Similar to any other organisation, even the Internet and search engines have certain rules and regulations. These rules have been formulated to curb illegal and unethical behaviour on the Internet and punish those who violate them. For online marketers and people providing search engine optimization services, the success of their business, directly and indirectly, is based on search engines. But, certain activities and usage of some techniques can blacklist websites from search engines and completely mar their business prospects.

It is better if websites avoid using a framed design, a completely graphic layout and 'flash', because search engine spiders or crawlers manning the site are not able to see relevant content, but only meta tags and titles. This is because, the crawlers simply cannot see any of the above and all graphics appear blank to them.

Often, organisations offering search engine optimization services track down the correct keyword, but advise their client website to stuff the keywords into meta tags and the page content to artificially rank the website higher. Keywords can appear only a certain percentage of times on a web page. Some sites even resort to hidden texts. This is another technique that is easily discovered by search engines and then these sites are classified as spam. Once discovered, no amount of SEO services can help redeem the lost ground.

Another blunder that can get a website into trouble with a search engine is linking your page with another blacklisted website. Paying another website to link with your website is again looked down upon by search engines. Even search engine optimization services providers are ignorant a bout these specifications and can unknowingly land websites into trouble.

With the aim of optimizing the website, some SEO services providers advise the use of 'cloaking' to their client website which involves displaying different pages to the search engine and to the end user. This is considered a serious offense, and is detected easily by search engines. Copyright violation is a serious offense that is unpardonable in search engine rules.

It is necessary to create awareness among SEO services providers and website owners and designers regarding the search engine rules and regulations and design the layout and content of the websites conforming to the standards and regulations set by search engines. Instead of finding loopholes, this is the correct way of achieving the desired ranking.