One of the best-kept secrets of SEO is that you don’t need perfect high authority backlinks, perfect anchor text, or perfect on-page optimization to rank for keywords.
In fact, Google prefers it messy and inconsistent.
So here are 3 short stories of where deoptimizing led to high rankings within Google.
Search engine deoptimization 🙂
Low Domain Authority sites increasing Google rankings
An SEO had a US-nationally-recognized appliance company as a client.
The client wanted to be in the top three results for something like “toaster ovens.” Very competitive.
They had tons of backlinks from high Domain Authority sites.
If you’re not familiar with Domain Authority, it’s an SEO metric that determines how easily a website can rank on search engines for competitive keywords (what you put into Google).
Domain Authority increases by having backlinks (a site linking to your site) and generally, backlinks from high Domain Authority sites are more valuable than from low ones… or at least this is what people think!
The client, being nationally recognized, already had high Domain Authority backlinks. Plenty of them.
Its competitors did too.
But here’s the thing – all the companies were only going after these high Domain Authority backlinks.
Sites like the New York Times, or Forbes, or Popular Mechanics.
The SEO said, “You already have plenty of high Domain Authority backlinks. I’m going to give you a more natural backlink profile.”
The SEO spent four months going after less competitive, low Domain Authority sites – mom & pop personal niche blogs, hobbyist blogs, etc.
The differentiation worked and got the client to where they wanted to be.
Why?
Principle
Life, business, whatever, despite our best efforts, is rarely clean and organized.
A growing or popular brand doing zero SEO is very unlikely to get backlinks from only high or low Domain Authority sites. It will be a mix.
This is called a “natural backlink profile;” it looks natural.
And Google, just like everybody else, likes natural.
You don’t want to buy synthetic at the supermarket, you want to buy natural.
Back to marketing, you don’t want to buy from an influencer who’s only paid to shill a product to you. You want that influencer to actually be sharing it because they believe in it.
You want the real thing.
So by making the backlink targeting a bit messy, it led to the client having a natural backlink profile.
And that’s what Google likes.
Removing keywords from a page to rank for removed keywords
Typically, you want to have your target keyword in the:
- Page title
- Meta description
- URL
- Top heading (H1)
- First sentence
This tells searchers arriving on the page that the page is for them. If you’re searching, “NYC piano repair services” and you come across a page that has “NYC piano repair services” in its page title, meta description, URL, top heading, and first sentence (all the visible areas to the searcher) you will know this page is for you.
But if you use the keyword, especially if it is a longer keyword, too much, you will overoptimize.
You will make something that doesn’t read or look natural.
And that’s just what I did.
It was a few years ago. I was looking at why some pages of mine were not ranking whereas others were.
I noticed the pages that were not ranking had 2-4 too many uses of the keyword. I had been using it in the aforementioned places, but also in the alt text, or too many times in the body text.
So what did I do?
I removed a few occurrences from the body text and/or from the alt text. Sometimes I even replaced the keyword in meta description or first sentence with a slight variation. Example: “piano repair services in NYC.”
Most of the time, my previously overoptimized pages began ranking after this.
Targeting generic anchor text to rank better
Anchor text is the text that shows over a link.
For the link: my SEO articles, the anchor text is “my SEO articles.”
Typically, anchor text that is your page’s targeted keyword is most valuable. Why? This says to readers who see the link that this link is exactly about that keyword.
Let’s say your keyword is “instant approval credit card.” You make a page targeting that. Now you want to have tons of backlinks with the anchor text, “instant approval credit card” …or at least this is what people think!
The same SEO from the first story had a medium-sized credit card company as a client. The major competitors were doing the same backlink strategy: they were mostly going after exact-match anchor text (having the anchor text be your exact target keyword).
The SEO differentiated the client by going after mostly generic anchor text. Anchor text like here, click here, alternatives, this brand, this, website, info, etc.
The target keyword, instead of being the anchor text, was placed next to the generic anchor text.
Natural.
The SEO ran this link building campaign for, as with the previous client, four months.
The keyword was purchase intent, high volume, and in the 90th percentile of difficulty.
The natural link building campaign worked.
The client got to where they wanted to be.
Deoptimize
When you target searchers and not search engines, you realize how important deoptimization is.
Over-optimization is spammy.
Searchers don’t want the spam. They want grass-fed, free range, non-GMO, no artificial preservatives, all that stuff.
Whether it’s on-page optimization, on-site, or link building, it’s typically best to deoptimize, have variety, and appear natural.
