The examples in this article are a couple of years old now, but they are still as true today as they were back then. Very little about SEO has changed, there have just been some fine tuning done, and the biggest change with the injection of Hummingbird in late 2014.
Over optimization launched around the same time as Penguin. Our observations have found this to be a completely separate factor than what the focus of Penguin itself really is (links), even though most SEO news sources put it together.
In this particular section, we are only talking about on-page over optimization. If the URL, the title tag, the header tags, and every other sentence have the target keyword – you are at a pretty high risk of getting tagged in a penalty.
Symptoms
- Ranking drop around Penguin launch
- Other pages rank without issue
- Other pages rank for the targeted keyword
- WordPress SEO plugin says page passes the Linkdex recommendations
- Backlinks are still live and powerful, at least compared to competition
Tests & Diagnosis
- De-optimize the page
- Do not change URL
- Start with keyword density, then H tags, then title
Common Misdiagnosis
- Penguin anchor text issues
- Substantially similar content
Complications
- This type of penalty often fails Panda CP test repeatedly, no matter how many times it is rewritten, leading one to believe this is a substantially similar content problem.
Solutions
If the diagnostic test shows positive rankings, it will have already fixed itself. A last resort is doing an internal redirect to a URL with a related keyword term. If nothing changes, you have misdiagnosed.
Best Practice
Normally Yoast’s WordPress SEO Linkdex data is accurate but it can throw you into the over optimization penalty if you try too much. In our June 2012 presentation, we gave our favorite example of how to keyword stuff without stuffing (which has changed and lost rankings – more on that below).
MortgageLoan.com ranked very well for “refinance mortgage” and other related terms. The ranking article was massive, very targeted, but certainly not stuffed. This is the absolute best example for what you can get away with and keep rankings.
Try to copy this in your own campaigns. A secondary benefit is all the long-tail rankings this method pulls in.
Here is what they did:
They over-optimized for sure. But they did not stuff their target keyword at all:
MortgageLoan.com changed their article on July 10th, 2013. It is still following this principle for the most part. Their rankings have been falling off a cliff but that is due to other factors. This type of optimization is one of the best things going for them. However, check out the SERPs for “refinance mortgage” and do the same type of analysis as above. Some don’t even include the exact keyword phrase and still rank.
Keep this in mind when optimizing your page. The “Green Bulb” indication for proper optimization in Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin is simply not accurate.