Recently I spoke to a webmaster that saw his good search engine rankings tanked and he wondered what happened. After all, for quite some time his website had enjoyed top rankings in the search engines, but all of the sudden his website was nowhere to be found. What could have happened?

First off, this webmaster had a niche website. The information presented was very unique and did not have much competition. This alone allowed his website to rise in the search engine rankings. Since he did not change his website much at all and there was no real competition for this business, he continued to stay there.

However, as business began to get more competitive, the webmaster began looking for new ways to set himself apart. He began working on a Viral Marketing peice that he intended to mass distribute from his website. In an effort to remain at the top of the search engines, he quickly added a variety of keywords and phrases at the bottom of his website to help his website be identified with his business. With the new increase in traffic, Google took notice and came back to visit… and then POOF! His website went away in the rankings. He got a Google Penalty!

This webmaster made the carnal sin of Keyword Stuffing. Keyword stuffing is the practice of placing a large amount of keyword text on a webpage for the sole purpose of getting ranked. Google does not like this practice and will “black ball” websites that try to use this technique (this is commonly referred to as the Google Penalty.)

Good SEO is built around the right keywords and phrases. However, the content of your pages should be more than just keywords. What happened to this webmaster was that a high percentage of his text was repetitive keywords. You should limit your keywords to fit within the context of your page’s text. If you are discussing “purple car widgets”, don’t just drop a ton of references about “purple car widgets” over and over.

A rule of thumb… you should be able to read your text fairly normally and it actually make sense!

Another thing to avoid in your quest for search engine rankings is “hidden keywords.” In other words, don’t add a bunch of keywords and make them the same color as the background. This is considered deceptive and will get you banned as well.

Have you been Google Banned?

Well, there is still hope. First off, correct the error. If this is a first offense and a rare occurence you may well be able to overcome it. However, if your ranking is of any importance to you, it would probably serve you best to contact a good SEO expert to help you out!

SEO is not difficult, if you know what you are doing. Trial and error will teach you, but can also cost you. You can study online for hours on end and you can learn it that way… but this takes a lot of time. A good website design and SEO strategy can help prevent these issues and allows you to focus on the more important aspects of your website!

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