Google plans to penalize over-optimized Websites
This post has been updated:
As new information appears to emerge this topic, I thought it best to update my post regarding the discussions.
Matt Cutts is clarifying the intent of his now famous “over-optimization” statements from earlier:
“I think ‘over-optimization’ wasn’t the best description, because it blurred the distinction between white hat SEO and webspam. This change is targeted at webspam, not SEO, and we tried to make that fact more clear in the blog post,” Cutts told me.”
Whether the term “over-optimization” caused confusion, I’m not sure, but it appears perfectly clear to me. When in doubt, follow the guidelines from Google with regard to SEO practices. Targeting your market segments and also ensuring you are making the most of Google’s algorithms are standard and acceptable behaviors. They are tasks that every business needs to engage in with regard to web strategy. Creating spam, false advertising, snake-oil strategy, and other seemingly unethical practices are never appropriate for professional web strategy.
This original post begins here:
Recently at the SXSW conference, Matt Cutts (Google’s head of web spam) made the announcement that they will begin rolling out new updates to handle “over-optimized” sites created by SEO abusers in order to “level the playing field” for those sites that follow the rules. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of detail has emerged yet on what this will entail, but I’m going to assume that most of us “tech folk” aren’t necessarily surprised by this. After all, the massive implosion of shady SEO marketing tactics over the last couple of years has been building up to a very apparent problem: sites that are not necessarily relevant or genuine are outranking real sites with content truly desired by searchers.
Are searches becoming less productive?
Just type in “web developer” into a typical Google search and you will have to dig deep through the search results to find a good web developer. If you are a potential customer in need of a real web development company to create solid web applications, Google searching is not going to provide a relevant answer very easily.
That particular Google search is, for the most part, irrelevant. Google wants to maintain its status as one of the best search engines so it must attempt to clean up this over-optimized web mess that many of these SEO “gurus” have created. Follow their best practices guidelines to ensure your website won’t be penalized as they continue to tweak their algorithms.
Always follow their SEO suggestions
When in doubt, always brush up on SEO knowledge from leading search engines. If you are still confused or simply want to ensure your website is optimized correctly so it stands the best chance to be found by your customers and audience, contact us and we can definitely help. We aim to ensure our SEO approaches are done in line with the recommendations of all standard search engines. We also explain to our clients that our approach is always done ethically and in keeping with the professional behavior one would expect from any business or organization. Let us know how we can help!
Listen to the discussion here:
Dear Google & Bing: Help Me Rank Better.
