New Article - Has My Site Been Penalized by the Search Engines?

[thejenn]

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/cla.../0220_sc1.html

Some Snippets:

"Continued changes in Google's algorithm have more webmasters than ever concerned that their site might be penalized when they notice a drop in their rankings. How can you tell if your site is suffering from a penalty or just a change in the algo?"

" Anything that is out of the ordinary: invisible gifs, server re-directs, frameset cloaking, hidden links, and invisible text. I examine all links to verify paths to make sure they aren't going to any "search engine food" pages. So much of it is based on a feeling and what to do next is based on what the site is telling me."

--

Anyone ever pushed the limits far enough to wind up penalized or banned? Any SEOs dealt with the nightmare of cleaning up another SEO's mess? What do you look for...what steps do YOU take to try and fix things?

[David Wallace]

Back in the early days I had a site banned from Google due to the fact that we had placed hundreds of hidden links on other sites back to ours. I know, definitely a spam technique but at the time it was one that Google hadn't really cried "fowl" about.

We wanted links because of the ever increasing popularity of Google and their accessing of link popularity in their algo.

To make a long story short, we had to remove all those links and then confess our sin to Google and beg for forgiveness. It was finally granted and we were re-included.... about a year later.

Since then we have helped a few clients who have come to us being either penalized or banned to get re-included. First the spam or offence has to be removed. Then you have to admit your fault to the search engine and ask them to forgive you. Finally you have to be patient.

That being said, I think many people today that thing they have been penalized has not actually been penalized at all but are just not that good at SEO. Very few sites actually get banned or penalized. Usually it is a combination of poor SEO or no SEO at all, targeting the wrong keywords, not enough link popularity, brand new site, etc.

[Old Welsh Guy]

I would say that 50% or so of my work is cleaning up the mess made by clowns who call themselves SEO's. For some reason we appear to be have become the home for battered and abused websites

Normally I get a conversation that goes along the lines of, we were doing ok, but then we stopped getting traffic. I ask if they made changes to the site or anything etc, they normally say no, I have a look, find all the rubbish in there, then they say 'oh yes we did have a company do some work for us' lol Then I walk away. I need to know up front exactly what has gone on, and dealing with people who have cheated and been caught is not a problem for me, but dealing with people who have cheated, been caught, then tried to hide the fact is an impossible situation.

There is always a trace of what black arts have gone on, be it in the backlinks, the cache, wayback, existing code not cleaned properly etc. To be honest, I love the challenge, so long as people are straight with me.

I am with David here though, I took on a client at the end of last year who had been told by their designer/seo company that the site was sandboxed. They contacted me, I checked, and the site had not even been indexed, go figure that one out, and how it could have ended up. I still do not know if the company was crooked, or incompetent, either way they were not professional.