Over-Optimized?
-
I have been hearing that the latest algorithmic changes address "Over-Optimization", which sounds very counter-productive for businesses.
Why would Google hurt the companies that have a narrow market or product offering?
Regarding over-optimization, does SEOmoz have a tool to help address those issues?
We saw a strange decrease in our "LMS" keyword, which is the core keyword for http://interactyx.com. I am trying to figure out if we are over-optimized.
Can anyone provide any suggestions and tools I can use to make sure my site now matches what Google wants?
Thanks!
-
No worries - I appreciate your attention to this matter.
It is a confounding problem that I am frustrated with the black box of terrible search results for legitimate pages.
I am open to an ideas/suggestion you may have.
Thanks, again!
-
Hi! I was a bit too hasty when I made the robots.txt comment. I do see what you did now there.
For the rest of it, I'll come back this weekend -- just catching up after being out of town for three days for Mozcation in Milwaukee.
-
Thank you for your response!
Most of the competitors for the term "LMS" dropped more significantly that my company did over the last 7 weeks. The search results for the term now have a bunch of junk pages, irrelevant pages and even Facebook groups higher positioned than legitimate companies that have been competing for the term for over 4 years.
For LMS, we camped out at the top of page 2 for a couple months as our best position ever for a couple months (ie May - Jul). I am not as worried about my Google Analytics results as I am about my actual SERP.
I could not be more frustrating to use all of the optimization tools, generate tons of relevant content and continue to get beaten by low Page Rank, junk sites in the search.
Use the SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool for LMS and Learning Management System and compare to the Site Explore results for interactyx.com. Either the SEOmoz tools don't line up with what Google is looking for or there is some other problem here.
Maybe I am mistaken, but I do not have my blog blocked by robots.txt. I blocked the pages/categories that were throwing up duplicate content, per SEOmoz. If you see something here that I don't that may be hurting my blog pages, please let me know.
I great appreciate you taking the time to review my situation.
-
Have you looked at your competitors? Has one of them done something to move higher, thus moving you lower?
Over what time period are you decreasing for the keyword in question? If you're looking long-term, keep in mind that (not provided) now accounts for some of those declines -- you were seeing all of your keywords 18 months ago, but aren't now.
Is there a reason your blog is disallowed in your robots.txt?
-
Thank you for your response and for sharing those links.
Our main keywords are LMS and Learning Management System. I think I just proved out a case study showing that organic backlinking does not work. It looks like we are forced to purchase a service to buy backlinks.
After 4 years of pursuing our core keywords, developing 4-6 unique content blogs a week, optimizing the site to the point where there are no tools to help any more, having a large social media presence, hundreds of unique visitors a day and we still rank 38th in the SERP.
Google is broken. My last guess is that there is an over-optimization issue, but that may not be the case. So, is there any tool that can be used to gain some insight into this situation?
Wouldn't it make more sense if Google was open-book about the search algorithm so at least we can compete for the areas that make the most sense for our online presence?
Seeing the terrible pages ranking higher in actual results makes me think that the overall user experience from google searches has diminished to the point where people may start migrating away.
Thanks again for your response! It is appreciated.
-
Hi,
I have studied your site and your site is good, if you want to know about the keywords are appropriate for your landing page then SEOmoz tool of onnpage analysis is best. It can results many important factors about the keyword usability on page. Can i know about your targeted keywords?? because LMS keyword is now 38th position in Google.com. you can applied different link-building services for promoting your keywords and i suggest one thing that is do keyword variation for decreasing over optimization. You can also make strong social profile for social media marketing.
These all three links are best to understand over optimization.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-is-considered-over-optimization-for-seo
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lessons-learned-by-an-over-optimizer-14730
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Optimized Page Not Ranking for Head Term
We have a primary donation page that we've tried to position well for the term 'Donate' and some of its longer-tailed derivatives. The page has plenty of high-quality backlinks and internal links, and hasn't had any manual actions taken against it. The backlink profile is fairly good from what I can tell, definitely not mainly spam. The issue is that it doesn't rank for 'Donate', at all really. For 'Donate Online' and 'Donate Canada', it ranks roughly #3-4 across major Canadian cities, but we're not even in the top 100 for 'Donate'. There are pages and domains that are way less optimized, with much weaker backlink profiles, that are ranking well ahead of us. It's not a noindex or robots problem, as the page ranks fine for many other terms. We also have a strong domain with around 660k backlinks according to MajesticSEO. Here's the URL in question: http://www.redcross.ca/donate I'm hoping someone can help us diagnose what could be going wrong with this term specifically and how we can get this page into the SERPs where it belongs. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalcrc0 -
How to optimize an about page for SEO. Best practices? Word count?
