How Dangerous Is Your SEO? 22 Risky SEO Strategies

Doing SEO means living with risk: whether you do a little, a lot, none, or the most search engine optimization, Google can choose to remove your site from the search results. That’s why you need to be aware of the risks you’re taking.

SEO is much more complex today than it was a few years ago, and not everyone may be aware of the risks that different elements of search engine optimization entail. We’ve therefore tried, to the best of our ability, to put together an assessment of how risky each individual activity or measure is. Of course there are many opinions on this, and it’s more or less impossible to assign an exact number—for example, what’s the likelihood that someone at Google notices you have a hidden H1 and applies a manual action for it? With that disclaimer out of the way, here’s the list.

Too many ads “above the fold” – risk 2 out of 5

From time to time, Google manually (what they call a manual action) pushes down sites with too large a share of ads in the area visible without scrolling. If you have to scroll down a fair bit to reach the actual content because there are too many ads, you’re definitely taking a risk. As a rule of thumb, it shouldn’t look like Google’s own search results, which have a lot of ads above the fold.

Hidden content on the page – risk 2 out of 5

In the past, hidden content (placed there only to rank) was something Google penalized quite hard. A headline that contains the keyword but isn’t shown, or a text block that’s hidden, could cause major ranking drops if discovered. Today they’re good at automatically filtering that out, so the risk has decreased somewhat. Most often it neither helps nor hurts. Here’s a study we did on content hidden behind tabs.

Sitewide inbound links – risk 4 out of 5

Links from all pages of a site have, since Google’s Penguin update, become something that greatly increases risk. The first thing you do when trying to get a site out of the Penguin filter is remove all sitewide links. If those links also use anchor text that matches the keyword and have a poor placement on the page (e.g., the footer), this is a trap. You can grab some quick rankings, but the risk skyrockets. This is one of the attributes we find increases risk the most—and something we’re extremely careful to avoid ourselves.

Exact-match anchor text links – risk 3 out of 5

Exact-match anchor text is when the link uses precisely the keyword you want to rank for. This used to be the best way to gain quick positions, but now it’s really risky to use exact matches carelessly. It’s especially dangerous in combination with other risks: sitewide links with exact anchor text or exact anchors in link directories becomes downright hazardous.

Link directories – risk 2 out of 5

We actually find the risk with link directories has decreased—provided you don’t use exact-match anchors. Our impression is that Google more or less just ignores them. There are occasions when a directory can be useful, but we would never use anything other than brand as anchor text anymore. One of the funniest things we’ve done in recent years (and it’s good SEO too): we bought KTHNOC.se.

Links from bloggers – risk 2 out of 5

Oddly enough, links from bloggers carry a relatively high risk (and are hard to control). Many of the large Swedish blog hosts have had big issues with Google, and most blogs are, in Google’s eyes, low-quality sites. If you get a lot of links from bloggers—through partnerships or sponsorships—that entails considerable risk. Truth be told, a large share of the filters and manual penalties we’ve seen lately relate in one way or another to blogger collaborations. That doesn’t mean blogs are bad per se—just that you need to know what you’re doing.

404s – risk 3 out of 5

It goes without saying that an individual page returning 404 will lose its ranking, but a large number of 404s across your site can make Google lose confidence overall. This isn’t as dangerous as it once was, but you should absolutely keep an eye on the errors reported in Search Console. Many 404s create a very high risk of losing many positions.

301s – risk 2 out of 5

301s are not dangerous in themselves—like most things on this list—but if you use them aggressively, risk shoots through the roof. Buying a competitor and redirecting to your own site used to be a very elegant tactic, but it’s not as golden anymore. Be careful and precise with your 301 redirects.

Duplicate content – risk 2 out of 5

Duplicate content is a sneaky danger because it’s not always obvious, and the original doesn’t always win. Large amounts of duplicate content can create major issues across the site in a way that isn’t clear—you might lose a few positions on everything rather than disappear entirely. Compare this with specific cases where Google deems an article duplicate and it sometimes vanishes entirely.

Indexing search results – 4 out of 5

This is one of the riskiest things you can do on a site. Google has always disliked it, often describing it as web spam, and lately they’ve become much stricter about it, especially with Panda. It’s a method less scrupulous SEOs have used to quickly increase the number of landing pages on a site, allowing them—during the months the site survives—to rank for many more terms. Because it’s almost effortless to generate millions of pages, it’s often been used on throwaway sites to drive a lot of traffic for a short time. Now Google reacts faster, and the return on risk is too small for most.

