One of the best things about the SEO industry is the amount of advice that’s available to the average consumer. SEO experts are all willing to share their knowledge with newcomers, and eager to provide a free education on all things SEO. Often this wealth of information can be overwhelming, and sometimes can out newcomers off completely.

The area that’s most likely to scare businesses off from search engine optimisation is search engine penalties. Without the thought of penalties, SEO seems like a straightforward process. You place words and do things to your site that will make the search engines realise you’re the best option whenever one of your target users performs a search. Add search engine penalties, however, and SEO seems like a minefield, with little hidden bombs set wherever an unwary foot is put down in the wrong place.

The fault mainly lies in the way the SEO community discusses penalties. Site owners are constantly being warned about being kicked off the index or having their pages drop in PageRank. Both of these things are not things most businesses would relish, but they are not the end of the world. Having your site penalised doesn’t mean that your relationship with the search engines is permanently soured, and you can discuss recovery with us at SEO Consult.

Some of the ways in which penalties are discussed can put fear into the heart of the average business. SEO agency blogs talk of ’search engine disasters’ and victimised sites. A lot of the language used when talking about penalties is intended to induce fear, but that of a rational kind.

SEO pros talk about penalties in this way to combat the very strong temptation bad SEO presents. Bad SEO tactics are all too easy to employ, and may even get your rankings looking a bit healthier for a while. Once you’re caught, however, you’re not the only one who has to face the consequences. The entire SEO industry suffers from the actions of bad operators, as the search engines alter their algorithms to be more and stricter in their judgement of sites.

The health of the SEO industry is not the only reason to refrain from black-hat search engine optimisation techniques. Penalties are real, and they have real consequences for a business. These techniques can and do get sites kicked off the search engine results pages for periods of several months up to a year. Not many businesses can afford to have their site essentially out of action for that long. This kind of penalisation, however, is unusual and should not be a deterrent for a site set on using SEO for good, not evil.

Penalties don’t mean that you shouldn’t optimise your site. Even the search engines recognise that SEO is of benefit to the internet. Good SEO clarifies the relationship between a search engine and a site. Bad SEO doesn’t cause the search engines to ban the techniques altogether, and it shouldn’t discourage you from making the best of your site.

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