"Are You DELIBERATELY Keeping Your
Website Out Of The First page Of Google?"
By Brad
Callen
Search
engines are very difficult to completely understand. There are
no complete explanations of how their ranking algorithms work.
But the very fact that the average person does not intuitively
know how to crack the search engine algorithms leads to all sorts
of questions; Usually variations of:
“ How do I get my website to the top of the search engine results
pile?”
Now if you have been following my newsletter, you will know that
search engine optimization is not magic or something equally
difficult to understand. Instead, I learnt it as a step-by-step
process and that is how I have always considered it. Nothing
too fancy; in fact, I could probably summarize it all in the
following points:
* An understanding of how search engines “think” .
* Knowing what search engines “want” .
* Learning proven optimization techniques .
* Applying your knowledge time and time again (experience).
Of course, SEO is not explained by those four sentences, but what they do is
that they give you a structure within which you can learn and carry out SEO
on your business with exceptional results. In short:
Get it right, and do it better than your competition.
But what does this have to do with today's discussion?
Basically, when you have “followed” the SEO strategies to the letter, and are
still not seeing your website rank anywhere near where it “should” be on a
particular keyword, then you have one of the following problems:
* Your website may have been sandboxed (specific only to Google).
* Your website might be penalized or even removed from the index by a search
engine for going against a stated guideline.
* A search engine might “think” that you are spamming them.
In the first case, you will have to “wait it out” with Google, while consolidating
on your positions in the other search engines by continuously building links
and adding content. The second case will never happen if you follow the advice
given in my lessons; if your website is penalized, compare what you have done
with what I have told you, and you will probably find out that something has
gone wrong.
However, like I said in the beginning, search engines are notoriously difficult
to understand – and sometimes you can do everything right and still not be
ranked correctly. Conspiracy theories apart, this is the part of the equation
that search engines do not always get right. SEO experts usually term this
as over-optimization , and like many SEO issues this one has a lot of debate
on it in SEO forums about whether websites are actually penalized for over-optimization
or simply banned for spam.
What exactly is over-optimization?
Over-optimization happens when your website is considered “too good” by Google – either
in terms of a sudden volume of backlinks, or because of heavy on-page optimization.
In other words, if Google considers that your website optimization is beyond
acceptable limits , your website will be red-flagged and automatically restricted
or penalized.
There is a fine line between over-optimization and spamming, and it is on this
line that Google can appear to err. However, this is not a mistake by the search
engine – in fact, Google calculates rankings by considering thousands and thousands
of different factors – and a lot of importance is attached to average “trends” within
the niche / keyword range that a website is optimizing for.
The bottom line is that over-optimization is non-spamming search engine optimization
that is misread by Google as being beyond acceptable limits, thus leading to
a penalty in search engine rankings.
What criteria does Google use?
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 ?
Avoiding the trap of over-optimization
As I mentioned at the start of this lesson, search engine optimization can
be boiled down to two simple steps:
* Getting it right and…
* Doing it better than everyone else.
In the context of over-optimization and avoiding unnecessary penalties, this
rings especially true. If you optimize your website within search engine guidelines
and according to proven optimization practices, you have it right. While putting
too little time on SEO is a serious mistake, the search for perfection within
SEO is a time-wasting and fruitless effort. Too much focus on getting the page
structure “just right” can divert attention away from the more mundane but
equally more important tasks – such as adding more content or monetizing the
website.
The next step is to eschew perfection and find out what your competition has
done. Suppose that you are optimizing your website for the term “landscaping”.
Which of the following approaches would you realistically choose?
* Go full-throttle on your search engine optimization, spending as much time
as necessary to get maximum value out of each word, link and page in your website,
so that you can get the highest ranking possible.
* Analyze the top 10 webpages for the term “landscaping” and understand what
optimization has been performed on them (natural or artificial). Calculate
the number of backlinks, check for authority inbound links – and once you have
figured out what your competition is doing, and do exactly the same – only
a bit more .
The first approach might mean that you are guaranteed a top position on the
search engines, but has two problems – you will waste a lot of time and resources
in this search for perfection and more importantly, your website may be flagged
for over-optimization. On the other hand, the second approach does just enough
to beat the competition – without pushing you or your budget to the limit.
Over-optimization is a phenomenon that is particularly difficult to figure
out – how does a SEO expert really determine whether his new website is in
the sandbox, penalized for over-optimization or just doing badly in the search
engines? While trying to find out the real cause for your poor rankings may
satisfy curiosity, you would be better served by following the “second approach” above.
Search engine optimization is a long-term, low-intensity process. You keep
building links and adding content, so that eventually your website not only
escapes the infamous sandbox but it also starts to rank really well on the
search engines. And as for over-optimization – as long you follow search engine
guidelines and don't go too far above your competition, you will be fine.
About the author:
If you liked the lesson and want to learn more about SEO, visit http://www.seoelite.com/7DaysToMassiveWebsiteTraffic.htmand
get your free copy of "7 Days To Massive Website Traffic!" right now!
Brad Callen
SEO Elite
http://www.seoelite.com
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