I don't think so. If you have a page about "blue widgets", then it is normal that your internal linking is done with "blue widgets" or a variation of this.

I found a new factor though that has to do with internal linking that might be one of the reasons why my site got hit by Panda.

I located a website that copied more than 20 articles from my website, INCLUDING the internal linking in the articles. Since everything is on his domain the "internal" linking changed into "external" linking.
I wouldn't be surprised if Panda thinks that I put these articles there with the links to cheat on Google.

How many websites doing the same thing are still out there? If several scrapers/thiefs are doing this, then the impact on my rankings could be hude.

More DMCAs to file today ...

I'm beginning to suspect that overoptimization is a major factor in Panda and here's why:

I have a 02/24 pandalized site with mostly news on new products. I cannot rank anywhere when I have a news post about a single product. Normally, then I have the product name in the title tag, h1 tag, bold, alt tag, etc, which could look like an overoptimization.

But, when I have a news about multiple products in the same post, occasionally I'm ranked well with these posts. Then I have multiple keywords in those tags and bold, so it's not optimized for a single product.

Since February Panda update, I had three cases of good rankings of multi-product news for single-product queries, although I hadn't received any great backlinks to them. Most of my news are single-product related and whenever I post them, regardless of good they are, how many backlinks they get, etc, they are ranked badly.

One of the panda factors that people have listed is over optimization.

Whoever is associating Panda with "over optimization" is incorrect in their logic--over optimization has been around for a LONG time. I have seen ranking losses due to over optimization at least 4 or 5 years ago.

I have the product name in the title tag, h1 tag, bold, alt tag, etc, which could look like an overoptimization

That's not necessarily over-optimization. If the product name is ONLY what's in the title, h1, bold, alt tag, etc. (without any other words) then the could be considered over optimization. And again, that would be an issue that would have caused you rankings issues before Panda came along.

That's not necessarily over-optimization. If the product name is ONLY what's in the title, h1, bold, alt tag, etc. (without any other words) then the could be considered over optimization.

Maybe a discussion on what 'over-optimization' is exactly would be beneficial here? It's a much used expression that is almost a contradiction in terms. Most likely very subjective too. In the above case, surely that's considered 'keyword cramming'?

Over optimization is the term generally used when you have optimized for the search engines rather than your users.

I am the perfect example of over optimization and how I started my SEO career. About 8 years ago when I started to actually develop websites for myself after building successful websites for many clients I read up on some SEO articles. I came across a so called "cheat sheet" of how to get your website to rank for the keywords you wanted. It basically broke down where you should have your keywords/phrases starting with the title tag being the most important, followed by the H1, H2 tags etc etc.

As you can imagine, my site never ranked. I eventually tested over and over again to see what would work and I finally got it down to having only the keyphrase in the title and in 1 paragraph and that is when I started to rank for some slightly competitive key terms.

Anyway, different people will have different definitions of over optimization. Essentially over optimization is un-needed optimizing of your site by placing keywords and or phrases in places that are not helpful to your users and are only in place to try to boost your rankings.

Anyway, different people will have different definitions of over optimization. Essentially over optimization is un-needed optimizing of your site by placing keywords and or phrases in places that are not helpful to your users and are only in place to try to boost your rankings.

Not necessarily.Having it in the title tag and h1 tag helps users as it tells them what the page is about.Using it the H1 tag often helps in link building as generally people use the h1 tag to link to pages.This is often the case in many CMS platforms.

Having it in the alt tag helps in describing the image to the bot. It is also recommended by google to have a descriptive phrase and not just keywords.

But having only the "keyword/s" in the title, h1 and alt tags might not always help in describing the page correctly.

In general when you tend to overdo something for a keyword (beyond what has been described above), it is considered as over optimization.Anchor text optimization is often the cause for over optimization.

In my original question, I was actually asking about anchor text optimization i.e. using the same keyword (or key phrase) to internally link to a page, when the the total number of internal links are only 6 to 8.Will this be considered as over optimization, considering the fact that the number of internal links to the page are minimal.