Matt Cutt’s Announces Upcoming Over Optimization Penalty at SXSW
Last week during a panel at SXSW, Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan discussed SEO and search engine relevancy. Rob Snell transcribed the event here. A portion of the discussion focused on websites who took optimization too far and what Google and Bing are doing to weed out these sites that over-optimize. At this point, Matt Cutts announced that Google would soon be rolling out with a new algorithm targeting over-optimization within a few weeks to a month.
“The idea is basically to try and level the playing ground a little bit. So all those people who have sort of been doing, for lack of a better word, “over optimization” or “overly” doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little bit more level.” -Matt Cutts
Google usually doesn’t give us warning of such events. Should you be worried? According to Vanessa Fox, a past Googler, she stated that if you do SEO, this doesn’t necessarily mean you should be worried unless you are going overboard.
Key Factors To Look For:
- Keyword Density: Is your keyword density normal or too high?
-Keyword Stuffing: Do you have too many keywords stuffed on the page and does it comprimise the quality of your content and the value you bring to your visitor?
-Quality of Content: Is it written for a human or for the search engines? Is it compelling content?
-Customer Bounce Rate: If your bounce rate is high, this could be a signal of a low quality site in Google’s eyes.
-Backlink Profile : Do you have too many backlinks from unnatural sources? Are your anchor tags diversified?
These are things to look at not only the next few weeks while waiting for Google to roll out with its over-optimization filter but to also keep in mind in general because as search engines get smarter, compelling content and user-oriented sites will only get more valuable.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic?
