Avoiding Over-Optimisation In SEO

Believe it or not, you can do too much SEO, and this is called over-optimisation. Over-optimisation is basically keyword stuffing, creating too many low-quality inbound links, creating too many outbound links, and over-doing any other parts of SEO. I usually have a few general rules to avoid over-optimising my own articles, which I’ll go over in a it more detail below.

Avoiding Over-Optimisation In SEO

Keep Your Keyword Density Under 4%

This isn’t a written rule, so just try to keep your article sounding natural. In my experience, an article with a keyword density that is too high sounds awful and may not only harm your rankings, but it can also act as a deterrent to your visitors as nobody wants to read an article that uses the same long-tail keyword in every sentence.

Only Use Outbound Links When Necessary

In other words, avoid hyperlinking every other words. High outbound link articles are tantamount to drinking a soda out of a can with holes in it; the link equity is just pouring out. Additionally, in the great words of Maddox:

The problem with this layout is that there’s too much shit to click on. Seriously, who’s ever going to click on all those links? The worst blogs are the ones that make every other word a hyperlink to another website soby the time you finish reading this sentence, you’ve forgotten what you were reading, or why you werereading it in the first place. Hey, this article is great but you know what would make it better? If I could readanother article in the middle of it. Great design, morons.

Don’t Stuff Your Keywords Everywhere

Stuffing your keyword 50 times in the alt text of your images wont’ fool search engines; they figured out that tactic a long time ago. Hiding the keywords by blending them into the background also doesn’t work to increase your keyword density, so avoid that as well (there are all against the Google Webmaster Guidelines anyway).