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Both Ryan and Yannick have good answers here. In addition, if you get a notice from Google in your webmaster tools or seem to have a penalty, you might file a reconsideration request and let Google know you were hacked but now have everything cleaned up. If you look online, you can find several resources that help to keep your Wordpress site from being hacked and test its security.

I have been directly involved in assisting sites recover from manual and algorithmic penalties. I believe most providers of SEO services have this experience as well. Penalties are a common driver or business for our industry. I did not intend to upset you in any way. My only thoughts regarding your reply were: if you have knowledge about an SEO topic, please share it. If you feel you have discovered a solution, it would be helpful to let others know about it in the Q&A section. You can even write a YouMoz article if you desire which can yield positive credit and attention. generally speaking, taking months to recover from a penalty would be crippling to most businesses. I always strive to work with clients to balance their traffic, but when I first receive clients they often show 85%+ of their traffic comes from Google. If they were to lose that traffic for 60+ days many would go out of business. I am glad to hear you were able to resolve the issues on your site. Best Regards, -Ryan