Does anyone have any advice on word count and best practice SEO for a blog about page or even a website about page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jdodd0 -
Future-proof website to optimize SEO.
Hi All, This is my first post and hopefully a question that could help others in similar positions. Say we are trying to rank for the keyword "security testing tools". Product name is "Sectest" and its a security testing tool. *We currently have an "SEO" section that is purely good content and the idea with this is to be able to rank for "security testing tools" talking about what to expect and look for in such tools and relevant content - Linking to our product page at the end of it. structure is brand.com/security-testing/tools and that would have a link to brank.com/products/sectest Obviously product pages would get their meta tags and content re-written so we don't compete for the same keywords. Is this approach optimal? or would google want us to link directly to the product page instead of "information" about security testing tools? Nobody in our sector is taking this approach and we have already started it, but I am starting to wonder if I am getting into big trouble further down the line. Thanks and best regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JorgeGarcia0 -
Performing Internal Optimization Without Much Anchor Text?
Hi guys. We're in the process of building a new site, and are using a lot of icon based linking, image linking, etc. There is some basic text linking here and there, but not a whole lot. My concern is, because I'm not using actual anchor text, but just images, that crawlers are going to have a more difficult time determining what pages are about. Do I have a valid concern, or am I just worrying about nothing? If this concern is valid, what is the best way to remedy this concern? Alt img tags?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CodyWheeler0 -
Domain w/ Identical Content to Site we are Optimizing
Hi Guys, We've been optimizing a client's site for about a year or so now and on a call the other day the client brought up that he owns and operates another site that's marketing the same product, but to a difference audience (we work on the direct to consumer side, this is a distributior focused site),with the same exact content as the site we are optimizing. Obviously this is a major duplcant content issue and we need to get it resolved very quickjly. We have already reccomendt to the client that we re-write content, but this is where my questions comes in - Which site should we rewrite the content on? The site we are optimizing is the more impoorant of the two, while we still want the other site to hold rankings we dont want to end up accidently optimizing the other site wherein the site we are working on full time suffers a lost when a "compeiting" site creates compeltely new content and may, accidentally, end up ranking higher than the site we are focusing on full time. As links also play a role, would that be a KPI to look at here in determining which site gets new content and which does not? In this scenairo, would would you guys recommend? Just want to make sure I'm dotting all my I's, and crossing T's here. Many thanks to all in advance, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Havas_Disco0 -
On-Site Optimization Tips for Job site?
I am working on a job site that only ranks well for the homepage with very low ranking internal pages. My job pages do not rank what so ever and are database driven and often times turn to 404 pages after the job has been filled. The job pages have to no content either. Anybody have any technical on-site recommendations for a job site I am working on especially regarding my internal pages? (Cross Country Allied.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0 -
How would you optimize a web site for a NYC real estate brokerage with apartment rentals and apartment sales?
I would think it would make the most sense to optimize the homepage for 'NYC apartments'. Then have two pages, one for 'apartment rentals' and another for 'apartment sales' directly underneath in the site's hierarchy. Is this is how you would do it? The competition for these keywords mostly have 'NYC Apartment Rentals' and 'NYC Apartment Sales' bunched together on their homepage. Is it possible to have 3 separate pages from the same domain rank on the first SERP? Also, the company I work for is called Platinum Properties. If we fail to include 'Platinum Properties' in the title tag would that negatively effect our current position for 'Platinum Properties' in the search results? What would be an effective way to get listed for both the keyword and company name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | platinumseo0 -
What is the Title Tag length for mobile pages optimized for the iPhone?
What is the optimal Title Tag length when optimizing a mobile version of your site for the iPhone?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GearyLSF370