Writing by Nick Stamoulis

Search engine penalties do happen from time to time and sometimes they happen to good, hard working companies who simply get wrapped up with the wrong type of vendor. Search Engine Optimization comes with boundaries and when those boundaries are pushed and stretched to their limits sometimes people find themselves on the wrong side of the fence. Sometimes all you need is to compose yourself if you just ran into the problem and get back on the horse with a positive mind set before moving forward with anything else.

Education – Don’t Make the Same Mistake Twice!
Think about the company or person you were working with and take the opposite approach if you need to find a new vendor now. Do some searching and pick a company that completely understands the search marketing industry. Read through testimonials and educate yourself on what a real Search Engine Marketing campaign should look like so that you can ask educated questions. The last thing that you want to do is to take on a new vendor that has virtually no credibility to their name. Take the time to read through a variety of Search Engine Marketing sources so that you really understand what a quality online marketing approach looks like. There is a great deal of free information out in the search space and it is up to you to sharpen your skills before you go shopping around again.

Put a Game Plan Together
If your penalty has finally been lifted after some hard work, put together a safe game plan and a laser targeted strategy on how you are going to move your website into the future. There is nothing worse than moving forward after a penalty has been received and not really taking the time to put together a custom crafted strategy on the second attempt at getting it right. Every Search Engine Marketing campaign should have a strategy in place that you can physically track on a monthly basis. The best approach to your online marketing is when you can physically see what is happening consistently. Shooting from the hip every month to conduct your search marketing will only lead to more confusion with your search marketing efforts.

Stay Positive at all Times
It can be very easy to really get down on yourself for letting this happen but the good news is that your penalty has been lifted and you have a second chance to get it right. The worst thing you can do is assume that every single Search Engine Marketing company, consultant, or professional is going to take the same path as your previous vendor. When done correctly, Search Engine Marketing can be very powerful and significantly grow your image but you have to stay positive and realize that there are plenty of good apples in the industry that work strictly by the books and follow all guidelines according to how websites should be marketed in order to stay out of any potential trouble.

Take Your Time
Don’t feel like you have to make up for lost ground. Rather, take your time getting ramped up again. What you don’t want to happen is to get too aggressive and start hitting the search space with a bit too much force which could cause you to get another penalty. You want to take your time for the most part and make your approach seem very natural and safe.

Introduce New Traffic Streams
Getting your Search Engine Optimization back up and running could take a bit longer than expected depending on how long your penalty hung around for. Now might be the time to start also thinking about introducing some new streams of traffic to your website. Things like social media and PPC could be the right choice right about now so it is important to keep your options open and be diverse. Your business might not be able to sit around and wait for your SEO to kick back in because it could be something that takes quite a while.

If you are overcoming a search engine penalty and getting back on the horse, take your time and put a plan together so that you can avoid this type of setback in the future.