ove to the top of the First of all, the search engines
search results pages, could drop your rankings so low
increase your visibility, that even the most diligent of
drive traffic to your site—with searchers would have a hard time
these promises, it is easy to finding your site. And a lowered
understand why many companies are ranking, as any business whose
tempted to avail of the services web site has been penalized can
of a search engine marketing tell you, is never a good thing.
company that use optimization Kinderstart, a parenting web site
techniques search engines like for example, experienced a 70%
Google and Yahoo! consider decline in traffic and 80%
illegal. revenue decrease after Google
penalized the site in March 2005
Known as Black Hat SEO, these for allegedly using Black Hat SEO
methods include adding hidden techniques.
texts, creating doorway pages
(or, as Google defined them And if you think getting your
“pages created just for search ranks lowered is bad enough, then
engines”), key word stuffing read this: in some cases, the
(i.e., bombarding your content search engines even ban sites and
with too much keywords and remove them from their index
phrases), using popular but list—this means that, unless
irrelevant keywords and you’re able to successfully
participating in link farms. appeal your case, your site will
never appear on search engine
Despite the potential benefits results page ever again. One
they can provide you, however, example is the case of RICOH
Black Hat SEO should be avoided Germany. The German web site of
like a plague. the Japanese office-products
manufacturer was “de-listed” by
Google after the search engine search engines than you display
discovered the site using spam to users’.”
techniques to bolster its
rankings (the site has been To avoid getting penalized or
re-listed after the company banned, hire a reputable search
apologized and its webmaster made engine optimization company and
the modifications Google ensure that only white-hat SEO
demanded). tactics will be used. Remember,
as great as the promise of
If you’re really unlucky, aside improved ranking may sound, the
from getting your site removed penalties the search engines
from the list, you might also could impose upon your site once
suffer from the same embarrassing you’ve been discovered to be
fate of BMW.de. While the banning employing the unscrupulous
of web sites are never really techniques are even greater.
announced (even to the company
that owns it), Google’s engineer
Mike Cutts announced on his blog
the removal of BMW.de’s site from the search engine’s index and type="text/javascript">
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About the Author:
Maraya Mullen is a copywriter for Fruit Engine LLC (http://www.fruitengine.com), a search engine marketing company.
