Ten guides on what puts a website at risk

Dangerous SEO Practices Explained

What the risky techniques actually are, how to tell whether somebody is using them on your site plus what to do if a penalty has already landed. Written so you can recognise the problem, not run it.

10 guidesBlack HatLink RiskContent RiskPenaltiesRecovery
10 guides
Recognise it, do not run it
Everything from £350 a month

Almost nobody sets out to get their site penalised. They hire somebody who does it for them. The techniques on this page still get sold, usually to businesses who were promised fast results and were never told what the method was. These guides describe each one plainly enough that you can spot it in a proposal, in a monthly report, perhaps on a site you have just taken over. They do not explain how to carry any of it out, plus we would not write that.

Start Here

What Is the Google Spam Policy?

The reference point for everything else in this cluster. Google publishes what it considers manipulative, plus most of the arguments in this industry disappear once somebody reads it. If you are trying to work out whether a technique your agency uses is acceptable, this is where the answer comes from rather than from anybody's opinion, including ours.

Read the policy guide
What you might be paying for without knowing

What The Risky Practices Are

Four guides covering the whole territory. What sits clearly outside the rules, what sits in the uncomfortable middle plus the two areas where most real damage happens, which are links and content.

Each one describes what the practice is and why it carries risk. None of them explains how to do it. That distinction is deliberate plus it is the whole point of the cluster.

What happens next, plus how to get out of it

Penalties, Attacks And Recovery

A site can lose visibility three ways. A person at Google acts against it, an algorithm reassesses it, else somebody else attacks it. Those feel identical from the outside plus they need completely different responses.

Read the first three to work out which one you are looking at, then the last two to do something about it. Guessing wrong here costs months, because the fix for one does nothing for the others.

Everything we do, from £350 a month

None Of This Is On Your Account With Us.

We do not buy links, generate pages in bulk or use anything described on this page. What you get instead is the slower version that keeps working: your listing, your reviews, your site in good technical order plus content written by people. If you already have a penalty, that is a different conversation and we are happy to have it.

Everything included in your plan:

Local and national SEO Google Maps and reviews Quarterly technical audits Content written by people Website management Social and AI optimisation
£350per month

One clear retainer. No setup fee.

Using these guides

Frequently Asked

How do I know whether my agency is doing any of this?
Ask three questions. Where did the links come from, plus can they show you. Who wrote the content, by name. What would happen to the results if they stopped work tomorrow. Vague answers to any of those are the signal. The link risk guide plus the content risk guide cover what to look for in the detail of a report.
My rankings dropped. Have I been penalised?
Probably not, plus that is worth establishing before anybody starts rebuilding. A large share of suspected penalties turn out to be a technical fault, a migration handled badly or an ordinary algorithm update affecting everybody in the sector. How to check for a penalty tells you which of those you are looking at. Diagnose first, since the fix for one does nothing for the others.
Do these guides tell me how to do black hat SEO?
No, plus they never will. Each guide describes what a technique is and why it carries risk, in enough detail that you can recognise it in a proposal or a report. None of them is a set of instructions. The purpose of this cluster is to let a business owner tell the difference between an agency working properly and one taking a shortcut with their site, which is a very different thing.
Is grey hat SEO acceptable?
It depends who you ask, which is rather the point. The grey hat guide sets out where the line genuinely sits plus why reasonable people disagree about it. Our own position is simpler than most: if a technique only works while nobody has noticed it, it is not a strategy, it is a delay. We would rather build something that survives the next update.
Can you fix a site that has already been penalised?
Frequently, yes, plus the first job is working out what actually happened rather than assuming. Recovery is mostly undoing rather than adding, which surprises people who expected to be sold a rebuild. The recovery guide covers what it involves plus how long it realistically takes. Get in touch and we will tell you what we think you are dealing with before quoting anything.
Is AI generated content a risk?
Generating pages in bulk with nothing behind them is, plus that is the version currently getting sites into trouble. The problem has never really been the tool, it is publishing at volume without anybody checking whether the result is worth reading. The thin content guide covers where the line falls, which is roughly the same place it has always fallen.