Over Optimization - Where is the limit?
-
Hi All,
Lately its been discussed a lot about the various penalties and the one that is least clear to me is over optimization.
I'm currently dealing with my site's sub-folders naming.
My site sells computers yet the domain name has nothing to do with computers.
The question is should I put computers in every folder name?
Examples:
domain.com/surveys/xxx VS domain.com/computer-surveys/xxx
domain.com/Questions/xxx VS domain.com/Computers-Questions/xxx
and
domain.com/Education/xxx VS domain.com/computers-education/xxx
Where is the limit?
-
Agreed. My domain name is our brand name and doesn't touch on our products however that doesn't hurt us. Over optimization is usually just trying too hard to force keywords in where they aren't needed; like name dropping.
-
I think either of those options is just fine.
URLs on the left are short and sweet. URLs on the right are a bit more descriptive.
I would draw the line at this question: Are you doing multiple things only for the search engines and not for the users?
My two biggest tips would be to 1) Write naturally (page titles, copy) and 2) Link naturally (descriptive, not over anchor texty)
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site-wide links with optimized anchor words?
Hi Moz community, I work at a web design company. I found my competitors have a lot of site-wide backlinks from their clients with optimized anchor text "affordable web design by XXX". Some of the clients' website are not even relevant to web design or design industry. I am sure those are dofollow links. Although I heard a lot of sayings that site-wide backlinks look unnatural and spammy, why the top ranking guys are still using this way to acquire backlinks? Does Google really actually say no to this? Thanks for any help and explanation. Best, Raymond
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee0 -
I am lost at where to go. My optimization rating is 95% + and rankings are on pages 4+. I would like to know what I should do to increase my rankings.
My site is Glare-Guard.com. My Domain Authority has not moved from 17 in a long time. i have done everything to optimize the different pages. I have 90%+ ratings for the various pages, yet I am still not even close to the first page for many of the keywords I am looking to rank for. Do you have any tips or ideas? Should I try to rewrite my content and add more information? I am just at a loss for where I should go to get the right traffic to my site. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bigskyinc0 -
Alt image tags , shoud i reupload my site images as i never optimized right first time?
Hi guys i own a photographic website. www.hemeravisuals.co.uk And when I created it , i wasn't aware of the world of SEO , alt tags and labelling your images etc...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hemeravisuals
Would it be wise to reupload my sites images (100 in total) as I cannot rename the files on my wordpress site but it does allow me to add alt text , captions etc?Or just add the data i can to the images allready on the site? Would it be worthwhile in terms of search and pagerank?0 -
Limit on Google Removal Tool?
I'm dealing with thousands of duplicate URL's caused by the CMS... So I am using some automation to get through them - What is the daily limit? weekly? monthly? Any ideas?? thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Video Optimization
I'm interested in marking up videos on a site, so we can get those videos ranking on Google as rich snippets. Anyway, i've been looking at Googles support on this - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2413309&topic=1088474&ctx=topic And they recommend scheme.org markup. I looked at Rands whiteboard friday videos - and it seems based on what i seen from the source code - that there is no scheme.org markup - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fixing-the-broken-culture-of-seo-metrics-whiteboard-friday Also for the life of me, i've been trying to find sites with videos with scheme.org markup, and can't find any! Its driving me nuts, i just want to see a real life example! -- Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mattcarter080 -
Future-proof website to optimize SEO.
Hi All, This is my first post and hopefully a question that could help others in similar positions. Say we are trying to rank for the keyword "security testing tools". Product name is "Sectest" and its a security testing tool. *We currently have an "SEO" section that is purely good content and the idea with this is to be able to rank for "security testing tools" talking about what to expect and look for in such tools and relevant content - Linking to our product page at the end of it. structure is brand.com/security-testing/tools and that would have a link to brank.com/products/sectest Obviously product pages would get their meta tags and content re-written so we don't compete for the same keywords. Is this approach optimal? or would google want us to link directly to the product page instead of "information" about security testing tools? Nobody in our sector is taking this approach and we have already started it, but I am starting to wonder if I am getting into big trouble further down the line. Thanks and best regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JorgeGarcia0 -
Do you use a different tactic to optimize for Bing?
Google is king, but it seems as though there is a significant source of traffic and revenue from Bing. What is the preferred strategy? Optimize for Google and hope it filters to Bing? An obvious concern would be that if we change tactics to please Bing, we could stand to lose our rankings with Google. Any opinions/thoughts/feedback/suggestions would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NaHoku0 -
Optimize a Classifieds Site
Hi, I have a classifieds website and would like to optimize it. The issues/questions I have: A Classifieds site has, say, 500 cities. Is it better to create separate subdomains for each city (http://city_name.site.com) or subdirectory (http://site.com/city_name)? Now in each city, there will be say 50 categories. Now these 50 categories are common across all the cities. Hence, the layout and content will be the same with difference of latest ads from each city and name of the city and the urls pointing to each category in the relevant city. The site architecture of a classifieds site is highly prone to have major content which is not really a duplicate content. What is the best way to deal with this situation? I have been hit by Panda in April 2011 with traffic going down 50%. However, the traffic since then has been around same level. How to best handle the duplicate content penalty in case with site like a classifieds site. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ketan90