Google Over Optimization Penalty

It seems that Google has been hard at work at helping promote whitehat content and websites all around the globe today in their attempt to stop “Blackhat Webspam”. They’ve just launched what I’d consider a major update and it really hits home with a lot of internet marketers who try to cut corners to achieve results. As of April 24th, 2012, Google has rolled out an impressive (or not – depending on who you are) Google Over Optimization Penalty which has shaken quite a few internet marketers.

Different types of Search Engine Optimization:

This has been stated many times in the past but Google has been adamant about stopping all forms of web spam; they’ve been trying their hardest to keep constructive and whitehat websites that provide great value to remain at the top of search engines while websites that heavily spam or ‘backlink’ unnaturally or using unsafe methods get penalized and sent to the bottom.

However, has this update been just? While I’ve personally seen both sides of the conflict, when you search for certain terms you’ll definitely see some unrelated websites ranking for keywords that should not belong in the Google index; a few of my own sites that provided a good and steady flow of content are now gone from the top 100 because I was too rigid when it came with my keywords.

Some thing which help you rank websites:

- Social Media sites like facebook, twitter, digg, etc. All the big sites.

- Contextual backlinks from top web 2.0 websites

- Diverse keywords used in anchor texts

- Natural link building from diverse IP addresses

Some things to look out for:

- Mass campaigns that doesn’t sync up with your normal backlink velocity that comes from spammy sites.

- Over-optimized keywords for onpage SEO. (SEOPressor could be a bad thing now?)

- Over-optimization of anchor texts pointing to any of your tiers. (Penalties seem to travel through tiers)

- Content made strictly to rank for specific keywords, rather than to make creative content.

- Direct-linking with massive amounts of AA blog comments with spammy/badly spun comments. (this was so 2008)

- Apparently, a lot of bad luck on some webmasters parts (Sorry, I had to Google! Don’t hate me more than you already do )

Google Over Optimization Penalty:

SEO can be positive and constructive, if one knows how to use it properly. The distinction between Whitehat SEO, Greyhat SEO, and Blackhat SEO are somewhat blending together as there are hardworking internet marketers who are getting penalized even though they do manual backlinking, and some of those lucky souls who use blackhat tools are now ranking for LSI’s that they weren’t even targeting, while others are tanking fast in Google.

While I understand the point of trying to reduce spam with things like blasting 100,000 blog comments to a single website with no change in keywords and junk comments, it is just making the lives of normal internet marketers who are not as tech-savvy or have invested in $1,000+ worth of software to be unsure of whether or not to continue if their rankings suddenly drop out of the top 300 for most of their keywords.

There are many things that white hat marketers can do to help their rankings and that does include basic stuff like creating great content, speeding up the site by consolidating programming libraries or improving usability; there are many ways to make websites more user friendly and more appealing to Google, and some of those include social bookmarking or social media. A good site can improve visibility and bring more awareness, rather than one that just backlinks needlessly for a single keyword.

An example of what many blackhatters are going through right now with their keyword rankings due to the Google penalty

A contradiction or Two

I am on the fence with this update. The reason for that is that a few people I know who blackhat ‘webspam’ are still ranking #1 for their websites, while in other cases some of the greyhatters or whitehatters now dropped in their rankings and pretty much lost their only income after building it up for a year or two of their own content and their own backlinks.

I own quite a few whitehat websites and I will tell you this, that some of those rankings dropped hardcore. Then again, my other whitehat sites have increased in rankings quite a bit. So which is it? They have both had similar backlinking strategies. Does this mean that Negative SEO is a thing now where someone can spam the #1 result with scrapebox or xrumer and call it a day as they watch them drop out of the top 100? Anything that blackhatters did for themselves (which failed them) can now be done to their competition; if Google ranks for authority, age, diversity, etc, doesn’t that mean that older and less relevant websites will show up first? (this has been seen in a few of my recent search results).

The web world is in a panic over the Over-optimization penalty and I can’t blame them. I went from earning a living to potentially needing to look for a secondary job just to support myself in a matter of 24 hours, to bouncing back a bit within the last 2 hours. Perhaps I should wait a bit while I let the dust settle. Who knows, some of my websites may even come back stronger.

Over Optimization is too Rigid:

When is over optimization too optimized? Though Google wishes to help the good guys rank, it seems to be currently backfiring on the internet marketers that I know. At the moment, it seems that a few of my sites went up, and others tanked in search engine rankings. All of this over the Google over optimization penalty on April 24th, 2012. Is whitehat the way of the future? If so, let me start 10 new authority sites and sign me up … as I need the money.

What we know for sure, is that scrapebox comments lead to drops in rankings. While that is great and all, it doesn’t help anyone but the blackhatters who use those tools. They can easily target a website and off from the rankings it goes.