Negative SEO is something that I personally would never execute on because I’m a believer in Karma. That doesn’t stop others from getting their hands dirty and wreaking havoc on those around the web. In fact, it’s a tactic that is being deployed by many Black Hat SEOs around the world. Google is doing everything they can to prevent negative SEO, but with the web being as diverse and complex as it is, there is only so much they can do.
History of Negative SEO
For SEOs who have been around for a while, you’ve seen the glory days of search engine rankings. At one time you could achieve top rankings with simplistic bulk link building efforts, keyword stuffing, meta keywords and more. Fast forward a few years to 2012 when Google dropped the Penguin bomb heard around the world (web) and SEO changed. There was now an opportunity to unleash a negative SEO attack on any of your competitors who you wanted to beat out in the search engine landscape.
Common Negative SEO Strategies
In an environment as large as the world wide web, there is a seemingly unlimited number of ways you could harm your competitors with negative SEO or they could harm you. Below are the most common negative SEO attacks carried out by mean people across the globe:
- server sabotage
- removal of your good backlinks
- content scraping
- building of bad backlinks (to your site)
- penalty redirections
Seven Steps to Protect You From Negative SEO
To make sure you do everything you can to stay protected from negative SEO attacks here are 7 steps to guide you:
Step 1: Understand that Google is trying to fight negative SEO
First you need to understand that Google is trying to fight negative SEO attacks, with their official stance being covered in the following statement:
“Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages”.Mr. Google
[Side note: This statement is typical Google. Anyone who has tried to “contact a webmaster” of a domain that is most likely spammy understands how difficult it is to get a response (but Google makes it sound so simple!).]
Step 2: Set up a Google Webmaster account with Email alerts
This is a no brainer, but if you own a website then you should have a Google Webmaster Tools account verified. Google will communicate with you via GWMT letting you know if there are issues with your site. Some message that are common within Google Webmaster Tools are the following:
- If your website is experiencing a malware attack
- If your web pages are not indexed
- When your server is suffering from connection issues
- If and when you receive a manually implemented penalty from Google
Step 3: Use the Google Disavow Tool
The Google disavow tool can be used to disavow (effectively remove) a specific backlink that’s feeding into your site which you have deemed toxic. Toxic or harmful backlinks can have a severe impact on your rankings and authority in Google’s eyes. Using the disavow tool can repair the damage that SEO criminals have caused should someone have decided to unleash a bunch of spammy backlinks to your website. One thing to note however is that this tool can also remove good links too, so be careful about which links you Disavow.
Step 4: Consider using the Disavow Tool for entire domains
Beyond disavowing specific backlinks one by one, Google Webmaster Tools also provides the ability to ignore all links pointing to your site from an entire domain. This is useful because Spammers tend to pinpoint one domain they own and know has a bad reputation according to Google. They then can blast large amounts of links from it to any website of their choosing which will naturally negatively impact the domains that are being linked to.
Step 5: Contact the host of bad links directly
Let’s not forget that negative SEO attacks affect all search engines… not just Google, and the disavow tool will only help within the ranks of Google. It’s also a good idea to contact the Webaster directly for a any backlink that you would like removed. Using our free email address scraper or premium SEO tool will help you find the email address for the appropriate person to contact. You can then send them a message asking them specifically to remove your link. This will work about 30% of the time since in most cases the negative backlink you want removed comes from a website that has a Webmaster who won’t respond anyway.
Step 6: Make an official complaint to Google (and don’t forget other search engines)
If your website truly has been hit by a negative SEO attack, you could attempt to let Google know here. Although this is generally for reconsideration requests, it may also work to let Google know if you think you have been hit by a negative SEO attack. However, if you’ve done the Google dance before, you surely know that it’s a shot in the dark as to whether or not they respond/listen to you.
Step 7: Continue with your positive SEO efforts
The best form of defense is attack so make sure you are proactive in your SEO. A website that has stronger positive backlinks and authority across the web will be more difficult to take down with a Negative SEO scheme. Suggestions to keep your SEO strong are to create quality/lengthy content, build many social signals pointing users back to your site, and actively engaging with users around the web. Also be sure to evolve your SEO strategy regularly as Google is always making improvements (tweaks) to the algorithm that enslaves us all.
Featured image courtesy of Link Research Tools
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