Can you over optimize?

If you use all the basic techniques found in SEOChat is there a chance you can over optimize or is there not really such a thing and you should use every optimization tool presented in the forum?

The quick answer is no, but it is wise both in terms of time and longterm ranking to carefully plan a website (think of it in the same way as if you were planing to build a house), structure and content is more important than trying to implement every idea and suggestion you can read on forums like this one.

would you take every ingredient you found in the kitchen to make a cake?

If it made a better, higher rising cake then I would have to answer yes

To keep with your analogy Syragon... how do you know what ingredients to leave out? If I leave out the eggs that will make for a bad cake however I could leave out the hamburger and it would come out pretty good. However, when it comes to SEO Techniques how do I determine the eggs from the hamburger?

Dont just make one cake............

You don't leave out any ingredients that makes it a cake.
H1 were invented to be used... If you put 5 of them on a page it's not optimizing... it's spamming.
Same for all the ingredients of the cake. To much sugar is bad, too much milk is bad...
There is no over optimisation... once you pass the line either way... it is then de-optimized.
A perfectly optimized page would be at the very limit of the spamming border line.
That's how I see it... H1, ALT... are there to be used and that is it...

Jocelyn,


Your entire post has the ring of excellence, Jocelyn. Very nicely done!

I could not disagree more. I perfectly optimized page are truly relevant for the serachphrase, user friendly, and nice to look at. If you create a borderline page then you might have to reoptimize it every month or so, you don't want that, and if you attemt to do anything to trick the searchengine they might someday react.

A old but good reading is:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm

I agree with the first quote and , obviously, I disagree with the second quote.

A definition of "optmize" is as follows -
op-ti-mize : to make as perfect, effective, or functional as possible.

In order to make the page as effective as possible, to a search engine, it would be necessary to take it to whatever limits that search engine allows. If the search engine changes its criteria for ranking pages then the page is no longer optimized for the new criteria and it will be necessary to re-optimize for that new criteria.

Backing away from those limits would be a safer bet but it would not then be a perfectly optimized page. Come to think of it, the entire issue depends entirely upon your thinking; either betting the limit or playing somewhat safer. In that regard, there is no right or wrong answer.

Perfect, effective, and functional for one person could mean a #1 rank for a few weeks while for another it could mean a first page ranking for a few months. It's all a matter of perspective.

Precisely...