What are SEO penalties and how do I avoid these?

Well there are many ways to conduct SEO.  There are what is known as Black Hat Techniques (These are big no’s!), grey hat techniques (These are techniques the likes of Google do not currently penalize but could be open to penalization down the road) and white Hat techniques (These are the tried and trusted methods and should always be the methods used).  Black hat techniques can work and they can get you ranked very quickly in some cases but they just are not worth it for the penalties. Your site could be removed from Google.  BMW experienced this in 2006, so even the big guys are not exempt.   We always use white hat techniques and are open to discuss any issues or concerns you may have.