De-optimizing your SEO by Azatiko.com

... a Search Engine Optimization Company, Montreal

How does one de-optimize search engine optimization? The idea of may sound ridiculous. But de-optimizing your SEO campaign is not about undoing all the work you did to get your search engine results. It's about reducing those unmistakable signs of SEO that may have worked in the past, but are now seen as flagrant attempts at ranking highly.

In a nutshell, it's about avoiding over-optimization. If you over-optimize the SEO on your website, your rankings might suffer because it will be obvious that your site was designed for search engines and not for web surfers. It's an important part of SEO that is often overlooked, and the consequences can mean a huge setback to your search engine optimization efforts.

Read more about Azatiko.com's search engine optimization services: SEO Company

Avoiding Over-optimization

Google has an algorithm that detects over-optimized webpages. These web pages trigger a filter called the "-950 penalty". It's called this because of what happens to over-optimized webpages on Google: they drop in the search engine results by 950 positions.

To properly de-optimizing a website, the following SEO aspects need to be addressed:

Keyword Density

Keyword density is the amount of times a targeted keyword appears in the content of a webpage. For example, if the word “Google” appears 20 times in a 200-word page, its keyword density is 10 percent. While there's no such thing as an optimal percentage, it's generally accepted in search engine optimization that a density above 8 percent is too high.

To de-optimize your keyword density, using variations of the targeted keyword is the easiest and most effective method. Instead of “Google”, use “googled” or “googling”. Using plurals and past tenses can bypass the over-optimizing filter and still be effective in helping your webpage rank for your targeted keyword.

Get a quote on how to generate more traffic to your website: Azatiko.com SEO Services

Anchor Text of Incoming Links

The same principle used with keyword density applies to anchor texts. Having volumes of links pointing to your site with the same anchor text is going to look a little suspicious to the search engines. Using plurals, past tenses, and other variations of your targeted keywords would be more effective.

There's also the possible added bonus of ranking well for these keyword variations.

Using Visual Tags

Visual tags such as bolding or italicizing implies a certain piece of text requires special attention. Search engines will see this highlighted text as more important that the rest of the content on the page. While this may be a very powerful SEO tactic, many webmasters overdo it by emphasizing every instance of their targeted keyword on the page.

Consequently, this tactic was quickly detected and filtered. There will obviously be places where you want to bold the text to attract your visitor to the phrase they searched. However, the key to de-optimizing visual tags is to use them sparingly and appropriately.

Using SEO to Cater Your Visitors

Search engines continuely strive to provide the best possible search results to their visitors. By insuring your page content reads well and is properly organized with the right SEO indicators, the search engines will know that your website was built for your visitors while still remaining relevant to the search query.

Making changes to these areas will not only help a website achieve better rankings,
but perhaps more importantly hold them over time.

Article Published January 2nd, 2009
De-optimizing your SEO by Azatiko.com – Montreal Search Engine Optimization Company

Return to Montreal Web Design articles