Types of Search Engine Penalties

Duplicate Content: The search engine algorithm will filter out what it considers to be duplicate content. This can happen if a certain number of words or phrases exceed a pre-determined level as specified by the algorithm. The filter works by dropping either the newest content, or replacing the older content if the page has been determined to have more “weight”.

Keyword Spam: If a page is found to have been created solely for the purpose of drawing visitors with keywords not related to the topic of the page, the page in question would be dropped from the index. This is usually applied manually by a human reviewer, but can be automatically applied if the spider detects it.

Cross Linking / Interlinking: This involves link schemes set up between sites that are closely related, links are created solely for the purpose of increasing link popularity. These schemes are detected usually because the sites reside on the same group of servers which contain similar IP addresses.

Cloaking / Masking: Pages created specifically for spiders containing keywords or phrases, human visitors are redirected to a totally different page containing different content than what the search engine spider sees. These are usually caught by human reviewers after a complaint, or if a sophisticated search engine spider is smart enough to catch on.

Sandbox: The sandbox is a sort of incubator, new sites or pages might be added to the sandbox to give them time to develop to ensure that the pages will be around long enough to warrant a place in the index. This penalty, if you can call it that is hotly a debated topic however as nobody has been able to positively confirm that it exists.

SEO Tools and Resources

Every time you create a new page on your website, you need to see if your use of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is working. Well that’s what this section of The SEO Guide is for.

Here is our collection of extremely useful SEO Tools:

Google Toolbar: This is the most used tool by webmasters by far. It will display the page rank (in whole numbers) of the page you are currently viewing. As a bonus, it includes a pop-up blocker.

Keyword Density Analyzer: See if your page is really on topic by how dense your keywords are on a given page.

Google Search Index Ranking: See where you page is listed when searching for your chosen keywords.

Keyword Suggestion Tool: Have a brain freeze when trying to find stuff to write about? Use the AdWords keyword suggestion tool and see which keywords would best suit your needs.

Conclusion

We hope this guide has shown you budding or even veteran webmasters learn a little bit of the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search engines are going to be your primary source of visitors and you can make friends with the search engine, make an enemy of the search engine or just simply ignore the search engine and hope for the best.

SEO takes time, planning and patience in order to successfully obtain decent rankings but it is not as difficult as you might have been lead to believe, hopefully you learned that reading this guide.

As a reminder, here is a quick SEO rundown, that if followed is all but guaranteed to provide great results.

A solid SEO foundation for websites: 

1)     Plenty of good separate pages of content. The more content you have, the better your chances of receiving loads of visitors.

2)     Site Map that links to all pages. This will help not only your human visitors, but the search engine spiders find their way around your site faster.

3)     A site map that is friendly to people as well as bots. It doesn’t have to be fancy, a simple list is more than enough

4)     Optimized Page Title H1 text can go a long towards getting you to the top of the list

5)     The more lean the page’s weight, the more Google likes it. Use CSS instead of font tags and stick your JavaScript into external files. Smaller pages equal faster page loads and search engine spiders like to go fast.

6)     The anchor text in links pointing to your site is important. Remember this when making link requests and have an appropriate title for your link handy to provide.

7)     The Google tool bar is an important tool, it will let you know your page rank which measures how well your page is doing.

8)     Page rank is important, but like all other aspects there is no 'magic bullet' where one thing will rocket you to the top. Using moderate amounts of SEO technique on all your pages is better than trying to vault one page to the top.

9)     Page Rank should be a SECONDARY consideration when requesting links or allowing links. Your primary concern should be the type of site that is linking to you.

10) Backlinks with a PR4 and above will show in Google’s Backlinks on toolbar or 'link:www.domain.com' but links from lower PR sites still count, so the more the merrier!

11) Use AllTheWeb.com to check back links to see all links regardless of PR.

12) Remember and use these useful queries "link:www.domain.com", "allinurl:www.domain.com" and "allinanchor:word or phrase". They will help you determine which sites are linking to you and what you have in the search engine.

13) A bigger site with more pages that has proper site map MAY benefit from the internal linking, hence the bigger is better theory. More unique pages, more possibilities to optimize for individual phrases. Each page should be looked at as an opportunity.

14) Buying a text link or any sort of link just for PR is bad and Google is giving those domains PR0's which defeats the purpose...