SEO Over-optimization

[Matt-Williamson]

I think you are right Egol - link profiles are under more scrutiny than ever and that is where the biggest risk of gaining a penalty lays.

Spend time and create decent content rather than spammy keyword laden pages - I have seen you push this point many times on here and elsewhere.

I also think people can take a big clue as to the quality of their content from their bounce rates and time on page stats - pages ranking for keywords but having a relatively high bounce rate and a low time on page.

[veed23]

Content is all fresh - keywords are integrated into the content minimally

1 site is ranked #12 for main keyword Im targeting

Other sites are ranked -

29

42

49

[Matt-Williamson]

Have they seen an increase or decrease in ranking over the past few weeks? From what you have written it sounds like you are going about it in the right way. Just be careful with you link profile as Egol has mentioned, but do work on gaining exposure through means such as social media etc - refer to advice on link building given throughout the SeoMoz blog and on recent Q and A's

[veed23]

Yeah they went up after Penguin - but I did not do any SEO on them in the past.

The content in the past was minimal but had more keyword stuffing.

Now im adding fresh content and removed all the keyword stufffing.

[Matt-Williamson]

Well then I would say you are on the right lines - keep up the good work and as I mentioned look how you can build you sites authority online through positive link building efforts - as this will help with your rankings...

[freestone]

I would say they went up because:

1. some site above you were unjustly removed.  It is happening. Yes this is my opinion.

2.  Some really crappy sites were removed.  What people say penguin was suppose to do and I support if in fact they get it sorted out to the point were the stop doing #1.

[veed23]

This post is deleted!

[freestone]

For keyword cowboy tickets ?

For that term that site looks very similar to the other sites on page one?  In fact for my money it is more relevant than all the national sites that are above it.

Hard to judge without knowing more details.

[veed23]

ranking high for cowboys tickets

site does not look similar however

The backlink profile = thousands upon thousands of spam links

[veed23]

ranking high for cowboys tickets

site does not look similar however

The backlink profile = thousands upon thousands of spam links

[freestone]

Ah...ok I see that point and did not obviously look at the link profile.

I am afraid I am quite cynical about the penguin update.  While I appreciate that it would be difficult to create an algorithm that does a 100% good job based on what you are seeing the algorithm is quite flawed.

There were a number of things written about EDMs and how they were being punished but perhaps the fact that it is an EDM in this case helped.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I totally agree Matt.  When we take a step back and ask "do these pages look like they're written for a search engine", that allows us to start to see the unnatural patterns that come from that type of approach that's geared toward ranking and not users.

I also put a lot of emphasis on that concept though - unnatural patterns.  Think about the greater web outside the small world of SEO driven sites.  Is it natural for someone who has NO clue about SEO, to repetitively use the same keywords over and over in link anchor text? Absolutely not.

Apply that same rule to every other aspect of the work.

Do NOT however, throw out the principles of Information Retrieval in the process.  Proper page titles, proper (and appropriate use) of keyword specific anchor text, H1s, H2s, breadcrumbs, content and topical organization -these are all CRITICAL to Information Retrieval, going back to the days of library index card systems (adapted to web content).  And that's true even without SEO.