Is my website over-optimized? • Yoast

You need your content material to rank. We perceive! However it’s important to watch out that you simply don’t go overboard in your optimization methods. So what’s the distinction between search engine marketing and over-optimization? And the way do you acknowledge an over-optimized web site? On this put up, we are going to reply each questions!

What’s over-optimization?

We consider {that a} web site is over-optimized if the methods aimed toward rating excessive hurt the standard of the positioning. In such a case, guests of the web site can have a unique and worse expertise.

For instance: in case your texts develop into onerous or annoying to learn, then you definitely’re most likely stuffing them with key phrases you wish to be discovered on. Maybe there are uncountable numbers of hyperlinks in your web site, and also you’re most likely making an attempt to over-optimize your anchor texts.

Methods you’ll be able to over-optimize your website

Let’s have a look at all of the methods you’ll be able to over-optimize your website, so you realize what not to do.

Key phrase stuffing

Key phrase stuffing is the obvious solution to over-optimize your web site. In fact, utilizing your key phrase a lot of occasions will assist along with your rating. Google will perceive what your put up is about and rank it accordingly. Over-optimized textual content, nevertheless, is unreadable. When you put your key phrase in each (different) sentence, your textual content will develop into horrible to learn. No person needs to learn a weblog put up about pink ballet sneakers if each sentence accommodates the key phrase [pink ballet shoes]. Even people who find themselves genuinely taken with pink ballet sneakers will get irritated.

Too many inner hyperlinks

You won’t instantly take into consideration website construction when you concentrate on over-optimizing your web site. However when you level all of your inner and exterior hyperlinks to your homepage or contact web page, since you need them to rank excessive, you’re positively not doing it proper.

If you wish to have an excellent site structure, your inner and exterior hyperlinks ought to go to your in-depth content material and your homepage. A very good rule of thumb is 50% to your homepage and different fundamental navigation pages, and 50% to your in-depth pages or content material.

Rating for non-relevant key phrases

It is likely to be tempting to attempt to rank for in style search phrases. In any case, extra folks will see your website! However that’s not essentially true. If this ‘additional’ key phrase or keyphrase has nothing to do along with your content material, folks will understand your content isn’t helpful and go away your website. This received’t look good to Google. The truth is, having an excessive amount of content material optimized for unrelated key phrases might even make your website rank decrease within the search consequence pages.

One other solution to over-optimize your website is by stuffing your footer with key phrases and hyperlinks. They don’t actually add any worth to your search engine marketing, since they aren’t crawled usually and Google devalues footer hyperlinks. However you are risking over-optimization.

Moreover, having a cluttered footer additionally makes for a poor person expertise. Individuals principally use a footer to get referred to your socials or simply entry your contact particulars. And as we at all times say: you need to design and optimize your web site in your customers, not Google.

Penalties of an over-optimizated web site

When you’re taking the optimization of your content material somewhat too far, you might be risking a Panda penalty. If Panda hits you, you’ll discover a sudden drop in your rankings. Over-optimizing your content material might, due to this fact, backfire.

And that’s simply Google. An over-optimized website additionally has penalties in your UX, and due to this fact in your customers. A put up full of key phrases isn’t straightforward or enjoyable to learn, and a textual content filled with hyperlinks isn’t enticing both. Would you wish to share that sort of content material on social media? Most likely not. So, an over-optimized web site can even trigger you to obtain much less social media consideration. The underside line: in case your guests get irritated, they’ll be much less inclined to purchase one thing or return to your web site.

Our recommendation for over-optimization

Although you’ll have good intentions, an over-optimized web site means there’s an excessive amount of of an excellent factor. It implies that the UX or readability of your web site has suffered out of your search engine marketing technique. At Yoast, we follow holistic SEO. That is backed up by Google, who states they wish to give the person the most effective consequence. With our search engine marketing technique, we at all times intention to the most effective consequence.

So, write the best content, make sure that the UX of your website is flawless, cowl all technical features, and handle the security of your website. With out making any concessions to the standard of your website, you are able to do quite a few issues to optimize your website for the major search engines.

Learn extra: How to write a high quality and SEO-friendly blog post »