- Did you know that focusing too much on SEO,
can actually hurt your traffic?
Hey, everyone, I'm Neil Patel.
And today, I'm going to go over the optimization trap,
when SEO actually hurts your traffic.
(upbeat music)
Before we get started,
make sure you subscribe to this channel,
and if you're on YouTube, click the alert notification.
Look, a lot of people think
that you can keep optimizing the same page over and over
on your site on a daily basis and I used to do this.
When I first started off in SEO,
I would make a tweak.
This was like 10 plus years ago,
actually probably close to 15, 16 years ago.
I would make a tweak and within a few days,
I would make another tweak.
And then on the next day I would make another tweak.
And back then the algorithms were different.
These days they've changed a lot.
Yes, Google is making over eight algorithm changes
per day on average, but if you're making changes daily,
you may not know what's hurting you.
Because not all changes,
will actually help boost your rankings.
It doesn't matter how good your SEO,
I guarantee if you're a good SEO,
you're pushing the boundaries, not doing anything unethical,
like buying links, I'm not talking about that kind of stuff,
but you're constantly testing new stuff.
Maybe when it's like load speed optimization,
or for example, we started hosting non-static content
on CDNs, that's what I mean by pushing boundaries,
not doing anything shady or unethical,
but more so you're testing new strategies.
And when you do them, sometimes they work out,
sometimes they don't.
But that's how you become a better SEO.
And here's what people don't tell you.
You need to wait until you can see the impact,
of your optimization and what it's going to have.
It roughly takes a month before you see optimizations,
to start having an impact.
So you don't want to just start making changes constantly,
slow and steady wins the race with SEO.
And that's why a lot of times it takes six months,
12 months to really get the optimal results.
The next way that people really hurt their rankings,
is over optimization.
I'm talking about keyword-rich anchor texts,
whether it's for internal links or external links.
And when you're doing these keyword-rich internal links,
and you have, you know,
let's say if I'm trying to rank for the word dog food,
and all my links, point up page say dog food,
both internally and externally.
What do you think Google's going to say?
This page looks a little funny,
they have way too much optimization going on,
for that word, dog food.
Normally other people rank for dog food,
have some of their links saying, click here, learn more.
The name of the brand name,
the name of the site name, right?
And when you think about that, that's more natural,
because everyone's not going to link to you,
with the word that you want to rank for, being number one.
So you got to rotate up your anchor text
and be more natural.
Sometimes I've been linked to my article on online marketing
and I don't use the word or the phrase online marketing,
not because I'm trying to manipulate Google,
but on my internal link, it just doesn't seem natural.
So I do what's best for the user and that's a strategy
you should take when it comes to anchor texts.
Another over optimization technique,
that people do over and over again, that's bad,
is they only build internal links to the same page
over and over again.
Naturally the majority of the pages on your site,
should have internal links, ideally, all of them,
but that's really tough to do,
when you have a really big site,
but eventually majority of the pages,
should have internal links
and you need to do what's natural.
And also that's very useful,
because as people link to some of your other pages,
that you know, you may not think that we're going to hit,
those pages will also pass juice to your other pages,
because you have those internal links going.
Another strategy to avoid when it comes to SEO,
is repeating the same keyword over and over again.
I hear this all the time,
oh, what's a cure density that I need to use.
If I want to rank for the term online marketing,
do I need to mention it five times in my first paragraph,
three times in my second paragraph,
six times throughout the rest of the article,
and one time in my conclusion?
Google's not looking at cure density like that.
It's all about what's creating the best experience
for the user.
They have something called LSI,
think of like at the source.
They know when an article is on Apple, the computer
or apple, the food or they know when your article
is on online marketing or on SEO or on dog food,
they can figure it out.
So don't stress too much about keyword density.
And if you optimize too much,
what you're going to find is, you may be undoing good work.
So think of SEO optimizations as tests,
you optimize, wait a few weeks to a month
and see what the outcome is.
If the optimization works, don't mess with it,
double down on what's working.
And the last strategy,
that I want you to avoid,
is building links too fast.
Even if your competitors have 1,000 links
and they're ranking at the top, you may be like,
hey, I need 1,000 links too, if I want to beat them.
I'm going to get 1,100 and I'm going to go buy links,
which you should never do.
And I'm going to go and,
or even manually build the links really, really fast
and have 20 people focusing on my link building efforts
and just doing manual outreach.
Well, here's the thing,
if you build links way too fast, it's not as natural,
and what you'll find,
is even if you're doing them organically
and you're just doing outreach,
what you'll find is you don't rank as high
versus if you just took your time,
slow and steady really does win the race.
Now, if you need help with your SEO
and you want to make sure you avoid over optimization,
check out my ad agency, NP Digital,
we will do it all for you.
If you have any questions, leave a comment below,
I'm here to help.
If you enjoy the video, like it and share it,
tell the people about it.
Thank you for watching.