Overly Optimized Websites To Get A Good Kicking

Announced today (16th March 2012) by Barry Schwartz on the Search Engine Round Table website, Matt Cutts can be heard “announcing” that Google will “target” overly optimized websites within the next 3 weeks.

So what are the reasons why Google would want to do this?

Well firstly, the problem with SEO (and this is coming from an SEO consultant), is that just because your website is at the top of Google, it DOES NOT mean that you are any good at providing the service or product that people have searched for (in the main it means you have either used a good web developer or used an external SEO company to optimise your website). However, we have become so trusting of the Google search results that we will end up using someone with a 1st page Google position.

I think this has always bothered Google, as the people who ARE awesome at what they do end up “missing out” on people who would not only WANT their service or product, but who would also DO an AMAZING job when they were “hired” or a purchase was made.

Online signals can reflect this, and can help to boost a sites rankings (such as external reviews etc) – but this is often “overridden” by monsterous link building and a very good working knowledge of how to make a website more “Search Engine Friendly”.

So what do I “hope” happens?

1. I hope the people who have built a “search engine friendly” website (i.e. following all the traditional “rules” regarding their site structure and page structure – especially when they are keeping in mind the end user and the end user experience) remain untouched (and possibly get listed even higher). The reason being that these people have built their website using the guidance given by Google, to help their algorithm to understand what the website is about, and (hopefully) have a really interesting website on their area of expertise that people genuinely get “value” from. These people have used the free stuff Google has provided such as Google Webmaster tools to iron out all the errors their website was throwing out, making it a better experience for both Google, and more importantly the user.

2. I hope Google DOES give a good kicking to the websites that have a billion (irrelevant links), poorly worded pages (because they have “SEO copywriting” – I’ve been “sent” some of this content and it is about as far removed from either SEO copywriting OR even understandable english!) or a strategy that have been designed “purely” to get past Google’s spam radar.

3. I hope Google starts to detect some of the sites that have a strategy of building 100’s of irrelevant blog sites, which “review” or “mention” the clients website for anchor text keywords. These sites fill the search engines with crap, pointless content but “sometimes” have been created in such a way that it becomes impossible for Google to realise what is going on. For example, when I was looking at a clients website, who their competitors were, and what they were doing to rank so highly, I came across at least 30 “blogs” that were pointless and had no value, but had recognised “links” back to my clients competitor websites. This then “forces” me to do the same (which I wouldn’t) or try to compete on a “not very level” playing field.

4. I hope Google also starts to detect websites that have articles written (no problem with that), but who use software that “re-writes” the article hundreds of times. The article may have been useful the first time, but having it “re-written” 100 times adds absolutely no value, and just “spams” the internet with more junk.

So over the next 3 weeks I think we might see “carnage” with the SERPs as Google’s latest Panda update gets to work.

Question is – are you afraid of what it could do to your website?

This could be a time for some SEO companies to “batten down the hatches” – only time will tell!

Leave your thoughts below!