What practices can harm SEO? Distinguish policy violations, content barriers, and indexing issues first
Practices that can harm SEO include showing different content to search engines and visitors to manipulate rankings, covering the main content with intrusive ads, and leaving website errors that affect indexing unresolved. Duplicate content can also make it difficult for search engines to choose which page to display, but it should not automatically be treated as a policy violation that incurs a penalty. When assessing risks, distinguish between policy violations, difficulty accessing content, and uncertainty over which page to show in search results, rather than describing every issue as a “ranking penalty.”
Cloaking content to manipulate rankings can cost you search visibility
Google’s spam policies state that sites violating its policies may rank lower or disappear from search results entirely. Enforcement includes automated detection and, when necessary, human review and manual actions. (S1)
“Cloaking” has specific conditions: showing different content to search engines and people with the intent to manipulate rankings and mislead users. For example, a crawler might see information about travel destinations while visitors see discounted pharmaceuticals, or a page might insert extra keywords only when a search engine accesses it. The key is the intent to deceive and manipulate; not every technical difference in how content is presented should automatically be considered a violation.
Covering the main content with promotions can hinder both reading and search engines’ understanding
Google’s guidance states that intrusive interstitials and dialogs obstruct browsing, undermine trust, and may make it difficult for search engines to understand the content, potentially leading to poor search performance. (S2)
For example, visitors may encounter a full-page promotion when entering a site, preventing them from immediately reading the information they came for. Google recommends replacing full-page interstitials with banners that occupy only part of the screen. This approach can also be used for app installation or newsletter subscription prompts. The issue is not whether a dialog exists, but whether it blocks the main content.
Check the actual impact of duplicate content rather than deleting anything similar
A 2023 article by Screaming Frog notes that duplicate content can make it difficult for search engines to decide which page is most suitable for search results. Before making major changes, however, you should inspect the passages that are actually duplicated and determine whether they genuinely pose a problem. (S15)
- The same complete content appears at different URLs: the article recommends using canonical tags or 301 redirects as appropriate to help indicate the preferred version.
- Pages share only some content: the article recommends considering rewriting or restructuring them so that each page offers unique value, rather than deleting them indiscriminately.
This is practical advice for handling duplicate content, not a basis for claiming that “any duplication will trigger a manual penalty.”
Ignoring indexing errors may leave pages with no chance of appearing in search results
A 2024 article by Semrush warns that unresolved website errors can prevent Google from indexing pages correctly; pages that are not indexed will not appear in search results. (S22) Therefore, when a page receives no search traffic, first check for errors that may be preventing indexing rather than immediately assuming the content ranks too low. These issues differ from spam policy violations and should not be conflated with them.
Practices that can harm SEO: perspectives from across the web
Is building a link network to gain backlinks risky?
Yes. Linking multiple blogs to one another in an attempt to artificially manipulate rankings may negatively affect search performance. However, forum discussions note that the industry uses “toxic links” inconsistently: some use it to mean potentially harmful unnatural links, while others use it to describe spam links that algorithms ignore. Not every low-quality link should therefore be assumed to cause a ranking drop.
What can happen when redirects pass through too many intermediate URLs?
Redirect chains can increase loading times, leave visitors waiting, and potentially make it harder for search engines to understand a site’s structure. An article by Neil Patel suggests that pages that load slowly because of redirect chains may lose search rankings and visibility. These are potential effects, however, not evidence that every redirect causes a ranking drop. Start by identifying URLs with multiple redirect hops, then check whether the chains need to be simplified.
Can structured data markup that does not match the page’s content harm search performance?
Possibly, especially when data entirely unrelated to the page is marked up to obtain enhanced search result displays. An article by awoo suggests that this may lower search engines’ assessment of the page’s value, affecting rankings and visibility. Markup should therefore reflect the page’s actual content, and the code should be tested before changes are made. Adding markup does not itself guarantee that enhanced search results will appear.
Does having many slashes in a URL harm SEO?
Not necessarily. One contributor on Webmasters Stack Exchange argues that how easy a URL is to understand matters more than the depth indicated by its slashes; the contributor has also seen deeply nested URLs rank highly on Google. However, if a site’s structure is too deep, crawlers may have difficulty reaching all its pages. This assessment is based on observation, so the number of slashes should not be treated as a direct criterion for ranking penalties.
What happens if multilingual pages omit self-referencing hreflang tags?
Search engines may ignore those hreflang tags. Semrush recommends that each language version reference not only the other versions but also itself. For example, an English page should reference both the English and Spanish versions, and the Spanish page should do the same. This advice applies to sites with different language versions that use hreflang; it does not mean that omitting a self-reference will necessarily cause rankings to drop across the entire site.
References
- Google 網頁搜尋的垃圾Content政策 | Google 搜尋中心 | Documentation | Google for Developersdevelopers.google.com — Source used in the article above.
- 插頁式Ads和對話方塊 | Google 搜尋中心 | Documentation | Google for Developersdevelopers.google.com — Source used in the article above.
- Slashes in URLs and SEOwebmasters.stackexchange.com — Discusses: Does having many slashes in a URL harm SEO?
- 五分鐘了解結構化資料What it means，與搜尋引擎進行有效溝通！www.awoo.ai · 2023-09-13T07:15:35+00:00 — Discusses: Can structured data markup that does not match the page’s content harm search performance?
- 什麼是反向連結? SEO一定要做外部連結嗎？www.da-vinci.com.tw · 2025-04-14T17:45:24+08:00 — Discusses: Is building a link network to gain backlinks risky?
- Mastering SEO Audits: Unlocking Insights with the Screaming Frog SEO Spiderwww.screamingfrog.co.uk · 2023-10-18T10:42:49+00:00 — Source used in the article above.
- Google Search Console Errors: Identifying and Fixing Themwww.semrush.com · 2024-03-20T10:51:00Z — Source used in the article above.
- Toxic links and disavows: A comprehensive SEO guidewww.warriorforum.com — Discusses: Is building a link network to gain backlinks risky?
- Redirect Chain Guide: How To Identify & Fix Redirect Chainsneilpatel.com · 2023-10-09T19:00:00+00:00 — Discusses: What can happen when redirects pass through too many intermediate URLs?
- 9 Common Hreflang Errors (and How to Fix Them)www.semrush.com · 2024-01-18T11:49:00Z — Discusses: What happens if multilingual pages omit self-referencing hreflang tags?
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