During SXSW, Matt Cutts (a high profile search engine quality member of Google), was interviewed about a new algorithm change directed towards addressing people who are optimizing a site to “trick” the search engines into ranking the site well.

Now before we all get our panties in a twist, chances are, if you’re considered to be a “white-hat” SEO, you probably don’t have to worry about any “over optimization penalty.”  However, if you find you’re asking yourself, “Am I really doing something sketchy even though it’s getting me to Page 1?” The most likely answer is yes; yes, you are, and you bet your ass Google is going to figure it out.  But what exactly is “over optimization” anyway and how does one avoid such a penalty?

Here at Wagger Designs, we’ve compiled a checklist of issues and examples that may trigger Google’s over optimization penalty.

1. Excessive Internal Linking in Content

For years, SEOs have been talking about keyword to content ratio, but what they fail to mention is the importance of the internal anchor text link to content ratio.  While content on a page is one of the most essential elements of SEO, it’s also just as important — if not more so — not to make the mistake of having a high percentage of links vs actual HTML content.  This general HTML content is considered to be anything located within <p> (paragraph) tags.

In the “Women’s Cardigans” example below, the link to content ratio is approximately 51%.  This means that 51% of all words in this paragraph are internal links.  This is something search engines could easily red flag and penalize the site for over optimization.

2. Highly Targeted Links in Footer

Historically speaking, web designers have used footers to display only the very most important pages on the site such as an HTML sitemap or an “about us” page since top-level navigation will include most if not all sub-navigation pages.

In order to increase the relevance of internal page topics, websites will place an excessive number of keyword stuffed anchor links at the bottom of a web page.  These “over optimized” websites try to position deeper pages as the “footer.”

A prime example of keyword stuffed footers can be found on the screenshot of a wedding site below.  Not only does it contain optimized links within the footer, the site lists out a highly detailed list of links at the bottom of every page.

3. Link Stuffed Navigation

Over optimizing primary navigation to be filled with targeted keywords may also flag search engines that the site was intended to optimize against search engine algorithms and not be tailored to the end user.  We uncovered two primary examples of navigation “over optimization”:  Sub-Categories and Breadcrumb structure.

Breadcrumbs were initially created with the intent to help a user find their way back to the home page or go back to a higher level category.  Later on, search engines began to use this breadcrumb navigation as a cue and began to utilize the keyword category structure within search engine listings.  Some websites have begun to take advantage of this breadcrumb navigation and create more than one path home.  While this type of navigation may ultimately help search engines associate products with multiple categories, users may become confused.

For example, the screenshot of the clothing site below uses three separate link paths for users and search engines to retreat backwards.

A more common “over optimization” technique for navigation is targeting and creating a page for every product under the sun and then labeling it using optimized keywords with a clear intent to boost search engine rankings and no regards to the user.  The funny thing about this technique is search engines understand category relations.  In other words, search engines understand that if the primary navigation is “Women’s Wakeboard Shop,” all links placed underneath are related to “Women’s” and do not need to contain “Women’s.”  This technique also makes it harder for a user to browse the site, which is something a search engine, like Google, may counter with this new “over optimization” penalty.

4. Keyword Stuffing

One may say, “Wow… keyword stuffing?  People really do that?  Isn’t that sooooo 1999?  …Even more importantly, it works?”  Yes, people still do it on the sly, and it seems to still help websites (coupled with other optimization tricks) rank in the Top 30 to this day.

For example the footer on this Northern Virginia/DC Metro Web Design site lists out top targeted keywords.  While it’s not entirely hidden and done in a classy way, these are the kinds of things the “over optimization” algorithm may intend to target:

5. Keyword Filled Title and Meta Tags

Another issue related to “keyword stuffing” as noted above, is injecting a long line of keywords into title and meta description tags.  Title tags should always be limited to include just one primary keyword and 2-3 supporting keywords when relevant.  Titles should look natural to entice the searcher and meta descriptions should be written to promote a call to action while occasionally including keywords.  Since search engines want all aspects of a site intended for a user and not the search engine, the new Google algorithm may begin to identify when too many words are stuffed into a title or meta description and deplete the value of such a site.

The example below attempts to target every “Green Tea” related keyword into the Title and Description.

6. External Linking

Historically speaking, Google has come down hard on individually high-profiled cases noted in sources such as the NY Times about abusing external link algorithm.  Such examples include JC Penny’s paid link buying or discounts offered by Overstock.com in exchange for a link.  Smaller businesses have managed to shield themselves in the fact they don’t have the amount of budget or customer leverage to drastically increase links to the scope of JCPenny or aren’t big enough to gain the spotlight for shady schemes.  However, Google’s new “over optimization” algorithm may be coming to get these smaller players in the upcoming months.

The thing that has always baffled me is how the all-mighty stock-splitting Google has enough money to investigate these notorious link-buying companies and their web networks, but has clearly never taken action to detect them and wreak havoc.

For example, many websites and their targeted backlink anchor text are featured under a WordPress blogroll and other similar side bar of links:

What Would Wagger Do?

