Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of baddies out there in the world of SEO. When the internet opened the globe to world-wide communication, it opened it up to world-wide scams as well. Everyone with an email account will be familiar with the 419 email scam, those pitiful letters asking for help in exchange for money.

For entities like search engines, the world of the scam is so much bigger. Everyone on the net is out to fool the search engines and it’s impossible to tell the good from the bad. Search engines are constantly bombarded with spam and spend a significant amount of time securing themselves from getting sucked in.

When it comes to rules, the internet is like the wild west. Although there are undoubtedly rules in place, no-one’s written them down. The only thing that is clear is that if you get caught out, you get penalised.

The penalties imposed by search engines are various. The common factor is a drop in a page’s ranking when it goes wrong. In fact, a drop in ranking is often the only sign you’ll have that you are being penalised. This is fine if you know what you did wrong, but terrible if you don’t.

Many companies face penalties for things they had no idea they were doing. In the complicated world of search engine optimisation, it is easy to put a foot wrong. It’s also possible that the error was made by an outsider, a hacker or a less-than-trustworthy SEO company. The trouble is, the error needs to be detected and fixed before you can even consider applying for re-inclusion on the search engine indexes.

Detecting when you have a problem can be hard enough, which is one of the reasons a continued relationship with your SEO consultant is a good idea. Having an expert eye on your site can save you a lot of time in several areas. It will help you to analyse your traffic flow, quash some problems before they become a major issue and spot the reasons behind a search engine penalty fast. You can talk to our experts at SEO Consult about the steps you need to take to track down any problems and apply for re-inclusion.

If you suspect your site is being penalised, you will need to examine each of your SEO techniques carefully. Do you have links that lead to bad neighbourhoods? Is your keyword density too high, to the point of keyword stuffing? Are you attempting to show the search engine spiders something different from the things your human viewers see? Anything that can be interpreted as being for the benefit of search engines only is likely to be the culprit, but there are many areas which can trip you up.

The best way to protect your site from penalties is communication. Establishing clear communication with your SEO consultant will ensure you are aware of each step they make. Communicating clearly with search engines is particularly important if you are trying to optimise on your own. Communicating with others within the SEO community will ensure you are informed about changes as they happen and can help you select the best SEO company for your business.

Get Involved