Firstly, it’s important to identify exactly the type and degree of penalty you have incurred, as this will give us some clues as to why you’re being punished. Penalties come in two main forms: manual and algorithmic. The former means that a search engine employee has come across something they don’t like and taken action. This is often accompanied by a message in your Google Webmaster Tools account, detailing why the penalty was allocated. The latter means that the rules that govern the search engine itself have singled you out.

The penalty in question comes in a number of forms. You may have incurred a site wide penalty if your problems are on multiple pages, or alternatively just a single page may have been bad, in which case a partial penalty is possible. Penalties can also be keyword specific, if you have used dishonest techniques for just one or two keywords. Play around with searching for your business, under your keywords, and your specific site URL. Take a look at whether your competitors have moved up or down, or the entire layout of the SERP has altered. The latter suggests a major algorithm update, with the recent examples being Hummingbird, Panda and Penguin.