There are two words that are guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of any website proprietor: penalties and filters.

They damage rankings and ultimately may result in banishment from the search engines. However, before panic sets in, let us guide you through the basics of penalties and filters.

A penalty is caused by significant violations of a search engine’s website guidelines, such as:

No, the headline isn’t a joke. Google okayed hidden text–in certain contexts, of course.

Remember a couple weeks ago when Search Engine Land was outed for spamming? Several readers, in an effort to be helpful (I’m sure), pointed out that this particular trick was the Fehrer Image Replacement technique.

Google and Volkswagen have been pals for over a year, but that once-pure relationship appears to have recently devolved into a criminal partnership.  It turns out that the Volkswagen home page – which is powered by a Google Search Appliance, and was also recently featured in the Google Enterprise Blog – contains some hidden text.