Why spam policies exist
Search engines want results that help searchers. Some tactics try to look relevant without being useful, and search engines publish policies against them. Google's are collected in its spam policies for web search, part of Google Search Essentials. Bing publishes similar guidance in its Webmaster Guidelines.
Google states that sites breaking these policies may rank lower or not appear in results at all, either through automated systems or through manual action by its reviewers. The risk lands on the site owner, even when an outside supplier did the work.
Practices search engines name
A plain summary of several practices Google's policies describe:
| Practice | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Cloaking | Showing search engines different content from what visitors see. |
| Doorway pages | Many near-identical pages, each aimed at a slightly different search, that all funnel to the same place. |
| Hidden text and links | Text or links placed so search engines read them but visitors cannot see them. |
| Keyword stuffing | Repeating words or lists of places unnaturally to match searches. |
| Link spam | Buying, selling or exchanging links to influence rankings, or creating links in bulk. |
| Scaled content abuse | Producing large numbers of pages mainly to attract search traffic, whatever tool made them, without adding value. |
| Site reputation abuse | Publishing third-party pages on a trusted site to borrow its standing, with little oversight from the host. |
The policies are longer and more precise than this table, and they change. Read the current version before relying on any summary, including this one.
Links: earned, paid and labelled
Links from other sites help search engines discover pages and understand how the web fits together. Because of that, they are a frequent target for manipulation. Paying for a link is not forbidden in itself; advertising and sponsorship are normal. What matters is how the link is marked.
Google asks that paid or sponsored links carry the rel="sponsored" attribute, that links in user comments and forum posts carry rel="ugc", and that other links you do not want to vouch for carry rel="nofollow". A paid link without such a label, placed to pass ranking value, is the kind of link its policies describe as spam.
Why ranking promises are a warning sign
Google's page on hiring an SEO says plainly that no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. Positions depend on the search engine's systems, on competing pages and on the searcher's own context, none of which a supplier controls.
That makes a specific promise a useful signal. Offers that are worth a second look include:
- a fixed position by a fixed date;
- a claimed "special relationship" with a search engine;
- a large number of links for a small fixed price;
- secrecy about what will actually be done to your site;
- work that you cannot see, check or undo.
Questions to ask before hiring help
Google's guidance suggests questions for anyone considering an SEO. In the same spirit:
- What exactly will you change on the site, and why?
- Will any links be created, bought or exchanged? If so, where and how labelled?
- How will we measure progress, and over what period?
- Which search engine guidelines do you follow, and how do you keep up with changes?
- If we stop working together, what remains on the site and what is removed?
Clear answers do not prove good work, but evasive ones are informative.
Worked example
A small online shop is offered "200 high-authority links in 30 days" for a low monthly fee. Asked where the links will appear, the seller declines to say. Set against the policies above, this is a clear case for saying no: the shop cannot check the work, and the likely method is the bulk link creation the policies describe.
If a shortcut was already taken
If a site received a manual action, Google Search Console shows it in the Manual actions report, with a description of the problem. The usual path is to fix the issue across the whole site, for example removing or labelling paid links and deleting doorway pages, and then request a review through the same report. Automated effects have no review request; they change as the site itself improves and is processed again over time.
Either way, the lasting fix is the same as the starting advice: pages that are genuinely useful to the people who find them.
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