Bans, Penalties Filters

You wake one morning to check the ranking of your site in Google for its top key phrases and find that you have moved down the rankings. This is the nightmare scenario for many SEOs. Your immediate thoughts are what is the cause of this? Is it an algorithmic change and the rankings will return or it something more serious?

Before explaining about the penalties it is important to understand that rankings move around all the time.  There are four reasons why your site can move in the SERPs.

• Algorithmic change – an update in the algorithm can cause chaos in the SERPs. An interesting article on the updates and filters that have been found. As you can see there is a filter for almost everything.
• Competitors SEO strategy - they have made changes or added links to improve their ranking.
• Your SEO strategy – you have done something which causes your site to fall in the rankings to fall.
• Google Penalty

These other factors make it difficult to distinguish filters from the noise of the other three factors. However, the range of punishments available if you are suspected of cheating Google ranges from the potential cutting off of your livelihood to a metaphorical slap on the wrist. Let’s start with the most severe penalty.

Ban

If you follow the webmaster guidelines you are unlikely to be banned. To check, do a site:yourdomain search and if it is still in the index then you have not been banned. One of the most high-profile examples of Google banning a site is when they delisted BMW from the index. A ban from the index is likely to occur if you have been up to something which is considered to be gaming Google. The most likely offences that will bring about a ban are:

• cloaking.
• using hidden text.
• linking to bad domains such as porn or casinos.
• many subdomains with duplicate content.

To be re-included, you need to find out what it is that has brought disfavour on your site and fix it, tug your forelock in a submissive way and submit a sorry I was bad re-inclusion request.

Penalty Filters

The next most serious problem is where changes made to your site can trigger a penalty filter. While there is no direct evidence for specific filters, it seems quite reasonable that there are algorithmic methods to catch catch obviously unnatural factors and over-zealous SEO techniques.

The effect penalties that are usually commented upon range from moderate to severe. A drop -950 positions can be incurred for duplicate content, linking, keyword stuffing. Brand new domains are especially vulnerable to these filters.  Creating too many links at one time of one kind will skew the link profile and trigger a -950 filter. It will take a long to time to come back because you cannot remove links. Other less severe penalties can also be imposed but the reasons are more difficult to diagnose but are often discussed and speculated on in the SEO forums. With filters, it is not necessary to submit a re-inclusion request which will be automatically removed if the problem no longer exists.

Conclusion

If you see a drop in ranking or traffic it may not necessarily be due to a penalty.  Most likely it is one of the other reasons that positions change. If you have knowingly done something  that is against the webmaster guidelines then change it back. Your rankings are likely to come back.