This guest post is by Nicole McGrey
Some websites can experience a huge drop in ratings even though their website is protected from content theft and has been optimized perfectly. This can be downright distressing especially if the webmaster has worked hard to create a clean and legitimate website with quality original content.
What can cause this huge demotion in rankings even though the website does not use any “black hat” tactics? Well, chances are that the website has surrounded itself with bad neighbors. Elaborating on the term “bad neighbors” on the internet basically means that the backlinks the site has created leads to some unsavory websites that are high on many search engines’ watch list.
Reasons for a website’s inclusion in the watch list vary, but they can include content theft, keyword stuffing and other “black hat” SEO tactics. While the website that created backlinks to this shady site might be clean, in the eyes of the search engine, everyone associated to this website must be using underhanded SEO tactics as well. Like that Simpsons episode where Bart drags the grades of anyone sitting around him down an unmistakable cone of ignorance, bad standing websites also cause the same effects to those around them.
As an important tip to webmasters, always link wisely and conduct a thorough background check on any website before building links with their site. Note that having inbound links to sites do not warrant a penalty, it’s the outbound links that will truly ruin the day of any webmaster that inadvertently connected their sites to some unscrupulous webmasters.
