manipulation with links, amongst other things.
  • Agreed, get rid of all junk content and make sure your client is being genuinely useful and there`s nothing that can be seen as spammy on the site.
    • [1] reply
    • I can't post a link due to an arrangement I have with my client. It's complicated.

      I've looked through his content and other than a handful of pages with similarly keyworded titles and perhaps some keywords in the copy that are bolded, there isn't much I consider to be excessive.

      If no such tool exists, I will probably have to experiment a little bit.
      • [1] reply
  • i'm of the belief that most on-page optimization should look 'accidental' rather than incidental.

    hmm, same goes for off-site come to think of it.
  • Sorry forgot to mention, that list is just speculation but something similar will be in next panda update. They're working on it now probably with some off page stuff too. Just to note the over optimization penalty and panda 3.3 are two completely different things, 3.3 wasn't even an update just a refresh of their data. If you want to see the best panda advice go to the Google blog, they have everything there on how to deal with it.
  • I wouldn't rule out off page elements unless you do little to no backlinking. I am testing some sites at the moment and it is becoming more and more evident that aggressive backlinking may be the cause for some of my sites to slip in search results.

    All my sites have very basic on page SEO (less than 1% keyword usage and all the stuff mentioned above). The sites that have natural links built to them seem to remain relatively unaffected while the sites with aggressive backlinking campaigns continue to slip. All backlinks are from sites with good PR and significant domain age, but frankly my testing pool is very small so none of this is set in stone, just what I'm observing.

    From what I can tell, Google is looking harder at unnatural linking structures and may be penalizing sites for it. And if this is the case, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out because if I wanted, I could go to Fiverr and purchase about 100,000 spammy backlinks for my favorite competitors - if I wanted to.

    Some good articles:
    How to Stop Over Optimizing and Start Creating for SEO - Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz
    Searchengineland
    Searchengineland

    Would like to hear what others think about this topic as I believe it will continue to have a significant impact on SEO...
    • [1] reply
    • So now we've gone from on-page optimization to increase ranks to "un-optimizing" to reduce damage.

      How about just make useful content and don't worry about any of it.
      • [1] reply
  • But Google didn't provide the full detail about over-optimization so, how we judge what that mean?
    • [1] reply
    • You can't, I said it's just speculation, atm it's the opinion in general from the seo community about what over-optimization actually is. All you can do is trial and error with Google, test if things don't go your way, make changes and adapt to their system.
  • Yes, dmtaylor247 is right. You can not find it out as there is not any hard and fast rule to judge over-optimization. You just check it when you think that there is chances to be.
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    Over-Optimization tool?

    HI Warriors, A long time client's search traffic has dropped by about 20% since March 20th - about the same time Google latest algorithm change hit. What I am looking for is advice as to if there are any tools I can run his site through to figure out the problem areas are in terms of 'over-optimization'.