Google Penalties for Webspam (Bad SEO): StartMaking Sense

If you have been reading about SEO for longer than a few minutes, you have probablyfound some variation of “build your website/write content for people, not search en-gines”. We have preached this from day one, but it seems like it may be one of thosethings that people read, but don’t really understand what it means. In light of Google’srecent announcements of an upcoming penalty for “over optimization“, an even morerecent warning of a webspam algorithm update (now called “Penguin”), and a fewyears of algorithm updates and spam-fighting pandas, let’s take yet another look atmodern SEO and some things to do, or not do, to avoid a drop in your search enginerankings or how to recover from a Penguin penalty if you have already been hit.

One would think that by now most website ownerswould have figured out that trying to trick Google is abad idea, but some may have done things months oryears ago that they did not think would matter because“it’s the WWW and everyone lies, cheats and steals,right?” No, everyone does not. It is time to undo thoseSEO mistakes and bad ideas. For many, un-overopti-mizing (huh?!) is going to mean undoing or removing a

lot of goofy things that were done in the name of better search engine positions.

Keyword obsession, ill-advised tips and bad advice Forget what you “read somewhere” about keywords, density, interlinking, blog net-works, link exchanges, link velocity, hyper-something-or-other… ugh! Too many to getinto. In short, if you read something about SEO and it seemed like the writer just madeup his own buzzword or it sounded like a crazy scheme, don’t let it take up space inyour brain – and don’t add it to your online marketing plan. As a matter of fact, forget that there is any such thing as a search engine algorithm. For-get for a moment that you are doing business online and think of the web the way youwould phone solicitation, direct mail or any other form of offline marketing. Howmuch sneakiness and bizarre behavior would your potential customers tolerate in the“real” world? Your online marketing should be no different.Stop thinking “what will this mean for SEO?” Instead, thinké

“Would I do this if there were no search engines?”If you went to your website for the very first time, would it make sense to you? Orwould it look kind of strange – repetition of the same few phrases in the titles, the copy,the navigation, the links to other pages, etc? This is especially important in the title ele-ment – the text that shows up as a link to your site in the search engine results. Key-word-obsessed webmasters will often fill up the title with their favorite keywords in or-der to rank well, declare victory, and then wonder why there is still no traffic coming tothe site. That is because while you may think search engines want a list of almost ran-dom words, people do not. And Google wants to give people what they want. You mayget a higher position with nothing but keywords, but a well written title is much moreeffective at getting users to click through to your site. Do put your most important tar-get terms in the title, but you don’t need to repeat it so much that you left no room forbranding. Yes, being on page one is still so much better than being on page two or low-er. But if you are ranking within say, the top 5 to 7 spots, being attractive to users be-comes just as important.Think about your own web browsing habits. When you are searching for something, doyou click on the very first search result without thinking? No, because you are not a ro-bot. You usually take a second or two to get some idea of what the page you are aboutto view is about, and go to the site that looks not only the most relevant, but the mostattractive to your interest, or possibly the easiest to understand. Now look at the titles ofthe pages on your site. Would the title make sense to you, as a rational human beingwho has no idea that search engine optimization exists? Or would it look like Googleserved up some sort of table of contents listing of tags or keywords?

You can also apply this to your meta description tags – the text Google usually showsunder the links in search results. Do you have a list of keywords in the meta descriptionor awesome advertising copy? Since the content of the meta description doesn’t meanmuch to search engines but does to people, don’t be afraid to be a little clever in yourdescriptions – especially if you are in a competitive marketing niche where everyone issaying the same keyword-stuffed nonsense in their titles and descriptions. Titles and de-scriptions that read like a good advertisement will bring more traffic to your website –and it will be users who are more likely to stick around and absorb your message. Andif that isn’t enough to break your keyword stuffing habits, think about that loomingGoogle penalty for being “overly optimized.”

Need Google Penalty Help?

The takeaway here for those who are addicted to keyword position as a key SEO metric:switch to click-through and conversion rates. Those are a much healthier way to losesleep over your web marketing. For content, focus on topics or themes rather than keyphrases. Write well, use a variety of words that mean the same thing as your belovedkeywords and use the best SEO keyword research tools available – a thesaurus and ra-tional thought. (Didn’t we say we are not your typical SEO company?)

Link Building for People Not Search EnginesArticle marketing, blog networks, “thousands of directories” and just about any otherlink you might get solely for the SEO value… OK, when have you ever found a reallyexcellent website or business from any of those? Of course some sites will still need lotsof good incoming links to do well, but don’t count on those easy to get but hard to justi-fy links to count for much.

Just how stupid do you think Google is people are?Maybe you are thinking, “I have to rank #1 so I am going to put comma separated keywords inmy title element instead of something people would like. Screw Google’s guidelines”

Hey, it’s your website. If you feel that being #1 is a more im-portant goal than reaching your target audience and show-ing them how good your products or services are withoutlooking like a spammer, that is certainly your prerogative. Google is getting smarter every day, getting better at recog-nizing even the more subtle attempts at manipulating theresults, and recognizing things that make sense to people,not just search engines. Before long, that top spot that seemsso important will be taken by a website that conveys its message well – to people.

“But what about my keywords? Don’t I have to have extra special secret keywords in every titleon every page and use them somewhere between 2 and 7 percent of the total text so I can be #1?”Seriously, forget everything you ever “read somewhere” about keywords.

Some Related Stuff:

Over-Optimized? Google’s New Penalty for Too Much SEO (7.1)Warning Signs of Bad SEO – Who Can You Trust? (5.7)