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:
ขHow do I get my website to the top of the search engine results pile?ข
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 stepbystep 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 ขthinkข .
Knowing what search engines ขwantข .
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 todayกs discussion?
Basically, when you have ขfollowedข the SEO strategies to the letter, and are still not seeing your website rank anywhere near where it ขshouldข 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 ขthinkข that you are spamming them.
In the first case, you will have to ขwait it outข 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 overoptimization , and like many SEO issues this one has a lot of debate on it in SEO forums about whether websites are actually penalized for overoptimization or simply banned for spam.
What exactly is overoptimization?
Overoptimization happens when your website is considered ขtoo goodข by Google – either in terms of a sudden volume of backlinks, or because of heavy onpage optimization. In other words, if Google considers that your website optimization is beyond acceptable limits , your website will be redflagged and automatically restricted or penalized.
There is a fine line between overoptimization 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 ขtrendsข within the niche / keyword range that a website is optimizing for.
The bottom line is that overoptimization is nonspamming 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 overoptimized, 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 ขway moreข optimized than the current top ranking websites?
In the past, have overoptimized websites been discovered as spam websites?
What are the trends / acceptable limits for welloptimized 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 overoptimization are, and how likely overoptimized 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 ขperfectข in optimizing your website while your competition was left far behind.
Google takes both onpage and offpage optimization into account when checking for overoptimization / spam, and as such it watches out for overoptimization 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 overoptimization. The real question then is:
How can you avoid such penalties ?
Avoiding the trap of overoptimization
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 overoptimization 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 timewasting and fruitless effort. Too much focus on getting the page structure ขjust rightข 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 ขlandscapingข. Which of the following approaches would you realistically choose?
Go fullthrottle 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 ขlandscapingข 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 overoptimization. On the other hand, the second approach does just enough to beat the competition – without pushing you or your budget to the limit.
Overoptimization 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 overoptimization 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 ขsecond approachข above.
Search engine optimization is a longterm, lowintensity 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 overoptimization – as long you follow search engine guidelines and donกt 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.htm and get your free copy of ก7 Days To Massive Website Traffic!ก right now!
Brad Callen
SEO Elite
http://www.seoelite.com
[email protected]
This article was posted on August 16, 2005
by Brad Callen