In today’s age of Internet Marketing, there is no doubt that Search Engine Optimization is one of the most powerful and effective methods of driving quality traffic to your website. While SEO can be a powerful tool, we, as marketers, must be responsible when implementing our SEO practices.
No, I am not referring to avoiding Black Hat techniques, we know that Black Hat SEO should be avoided at all cost. What I am referring to specifically is something called over optimization. What exactly is over optimization? Keep reading and I will shed some light on this subject and provide you with some things you can do to avoid over optimizing our own website.
First, let’s talk about some common methods of over optimizing our websites. Some of the more prevalent methods of over optimization are keyword stuffing, using too many internal links and writing unnatural content.
Keyword stuffing is the over use of certain keywords or phrases. An example of keyword stuffing would be using a keyword in the headline, the sub headline and repeatedly in the following body text.
The next technique, too many internal links, is the process of providing too many links from words in the body text to other areas of the site or simply adding a bunch of irrelevant footer links.
The third technique, writing unnatural content occurs when you write content to be placed on your site that just doesn”t fit the goal or purpose of any one particular page of your site. So now that we know what some of these over optimization techniques are, lets talk about some things we can do to avoid using them.
When crafting the content for your website, the first and foremost thing we should do is write our content for humans rather than search engines. Avoid over using a keyword just for the sake of using that particular word. If you would not repeat a certain word or phrase over and over while trying to provide information to a neighbor, then don’t do it while writing your website content either. In short, pretend you are explaining something to an audience and use keywords to help tell your story rather than over embellishing the story.
When creating internal links, provide them where it makes sense. For example, in your about us information, if you briefly touch on some of your services, it is a great practice to provide text links to specific service pages. On the flip side of this approach, be careful not to overuse this technique and add a link in every sentence that will redirect your visitors to another area of the site.
Lastly, create content that blends well with the goals and objectives of your site. Do not include unnecessary or irrelevant content simply because you feel that more is better! By following this simple set of rules or best practice you are far more likely to create compelling content that is written for humans and also provides your site with great SEO qualities as well.
