Size of Google Penalties...Ten SERP positions

[theiceman]

Twice in the past month, I've discovered things I was doing in the way of over-optimizing for Google and removed them.

Each time I removed the offending practice, my SERPS results jumped 10 positions!! So, that must be the size of penality Google give you for minor overoptimization infractions!!

With the removal of this last over optimization penality, I finally arrived in the top 10 SERPs on page one (out of about 150,000 pages)...for the first time, on two of my three main search phrases. Got #10 on Cincinnati wedding photographers and #4 on Cincinnati wedding photography. I jumped up to page 2, position #13 for Cincinnati wedding photographer!

Now I've got to start getting back links with "Indianapolis wedding photographers" as the link text for that market area! [I'm ranking down in the 40's and 50's in the serps for those search phrases for the Indy market!]

Yea! I'm starting to get the hang of this! Less is more!!!

ice

[tcampione]

Can you tell us what it is you over optimized?

[theiceman]

I'm afraid some of my competitors might benefit if they come across that info here.

I've noticed that nobody else around here ever really reveals that kind of info on the board....I guess, because they use that knowledge to earn their livings as SEO experts. (Not me, thought.)

What you have to do around here is kind of read between the lines on all the posts. Occasionally, someone will let something useful slip and you can pick up on it if you are really on your toes...but not very often.

If you get an idea for how you might be over optimizing, try it and see if it moves you up, keeps you the same or down in the SERPs much.

If you suddenly jump up 10 spots = 1 page in serps, you've struck gold!! If your SERPs drop, just reload the old copy of your webpage back up to your website again to regain the ground you have lost. Nothing lost, except a little time!

hope this helps!

ice

[tcampione]

I understand and agree with your reasons for not disclosing more. The only thing I’m not sure of is being able to tie a specific action to movement in SERPs. I keep a record of ‘changes’ I make, and the date.

But, I can make a number of changes over 2 to 3 weeks, and see no movement at all. On the other hand, I can make no changes for 3 weeks and see substantial fluctuations, like going from #45 to #70 to #56 and back to #40.

My site is about 6 months old and for some keyphrases, position holds on page one. For my most important phrase, I tend to move up or down by 5 or so positions on almost a daily basis, around page 5 (pool 2.3 million). Maybe certain penalties are expiring, others are kicking in, and different filters are running on different schedules.

[theiceman]

Google caches my site every day and a half or so and it is really easy to get feedback to what I am trying SEO-wise with it like that.

I know that I tried everything I could think of and most of them made no difference at all...but when you hit that 10 spot jump and it holds solid, you know that you've hit something!

The two that I've found were basically just reversing what I've been coached to do by people giving SEO advise online.

For instance, I've read that you should have your search phrase in your "alt" tags. I put them there, one occurrance, then two occurrances, then three occurrances...nothing on any of those, neither up or down on Google. then I took them all back out....nothing, again, no movement at all.

So much for advice on "alt" tags!! (IMHO)!! I'm currently in #4 in the Google SERPs among 150,000 pages for my main search phrase, without a single "alt" tag usage!

Enjoy,

ice

[greeneagle]

I don't believe using alt tags for images incurs any penalty unless you "stuff" keywords/phrases.

I also don't believe GOOGLE would go "against the grain" concerning W3C validation and Accessibility recommendations and standards!

Also, there has never been any good proof that an "over-optimization" penalty exists, unless "spamming" rules are violated!

Ken

[daemon61]

About alt tags - I dont remember that i read anywhere on this forum that "alt tags help in SEO". Its OK to have them for viewers. Here is what marketingterms.com says about them:

"ALT Tags are commonly omitted from web pages, from the smallest personal pages to the largest web corporate sites. Yet, if properly used, ALT Tags can be quite useful. Among other things, ALT tags can:

* provide further detail for an image or the destination of a hyperlinked image.

* enable and enhance access for people with various disabilities.

* provide much-needed information for people who surf the Web with graphics turned off, and people who surf the Web with text-only browsers.

* assist in navigation when a graphics-intensive site is being viewed over a slow connection, enabling site visitors to make navigation choices before graphics are fully rendered."

[theiceman]

One of the SEO guys on this very board that I "hired" on a trial basis...that bombed...told me that I needed to have my keyword phrase appear 3 times in my "alt" tags.

Of course, he told me a lot more too that didn't prove out. It was also recommended on SEODoc.com

Anyway, I was just using "alts" as an example, it was not either of the two penalities I found that boosted me 10 spots at a time when eliminated.

ice

[tomhouy]

The site I manage jumped up 10 and 14 positions in Google, as well as related search engines, for two of our highest traffic keywords. We didn't make any changes to the site recently, so perhaps it wasn't soley due to modifications to your site?

[simonm]

I would agree that the cause of the movement could be due to many other things than change of keywords and volume of keywords or other optimisation.

I see the greatest immediate change in SE position for key terms when I change the volume and nature of inbound links identifying that term. Long term effects due to age of page and lack of change, growth in number of pages on site etc.

[buddhu]

So far as alt text is concerned, I've seen no evidence that they help or hurt rankings for G. Alt text for *linked* images is supposed to be relevant in a similar way to how standard hyperlink anchor text is, but again it hasn't made a big impact that I can identify.

I'm reluctant to write off alt text altogether as a relevant on-page consideration, as it is potentially visible on-page content, and may validly be included in an algorithm that ranks pages according to relevance / user experience.

And the point that the changes you have made *may* not be the reason for the changes in ranking is well made, but I guess you're in the best position to judge that.

[Burf.com]

If i knew how to help people get better positions i think i would try and help, I beleive i have no competition on here and am not here to make a living out of it

I run a UK search engine as you know but do you know what my site is found by? words related to wavs and simpsons hehe

even though i am still not number one for these words, i still get 3 times more hits from these than the word burf which i am number 1 on for nearly every search engine.

But hey its all fun