How to Avoid Over-optimization in SEO?

The eagerness of the SEO experts to be awarded the top spot in the search engine results knows no bound and to achieve this they are prepared to go to any length, even adopting many dishonest practices. There had been numerous examples of various sites being wholly blocked and excluded from the search results of Google and other search engines due to adopting various malpractices and ‘black hat’ techniques of SEO.

The search engines cannot be blamed for this, because due to the evil practices that LinkHelpers Seattle SEO Company experts put into playing, the search engine results were compromised to the point of the keyword searches returning irrelevant results. Even if search engines fail to detect your dishonesty, you will be reported by your competitors. Given below are some of the evil SEO techniques that should be avoided:

Keyword stuffing:

Keyword-stuffing implies to use the target keyword in throughout the article abundantly to the level of arousing suspicion. The suggested keyword density ranges from 3% to 7%, so if any item exceeds that limit of the incorporation of the keyword, then it appears like keyword-stuffing and search engines will quickly find it out. An article containing 10% keyword stuffing will hardly seem intelligible to a human, so do not blame search engines if they penalize your site on this account. Keyword density in the headings, title, and the first paragraph is generally considered, so be cautious not to stuff these areas with keywords. If you see that you have used the keyword a bit too frequently, you better replace some of them with synonyms to avoid the penalty. Also, avoid putting the target keyword in bold or italics, that is also viewed suspiciously by the search engines.

Doorway pages and Hidden texts:

Another such evil practice is doorway pages. Before the formal introduction of the PageRank algorithm by Google, Doorway pages were not considered to be a glaring fault for optimizing a website. These are the pages included only for the search engines, as they have no significance from a human’s point of view and is a tactic to get good search ranking. However, since the keyword is not the only way of determining the popularity of your site, so this practice has declined. The other is a scam called hidden text. Humans are incapable of seeing this text, although it is there in the HTML source of the site. It is used mainly to create a false impression for the search engines that the page is keyword-rich. Both these practices are considered manipulative measures by Google.

Duplicate content:

Content is undoubtedly the backbone of SEO, but not the duplicate content. Search engines do not index the duplicate content. If you add the same content on various pages of your site, then the search engines do not index all those pages, but index all those pages as a single page, as putting the same content conveys the information that they are the same page. This can affect your rank drastically. So try to avoid it and also keep checking whether contents of your site are getting copy pasted by some other places.

Backlinks:

Backlinks are indeed a valuable tool that can award you with the long-coveted top spot in the search engine results, but earning such links from irrelevant sites can affect your web visibility adversely. Use of the keywords in links, file and folder names and domain names do serve to enhance your rank, but you must strike a balance between the two extremes- to stay on the top of SERP and getting kicked out. When you choose an obvious keyword and find that the competition for it is fierce, you can go for an alternative keyword, but do not overcrowd the domain name by using the keyword, because if you fail to generate content to complement them, then again you will be penalized. Another thing is to keep a tab on what anchor texts other sites are using to get linked with you, although you have no control over it.

On the final note, it should be known that the search engines are entirely indifferent to whether your site has been over-optimized with good intention or to cheat them, so the best option is to resort to the sound policies to optimize your website and restrain from overstepping the boundary.