While Wagger Designs believes SEO is a core component of web design, we believe it’s most important every website we build is intended for the end user.  While it’s important to get users to your site, it’s even more important not to forget that your users are your customers.  After all, search engines aren’t going to pay your rent.

Most analytics reports for ecommerce sites include general metrics such as traffic, orders and revenue to provide a bird’s eye view of traffic and associated key performance indicators. That’s great, for an executive.  But what about gaining deeper insight to provide a more informing strategy for mid-level managers?  Which products and their categories drive the greatest AOV and Revenue per Visit?  These are some of the most important  when making an informed SEO strategy for the future.  The answer, of course to all of this, lies in keyword -or in most ecommerce, product-categorization.

Mapping Out Your Categories

Although most categorization are customized according to the types of products within your offering, there are 3 major overarching categories applicable for all ecommerce categorization:

Brand Breakdown & Credit

 Odds are your site is already optimized to rank #1 for general branded keywords.  But perhaps multiple affiliate sites or third party retailers are optimized to rank well for keywords related to your brand’s product.  A great way to illustrate your SEO program is working to the fullest is to create a “Brand Secondary” category.  All product based keywords associated with your brand should be placed under the “secondary” category.  This will ensure you’re receiving credit for optimizing all product related keywords.

The example below illustrates the Brand vs. Brand Secondary breakdown:

Unbranded Breakdown:

A great starting point when determining unbranded ecommerce categorization is to analyze your website’s primary and sub-navigation.  Let’s take a look at Zappos.com’s use of unbranded categorization within its navigation:

 Here, the major product category we’re analyzing is Shoes  which is highlighted in light blue portion of the navigation.  The segments -or secondary categories- are “men’s” “women’s” “girls’” and “boys.”

Although your site’s main navigation and sub-navigation may help you organize your keyword clutter, there is always more than one way to customize hierarchy.  It is always important to ask yourself questions like: “Is it more important to breakdown first by gender and age or instead by product type?”  When in doubt, let your keyword volume and/or your paid search program dictate the primary category.

In the Zappos example, the category hierarchy can be sorted in multiple ways:

Upon analyzing the navigation on Zappos.com, the determined Product Category is Shoes and the segments are broken down by age/gender:

The Unidentified Bucket

 The unidentified bucket is all of the junk we can’t clearly determine its net worth.  It could have been a branded query, but it could have also been an unbranded query.  Typically, major typos/misspellings, foreign characters and the famous “Keyword Unavailable” all fall into this bucket.

Using Paid Search for Categorization

 Paid search tends to break down keywords in a much similar fashion through the use of Campaigns and Ad Groups.  In order to maintain campaign congruency, it is ideal to align your categories with your company’s Paid Search structure (or vice versa).   This provides your ecommerce search program to easily make an apples-to-apples comparison when sharing insights and strategies.

Key Metrics

 So you’ve finally found a home for all of your keywords.  What next?   It’s important to evaluate your keywords on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.  Ask yourself the important questions to inform future keyword strategy and advertising campaigns such as:

• What product categories are driving me the greatest Average Order Value and Revenue per Visit?
• Which keywords aren’t converting in these categories and how can I get them to convert?
• Which categories encounter a seasonal trend while others remain unchanged all year?

The most concerning aspect of both of these bills is that our country’s decision makers stand behind SOPA and PROTECT IP as written to champion American interests and intellectual property ad, in turn, protect the American entrepreneurial spirit, our jobs, and our financial security.

In fact, both bills will ultimately fail to accomplish the intended goals and are, in the process, set to squash many of the freedoms we take for granted from a free-flowing Internet.

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

“To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.” – H.R.3261

What It Does:

This  bill would allow copyright holders and the Department of Justice to seek legal action against websites accused of facilitating copyright infringement, and to force service providers to block offending sites; this would prevent gateway services, such as Google Checkout or Paypal, from doing business with such sites and would even bar search engines from simply linking to an offending website.   For streaming content, such as YouTube, Vimeo, or a self-published video blog, unauthorized streaming of any copyrighted materials would be a crime backed by up to 5 years in prison after 10 incidents of streaming copyrighted music or video within a six month period.

PROTECT IP Act

“Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011” – S.968

What It Does:

As the bill states:  “An service provider of an information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to– (i) remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order; or (ii) not serve a hypertext link to such Internet site.”   Additionally, the information location tool, which is largely refers to Search Engines but can refer to any site, must delete all hyperlinks to the offending “Internet site.”  The net effect is that, without an up front burden of proof, Internet sites can be censored until such time as their names are cleared, no matter how long that takes, and without remedy if falsely accused and later proven innocent.

What Does All This Mean?

The summation of both of these bills is an attempt to control the flow of information on the Internet under the guise of protecting the American Dream from “rogue websites,” plagiarizers, and other intellectual property thieves.  As an organization that both uses the Internet to share materials that our are own intellectual property and that also helps other organizations share their own intellectual property, we agree with the masses that taking anything that doesn’t belong to you without any attribution or retribution is reprehensible behavior.

