Negative SEO is a real threat to your website’s rankings and reputation. Either a competitor trying to chip away at your efforts or a bad incident caused by poor backlinks and whether you have it under control or not, you need to know and deal with negative SEO if you want to keep your online presence healthy.
Based on insights from the Grumpy SEO Guy podcast, this guide will walk you through negative SEO, what tactics are used against you and what you can do to protect your website.
What is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO is any unethical tactic aimed at reducing a competitor’s website ranking in search engine results. Can go from a harmful backlink to more advanced tactics that exploit high authority links. Negative SEO has been around for a while, but a newer version of it, called “Negative SEO 2.0,” is becoming popular.
Negative SEO is real and it’s best to ward it off by getting your site in the hands of a reputable SEO company. Still have no idea about what SEO budget might mean and how it is better to address the question of the prices? For further information on how to read SEO costs and choose the best variant for your business, kindly read the guide on understanding SEO Pricing Models for Businesses.
Traditional Negative SEO Tactics
1. Bad Backlink Creation
The most common form of negative SEO is when someone uses a hack to intentionally generate spammy, low quality backlinks pointing to a competitor’s site. Typically, these are irrelevant, and the sources are shady. If the search engines find these bad links they will penalize the website that is being targeted which will drop its ranking.
2. Spammy Backlinks with Irrelevant Anchor Text
This is when you send hundreds or thousands of backlinks to that site with a completely irrelevant anchor text to the content on that site. It leads to that to unnatural backlink profile which may be read by search engines as an effort of manipulating the rankings.
Impact: Implementation of such tactics can lead to decrease in rankings by very significant amounts, or penalties from search engines, such as Google. Not only is negative SEO damaging to your competitors’ rankings, it is also time consuming and difficult to rectify.
“Negative SEO 2.0” – The New Threat
Paying for Link Removal
The newer, more insidious form of negative SEO is to pay website owners to remove high authority backlinks from a competitor’s site. The tactic behind this is to lower the competitor’s site rank by reducing its link authority.
Why It’s Dangerous: Turning to this practice is unethical and may be fruitful if the competition has used the authority of strong backlinks. If you remove these backlinks, it will damage their SEO profile and make it more difficult for them to rank well.
SEO Fundamentals: What You Need to Know
1. Avoid Penalties
Good SEO is about avoiding penalties. Google’s algorithms are so smart they detect unnatural link building and spammy tactics. If you are a victim of negative SEO, you run the risk of being penalized and that could seriously set you back.
2. Build Website Authority
The more backlinks you have, the better off you’ll be in the world of SEO. And sometimes, the backlinks matter even more than the content itself. Backlinks from authoritative sites with good quality help to build your website’s authority and also helps you rank better.
3. Content is Important, but Authority Matters More
Ranking does take high quality content, but it’s the authority (via backlinks) that usually makes all the difference. Even the best content can have troubles ranking on the first page of search result if they don’t have a solid backlink profile.
4. Beware of Unreliable Agencies and Vendors
There are many unreliable SEO agencies and backlink vendors who provide either low quality backlinks or other practices which could hurt your site. With backlinks or SEO, always be careful.
5. The Risks of Guest Posting and Link Outreach
Not all the backlinks that are out there have the same value in as far as the site’s authority and rankings are concerned. There are practices like guest posting and link outreach that can benefit from, yet do more harm than a favor if improperly implemented.
How to Protect Your Website from Negative SEO
Step 1: Monitor Your Backlink Profile Regularly
With Google Search Console or any third party backlink checkers, you can monitor your backlink profile. Make sure also to watch out for sudden spikes of spammy backlinks which could indicate an attack of negative SEO.
Step 2: Disavow Harmful Backlinks
If you find bad backlinks pointing to your site, use the Google Disavow Tool to tell Google to not even consider those links. This protects your site from the penalties that these backlinks create.
Step 3: Regular Site Audits
Regular website audits will help you find any vulnerabilities. Free audits are not something to rely on as they are generally shallow, and inaccurate. Charge for audits, but we will credit the cost against future services. It also enables you to receive a more thorough and actionable analysis of your site’s SEO health.
Step 4: Strengthen Your Link Profile
So invest in building a solid quality backlink profile over time. Don’t depend on shortcuts or black hat techniques to get links. Instead, concentrate on getting backlinks through content marketing, outreach, and creating relationship with strong sites in your niche.
Step 5: Stay Informed and Adapt
SEO is an ongoing process. While you’re doing it, don’t forget to continuously assess your strategies, learn new SEO trends and adjust your strategies to them. If you see any strange drops in rankings, go in to investigate and make changes if you need to.
How to Recover from Negative SEO
If you’ve already been the victim of negative SEO, don’t worry. Here’s what you can do:
- Investigate the Situation: If you notice unusual activity on your backlinks, look out for a ton of spammy links. Find the source and consider taking action to remove those links.
- Use the Disavow Tool: Once you’ve found the harmful links, you can use the Google Disavow Tool to tell Google to just ignore them. This will protect your site from penalties.
- Strengthen Your Content and Link Profile: Start building quality backlinks again. It will help to fight back the damage done by the negative SEO. Get links from reliable, authoritative websites.
- Consult an SEO Professional: If this is a bad situation, you may want to talk to an SEO professional and let them walk you through recovering.
Key SEO Advice and Best Practices
- Learn Link Building Before Investing: It’s important to understand how link building works before you invest in a service. Do not trust backlink vendors, most of them are scammers or unreliable.
- Avoid Giving Away Free Recommendations: Never share precise SEO strategies or recommendations for free. Your competitors can use this against you.
- Link Building is an Ongoing Process: SEO is not a one-time fix. It’s a never ending task, building up the authority of your website and optimizing your content. You should put more effort into link building and content quality, since the better the results will be.
Negative SEO is a dangerous threat, but you can protect your website from harm through the use of the right strategies. Keep monitoring your backlink profile, stay ahead of the game by building your authority the ethical way and make sure you are up to date with the latest SEO best practices.
By concentrating on ensuring you build a strong, reliable SEO foundation, you can fight negative SEO and ensure your website continues to rank well in search engines. SEO is not a one time process. Stay consistent, stay informed. Don’t let negative tactics get you down. For additional tips on overcoming the SEO challenges and for the latest trends, listen to the Grumpy SEO Guy podcast and check out more SEO best practices.