Difference Between Over Optimization and Reality - Google is Moving Towards Reality So Don't Fool It!

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In the earlier times, Black Hat SEO’s had a good time. Just a little tweak in the title tag, H1 tag, content area and boom the site actually got a boost up in the search results. The Google ranking algorithm was much easier to crack back then in 2000. But in the era of Hummingbirds, Penguins and Pandas, Black Hat SEO is reeling to survive. No clues are working and what worse is that the ones that worked in the past are actually hurting the sites now. So, which is the correct approach to brandify your site without breaking the rules?

SEO Over-Optimization – Don’t Cross the Line

Optimization was never a strategy to stuff keywords but people did so because it worked. Who the hell in this world will stop and see his competitors enjoy a larger share of ranking when they knew the secret behind it. The secret was easy to implement and didn’t cost much. Hence, it started to boom.

When optimization became over-optimization, little clue was available. But today, the thing that works is the REALITY. No matter how good optimizer you are, your web page will not rank higher unless you face the reality and provide real world answers to the user’s queries. This may sound confusing in the first read so let’s take an example as to what am I trying to say!

Suppose I have a webpage that I wish to rank for the keyword “Best seo practices for Google”. Most of the internet marketer’s even today will suggest the following strategy:

A 500 word article on the topic.
A title tag that says “Best seo practices for Google”
A description tag that starts with or has the words “Best seo practices for Google”
An H1 tag that says “Best seo practices for Google”
File name that reads “best-seo-practices-for-Google”
Some links with anchor text “Best seo practices for Google”.

That’s all! Now, can you imagine rankings just by creating a webpage like this?

The answer is a straightforward NO.

What Works Now?

First of all concentrate on the topic and think from user point of view as to what a person interested in this topic is looking for. Due to the power of Hummingbird, Google knows that a person searching with the query “Best seo practices for Google” is actually looking for a resource that explains the basics of seo for ranking on Google. That’s all! It will process the query accordingly. It is not at all necessary that only resources having the exact match keywords and titles will rank on Google. Many other resources which hold a high semantic relevance will be ranking higher up on Google. Don’t believe then check it yourself here. The first result is that of Google SEO starter guide, the third result actually does contains the keywords in the title and the file name, we can also see guides from Moz and search Engine Watch ranking with no use of exact match keywords in the content.

So, how are you planning your next SEO strategy? The old school way or the modern school way? If you are still following the old rules then the time is ripe enough to break the shackles.

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