Sometimes we have to relearn lessons we’d forgotten about. This just happened to me. The other day I got an email from a very nice lady I’ve worked with before. She was asking me if I’d be interested in working with her on a project…

The problem was, it was a gambling site. I hated to tell her, but I don’t work on anything that I consider immoral. I sent her an email back, explaining my position. Then I had a thought: Why not put a notice on my website, laying out my personal position so that people don’t ask me to work on projects I don’t want?

So I added a paragraph to the bottom of my website.

Next thing I know, my website is down a few points on all the major search engines. Then I remembered that these were words that might trigger a spam filter if they were used in email. They can have a negative effect with the search engines too.
Needless to say, I took that paragraph down straight away, and and I won’t be putting it back up! If you’re having trouble with your search engine ranking, just make sure you’re not using trigger words that could be holding you back!