Yes that’s right the new way to optimize your website for organic placement is to de-optimize it.
Here are some of the things others in my industry feel that Google is targeting and applying penalties for at this time:
1. Link title tags – this used to be a good SEO tactic, now it is best to remove any you have put in.
2. Internal links – watch your anchor text and stop using keywords for anchor text for links. Switch up the text you use, use natural language and stop trying to build keyword density.
3. Image alt tags – these tags should no longer be sentences that just happen to include keywords, but rather real descriptions of an image.
4. Bolding words in your text – Bing has liked bolded items before and so has Google, but now you may be racking up little small penalties for bolded keywords in your content. It is time to clean up!
5. Not having a mobile website – today there’s simply no excuse for not having a mobile website. Google may very well be penalizing you for not having one. To get one for the first year is free. Just go to DudaMobile.com they have partnered with Google to supply super easy sites free.
For more great information on small things you may be doing that are racking up points that may really be hurting your website placement, check out this great article.