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Have I over-optimised?
New-ish web designer and noobie SEO asks if he has over-optimised a site!
Hi,
I'm new-ish at webdesigning and SEO. I have just re-designed at re-written my site.
Before the redesign I was being indexed by Google once a month - pretty stable I thought. After my re-design, MSN and Yahoo have indexed me and I am performing pretty well for my keywords (primary and secondaries).
However it has been 1 1/2 months and Google has still not indexed my home page and a lot of my other pages. Researching why this could be, I came across alt tag stuffing. With Hindsight, I guess I was a little guilty of it - placing my keywords (not too subtly) in the alt tags - but I wasn't doing it to the extremes. My keyword density was at most 13% (on a page with little text), but mostly in the 8-10% range.
I am a little paranoid that I have been filtered out because googlebot found I had a high density in the alt tags. I have gone through my site now and changed the text a lot, but my density is still in the 5-7% range. Is this too much - have I over-optimised? Have I over-optimised in another way, say too many keywords in the title etc? Any advice here would be great!
Thanks
Spongy
[edited by: caveman at 7:59 pm (utc) on Mar. 13, 2007]
[edit reason] Removed URL and specifics, per TOS. [/edit]
I think if all you had done slighly wrong was a bit of ALT tag stuffing then, from experience, Google won't have filtered you out. What you have to realise is that in changing the design completely, you are also changing the coding that Google reads. It could be that there is less / more text, less / more relevant text, or maybe it just finds it harder to crawl through your site.
I've no doubt that the new version is an improvement, although I can't see either because they were edited from the post. Send me an email if you want me to have a look and offer opinion.
In terms of other things you could do, have you considered creating a Google Sitemap and the various tools to know when you're being crawled and what Google is finding? Also try look at creating a robots file.
Again, not having seen your site, it sounds as though it may be coincidence more than anything. If your site is improved in a good way then I wouldn't think you should have problems with Google.
Remember, email me your URL if you want me to have a look.
Hi,
Thanks for your reply -
There is more text - thats one of the things that I noticed. However, the main design is similar - I moved some areas around, added some more javascript etc. I guess I recoded quite a lot, but kept the design similar, if you get me.
I do use webtools, have uploaded a sitemap and use AWStats and Google's Analytics. I can see that google is coming to my site and hitting the robots.txt as well as some of the other pages, like the front page, but this isn't being reflected in their index.
Maybe I am being paranoid, and hopefully this is a coincidence, but I'll do more than kick myself if I am being penalised - this site refresh was suppossed to gain better serps - not do the opposite!
Anyway, thanks again,
I have emailed you the URL.
Spongy
Spongy - There is a difference between being included in the index and ranking. Which are you asking about? It's not likely that over-optimization would keep you from getting indexed.
When you redesigned your site, did you change any urls? Did you change your navigation structure? That could have a big effect on how Google sees you.
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