Too much SEO?

There are certain rules and guidelines to SEO. Black hat and white hat aside, much of SEO is done through keyword optimization on the site as well as generating links back to the site from other sources. But according to some, there can be too much of a good thing. If you are so focused on producing pages of keyword rich content that your site becomes repetitive or pattern based, you might be throwing up a flare to Google and other search engines that your site is essentially spam.

Spam Sites
Google penalizes spam sites when it finds them (and feels like it.) If Google feels like your site follows the pattern of spam sites, you will most likely find your site and all your hard work booted off results pages. Characteristics of spam sites include highly repetitive pages often created as duplicates of a template to increase the amount of content on the site. Content is keyword laden gibberish, and the overall offerings of the site contain little or no value to visitors. Why create a spam site? To have visitors click away from it, preferably onto your Adsense or other ads cluttering up the perimeter of the page. Or to sell paid links – many paid links.

Avoiding Spam
There is nothing wrong with an Adsense based website. Likewise there is nothing wrong with templates and cloned pages, providing you are offering legitimate and preferably unique content on each. To keep your site about the line, be sure you are steering clear of these common spam site indicators:

Cloned Pages – If all of your pages are similar or exactly the same save a single keyword or phrase, it’s obvious you were cutting corners and have nothing unique to offer on those pages. If your pages aren’t ready, keep them offline until you have something meaningful to say on each.

Duplicate Content – Articles and even site designs that are found elsewhere online make your site look like spam or at least not valuable to visitors. Don’t buy PRL articles and leave them unchanged. Don’t fill your site with free content, and don’t buy a premade site and leave it exactly as it is.

Paid Links – If you have obvious paid links on your site such as in the footer or sides of the pages, you might be in danger. The same is true for incoming links. If all your incoming links are through the same keyword phrase and the same source or type of source, it looks very suspicious.

Excessive Keyword Repetition – Yes, keyword optimization is important, but there is such as things as too much of a good thing. Ideal keyword saturation is between 2-8%. But too many keywords can be a bad thing. If your saturation levels are high, consider reworking your content to give it a more natural feel.

Lowercase Letters – Finally, it appears punctuation matters. Be sure to capitalize links, titles, and subheadings on your site. Lack of punctuation indicates lack of effort which indicates a site of little or no value.