White-hat GEO: what we won't do, and why
Some of these tactics work for a while. When Google or a platform decides they break the rules, your domain takes the penalty, not ours. If a client asks for them, we decline that part of the work. Each row names its rule, so you can hold any provider to this list.
| We don't | What it means | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| Buy or trade links | Paying, or giving free product or services, for links or articles with links; link swaps; disguising bought links with "click here" or bare-URL anchor text. | Google's spam policies on link spam. Paid and sponsored links need rel="sponsored" or nofollow. |
| Keyword-swapped pages | Page after page per city or keyword, differing by a few words, all funnelling to the same landing page. | Google's doorway abuse and scaled content abuse policies: mass-producing pages to manipulate rankings, with or without AI. |
| Fake accounts and seeded posts | Posting under made-up identities, answering your own questions, trading upvotes, or pushing one claim across many accounts so AI thinks many people say it. | Reddit Rules, rule 2, bans content manipulation. The FTC's Endorsement Guides and its rule on fake reviews. |
| Undisclosed paid content | Articles, posts or reviews written for money, product or any other benefit without saying so; paying to appear on someone's "best of" list without it being marked as an ad. | FTC Endorsement Guides: material connections must be disclosed. |
| Borrowing another site's reputation | Publishing your page in a news or industry site's section or subdomain, unlabelled, mainly to ride that site's rankings. | Google's site reputation abuse policy. What is fine: a clearly labelled ad or sponsorship on a site relevant to your business, with rel="sponsored". Whether to buy one is your call. |
| Expired domains | Buying an old domain to use its past rankings for unrelated content. | Google's expired domain abuse policy. |
| Click and search farming | Paying people or running scripts to search for your brand and click through, or to like, comment and save. | Google's policies forbid sending it automated queries. |
| Invented numbers, absolute claims | Figures with no source; "best" or "#1" with nothing to back it. | Advertising law in most markets, and a practical problem: AI repeats invented numbers as fact. |
| Ranking promises | "Recommended by ChatGPT, guaranteed", "top 3 in two weeks", "70 out of 100 questions". | AI answers vary from run to run. Nobody controls these outcomes, and promising them invites false advertising claims. |
| "Humanizing" text to beat AI detectors | Rewriting content only to fool AI-writing detectors. | Passing a detector isn't an outcome you need. We deliver pages readers can use and facts they can check. |
What we do instead
- Pages on your own site, one real question each, facts confirmed by you.
- Off-site, real identities only, answering questions people already asked, with any affiliation stated up front.
- Your profiles on review sites and directories claimed and accurate. Reviews come from real buyers; gifted products are disclosed under each platform's rules.
- Paid placements only when labelled as ads, and only if you choose to buy them.
- Results shown with a public, re-runnable score, not screenshots.
The sources
- Google Search spam policies (link spam, doorways, scaled content, site reputation, expired domains, machine-generated traffic)
- Google: qualify your outbound links
- Reddit Rules (rule 2)
- FTC Endorsement Guides: what people are asking
- FTC rule on the use of consumer reviews and testimonials
Links checked between 2026-10-04 and 2026-10-08.
Take this list to any provider
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