Search Engine Penalties

Ever wonder why your site suddenly lost its search rankings (SERP) or deindexd from Search Engines? Yes, theres a few penalties involved. Lets have a look how it happens and what we should do to avoid it.
Major Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN have their own guides for webmasters for “do’s” and “don’ts” and probably other search engines have their own as well. However, these are only guidelines and may not include all the informations which can start a penalty. Here are a few common mistakes which webmasters do.

1. Clocking : Its when you submit your site to search engines with different informations. Optimizing the page for a irrelevant keyword can also harm.
2. Keyword Repeating : Repeated use of a word or phrase in an attempt to increase a page’s relevancy. Its also called Keyword Stuffing.
3. Irrelevant Metatag : Where webmasters place high traffic keywords in meta tags that are completely unrelated to a web page in order to generate more traffic.
4. Redirection : When a visitor clicks on a result link and then redirected to another totally irrelevant site. This will penalize both the sites.
5. Duplicate Content : When Search Engine finds any duplicate content on your site, it will automatically put it into supplemental result. Yes, its also a penalty.
6. Doorway Pages : Web pages that solely exist for the purpose of ranking well in the search engine results pages (SERPs). They are typically not part of the navigational structure of the web site and can only be found if someone happens upon them from a search query.
7. Invisible Texts and Small Fonts : When a webmaster inserts keywords as texts which is only to get high ranking in SERP. The technique is to blend the color of the texts with background so that they can not be seen to normal visitors. And even hiding the texts by setting them to 0.5px will initiate penalty.
8. Hidden Links : This is typically done by using a small 1×1 transparent gif image and then hyperlinking it somewhere.
9. Linking to SPAM sites : You will never come under a penalty if a bad site links to you. Search engines understand that you do not have any control over someone else linking to you. However when you link to what a search engine considers a “bad” site, that you do have control over and while it will not always generate a penalty, it can if it is abused as firming links.
10. MFA : Its when sites made only for Ads. This sites normally have very less content and almost full of ads.

Theres a few things you can do if you get penalized or banned. One is to get a new domain and start for scratch without applying those blackhat techniques. This is not recommended as you probably have invested your hard earned money and precious time developing that site as a brand name. The other thing you can do is to rectify the issues which caused you the penalty (Like deleting doorway pages, editing template to remove hidden texts or hyperlinks, removing links to the SPAM sites, Checking the content for duplication or Keyword repeating, editing meta tag to suite your site, etc.).
Once you are done with that, you have to contact search engines to reinclude your site. For Google, login in your Google Webmaster Tools, and then Under Tools, click Request reconsideration and follow the steps. For Yahoo, Go to Yahoo! Search URL Status Review Form and fill out the form. For MSN, go to Reinclude Your Site page and fill up the form. Don’t forget to login in all the cases before submitting the form. All other search engines have their own way, you just have to search for it.