The language of both of these laws, however, invites other consequences.  Consider for a moment that if either of these laws had been in effect a decade ago, the landscape of today’s Internet would be very different indeed.  For starters, we would not have YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Etsy, Ebay, Dropbox, Twitter, Twillio, Vimeo, Tumbler, Pinterest, Can.vas, or a good number of open source software projects.

What Can I Do?

That’s a fantastic question!  Tell the House and Senate that you are exercising your right as an American citizen and say:

• You do not support restrictions upon the entrepreneurial spirit this country has been built on
• Enforcement of laws in this country should always require due process
• The United States of America is not China, and you do not support a Great Firewall of America
• That Internet Blacklist Legislation would drive jobs away from this country and will not be tolerated here

Tell Them Now!

Say NO! to SOPA by contacting your House Representative: http://www.house.gov/

Say NO! to PROTECT IP by contacting your Senate Representative: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Contact SOPA Supporters directly: http://gizmodo.com/5870241/presented-without-comment-every-single-company-supporting-sopa-the-awful-internet-censorship-law

Every once and a while, someone comes along and does something, like deleting internet postings, that reminds the world of the internet’s golden rule: All posts are final.  Today that someone is PR Paul.  While Paul and his associates are in full “damage control mode” — hopping twitter accounts and scrubbing tweets, site content, and other social sites — the documentation of these actions through #OceanMarketing on Twitter, Penny Arcade, The Examiner, and Forbes are proving to be Paul’s ultimate folly.  One thing Paul has done well is to remind folks that once something is on the Net, it has made an imprint that extends far beyond any single person’s reach.

As he and his buddies hop around social sites trying to fix a situation that will probably fad itself out over a the next few weeks, I think PR Paul could benefit from a few good books that have come across my desk in the last few years:

• I Love You More Than My Dog
• The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself
• Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (And Other Social Networks)

For everyone else, including us at Wagger, this is a cautionary tale about the importance of researching any company representing you. Ask for references and ask to see the work they’ve done.  If they are a little green, or just starting out, they should admit it outright.  And, as a point of advice, be very suspicious if another organization wants full control of your business email, Twitter, and other public-facing elements without your oversight — especially if the owner comes off as a street thug masquerading as a self-proclaimed “Marketing Professional”.

Flurry’s Edge on Competition:

Flurry provides mobile application usage statistics across iOS, Android, BB, WP and J2ME platforms.  The analytics platform reports the number of new and active users, sessions, average time spent on the mobile app, frequency of use, page views, and retention.  All data metrics can be segmented through Flurry including by app version and time intervals.  Since Flurry is a leader in mobile research, users can compare metrics to the industry average.  Conversion is easy with event and parameter tracking. Each click can be tracked and tied to specific product and services.

The mobile app analytics service also provides information on user demographic, geographic and interest information.  Best of all, it is free to use.

Room for Improvement:

Unlike enterprise level analytics services such as Webtrends or Omniture, Flurry is unable to offer full site side analytics.  Flurry has had ruffles in the past with Apple’s review process due to privacy concern.  However, Flurry has not been reported to have violated iPhone policy in recent times.

Cost of Flurry:

Free.

Mixpanel’s Edge on Competition:

Mixpanel provides real-time analytics tracking for mobile applications.  Instantly track who is roaming around your site, where they’re going and how long they stay.  Mixpanel can also be tied to other platforms such as your website and Facebook.  Because the mobile application analytics is cross-platform friendly, it’s much easier to link up mobile user data to other platforms.

Mixpanel also uses what they call “data points” which is also referred as event tracking.  Mixpanel users can control and manipulate what gets tracked and create their own naming convention.

Once data points are set up, you can then identify which ones play a crucial part in the conversion process.  A funnel is then created in order to track both conversions and drop off rates of users.

Room for Improvement:

This mobile app analytics service is recommended specifically for e-commerce mobile applications.  It’s not nearly as beneficial for high volume, low conversion sites as pricing is calculated by each event.

Cost of Mixpanel:

Free until 25,000 data points (events) are used up.  Monthly packages are available based on traffic volume.

Localytics’ Edge on Competition:

Localytics can track traffic on mobile applications and tablets.  Although they do not provide cross-platform tracking, the company grants full access to the non-aggregated data so it can easily integrated wtih other analytics platforms tracking websites, CRM, advertising and other business intelligence systems.

Reporting is made simple with real-time analytics, exporting features and hourly drill downs.

Room for Improvement:

It’s possible to miss out on crucial data if a business is unable to integrate the Localytics’ API into their web analytics platform.  It’s always important to ensure an analytics platform can integrate with this API before signing up.

Cost of Localytics:

Localytics offers three pricing tiers for its clients.  The free version offers basic tracking, event attributes, and a world heat map.  The premium version ($95 a month per app) offers additional analysis including one funnel tracking, retention analysis and screen flow analysis.  The enterprise edition ($895 a month) gives clients unlimited tracking for all apps in addition to multiple features including 50 funnels analyses and full support.