You may have heard that search engines like Google can issue penalties against websites that break the rules (AKA, using black hat SEO techniques). When search engines issue a penalty, it means that your website will no longer be visible in search results. So when people search for you online, you won't show up on the search results. That's a BIG problem if you're website is trying to sell goods or services.
Any website can be penalized. It often happens because the website's owner (or SEO team) is using shady, unscrupulous SEO tactics (also known as black hat SEO techniques) to try and trick the search engines. This is a BAD idea and will always hurt you in the long run. Once you get a penalty, it's hard to have it removed. So be careful to avoid any of these black hat SEO tactics.
So what might cause you to get a penalty? If you give Google's crawlers any proof that you've tried to game the system or break their Quality Guidelines, you could get a penalty. That usually means your ranking will drop (often very dramatically).
Google and other major search engines have made a name for themselves by always giving users the most relevant content. That means anyone who tries to game that system will pay the price with a harsh penalty. A few examples of black hat SEO practices include things like: keyword stuffing, sneaky redirects, negative SEO, invisible text, cloaked pages, and many others. Black hat SEO is a bad idea and you should always avoid it. That's why at SEO Robot we only use honest, "white hat", Google-safe strategies to help improve your website's ranking.