Very large number of pages – risk 3 out of 5

A huge number of pages is not a problem in itself—Wikipedia, for example, can hardly be said to take high risk. But quantity often leads to lower quality on individual pages (e.g., search-result pages as above), and that’s what triggers the Panda filter. Given how hard it is to get out of that filter, we rate the risk as 3 out of 5 because the impact, if it hits, is so severe.

Poor language – risk 1 out of 5

Poor grammar, misspellings, or lots of profanity (!) are not appreciated by search engines. In English-speaking markets this is a bigger issue than in Sweden; it’s clear Google is much worse at understanding Swedish. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind. In summer 2021, Google made major changes to how it reads and ranks based on language.

Very high link growth – risk 3 out of 5

Getting a ton of links in a short period used to be a guaranteed way to send a site straight into a deep, dark hole in SEO’s scary forest. Our assessment is that Google is far less sensitive now, and a surge of links over a short period is seen as more natural than before. It may not deliver long-term results the way a steadier pace does, but it’s nowhere near as dangerous as it was 3–4 years ago.

Canonical – risk 2 out of 5

The canonical tag has evolved from being a fairly weak tool in SEO to a somewhat stronger one, and its effects are more powerful now than before. That also increases risk: if you point it wrong, all kinds of weird things can happen. Tests simulating someone accidentally setting the canonical on every page to the homepage resulted in the entire site being deindexed (except the homepage) and all rankings lost. Other errors can cause different issues, and this is one of the first tags we check when someone comes to us with a problem.

Press releases and article directories – risk 2 out of 5

Google recently issued warnings about press releases and article directories, but remember: just because Google warns about something doesn’t automatically make it the most dangerous tactic in SEO. What you need to avoid is overly aggressive linking in press releases and article directories. Stay away from exact-match anchors here too. Once again, let Google be the cautionary example—do as they say, not as they do.

Thin affiliate – risk 3 out of 5

One thing Google internally cites as a reason for a manual action (someone at Google manually removes you) is so-called “thin affiliates.” By this they mean affiliates that add no value. Value can mean different things—good travel guides that are affiliates for hotels and flights obviously add value; a sensible price comparison does too. This means affiliates must put extra work into their content, which is why we rate the risk 3 out of 5.

Footer links – risk 2 out of 5

Footer links used to be among the riskiest links, but we think the risk has decreased somewhat in recent years—perhaps because few people are foolish enough to use keyword anchors there nowadays. Often it seems Google simply devalues them so there’s little risk beyond the links not counting. Beware of anchor text, though.

Footer links from your clients – risk 4 out of 5

We felt this point needed its own explanation. The risk with footer links can escalate for various reasons, and one thing Google truly dislikes is SEO agencies getting links from their clients. They have similar feelings about some platform providers (e.g., e-commerce, blogs, etc.), though not to the same extent for all. Google warns quite strongly about this and has chosen to bold it in their description of SEO. Compare that with things like guaranteed placements from SEO firms or companies selling fake traffic, which are only mentioned at the end under “What else should I watch out for.”

Blog comments – risk 3 out of 5

Using blog comments to gain attention is a balancing act. Good, sensible comments on good, sensible blogs can improve your rankings. Unfortunately, bad comments on bad blogs also “work,” but with much higher risk. It’s also hard to define the exact line where it becomes too much—very social bloggers comment a lot, and everyone appreciates good comments, Google included. However, since you control the link yourself, Google has reason to at least diminish its value. Combined with the sheer volume of blog spam, this makes Google wary of blog comments—and you should be too, especially if it’s being delivered as a service.

User-generated content – risk 2 out of 5

User-generated content is both a blessing and a curse. You can get large amounts of relevant, quality content that signals activity and engagement—great! Unfortunately, users rarely care about your SEO and have no problem asking the same question someone else asked a year ago, even if that confuses Google with two identical landing pages. Unless you want to send them to writing class or require a certain amount of text, you also risk lots of thin pages with poor grammar, which can trigger various filters. Google is somewhat forgiving and has learned to recognize, for example, forums—but there’s still a risk.

Launching a new site – risk 5 out of 5

This may be surprising, but a new site often entails the highest risk of all. The most common cause of ranking loss, from what we see, isn’t filters or manual actions—it’s technical issues. A site launched without a sharp focus on SEO can cause very serious problems. A new URL structure can create catastrophic issues that last a very long time.

The biggest risk in SEO

We’d like to end with what all too often lies behind SEO problems—for example, when launching a new site: choosing to do things that affect SEO without thinking about SEO. No SEO is dangerous SEO. It’s easy to believe, from the picture painted by Google and some speakers, that as long as you bury your head in the sand, nothing bad will happen. The truth is, that’s one of the riskiest behaviors you can have. You need to understand how SEO works if you run—or want to run—traffic from search engines. Anything else is like walking through a minefield blindfolded.