We all know that Google has been severely punishing websites that use black hat SEO techniques since the Penguin algorithm update.
What if someone malicious (like your competitor) starts applying these techniques on your website in order to penalize you?
This, ladies and gentlemen, is called negative SEO.
What is negative SEO?
Negative SEO involves using Black Hat SEO techniques on other websites with the aim of having them penalized by Google. Negative SEO can also mean reducing a website’s SEO effectiveness by disabling or modifying them.
Dealing with negative SEO techniques can be quite difficult because some of these techniques are beyond your control, such as creating bad links to your site. Additionally, they are difficult to detect.
Unlike some hacking practices that aim to simply destroy a site, a negative SEO attack does not affect the appearance of the site.
Instead, the effects only become apparent when the site experiences a drop in search engine ranking and a decrease in incoming traffic. And this, it is important to note, can happen for completely different reasons.
Why would anyone commit a negative SEO attack?
Just like with hackers, the motivations behind negative SEO attacks can vary. They can sabotage a competitor who is doing too well for their liking. In some cases, businesses may also ignore SEO rules and start using black hat techniques to improve their site’s ranking.
And of course, there are always those who do this simply for the pleasure of annoying others.
How to protect yourself against negative SEO attack?
Fortunately, there are several ways to protect against and even prevent negative SEO attacks:
- Keep an eye on your website
The best way to guard against negative SEO techniques is to monitor your site regularly . Use tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics to keep tabs on your organic traffic performance.
If you suddenly notice a significant drop in either, it could be a sign of negative SEO in progress. Also be alert for any unexpected changes in your link profile.
- Be careful with creating backlinks
Bad links can easily harm your site, so it’s important to be very selective when it comes to linking. Avoid link exchanges with dubious or suspicious sites and ensure that all incoming links come from reliable and relevant sources.
If you notice a sudden spike in suspicious links pointing to your site, it is best to disavow these links using Google Search Console to avoid any risk of penalties.
Why would anyone commit a negative SEO attack?
Just like with hackers, the motivations behind negative SEO attacks can vary. They can sabotage a competitor who is doing too well for their liking. In some cases, businesses may also ignore SEO rules and start using black hat techniques to improve their site’s ranking.
And of course, there are always those who do this simply for the pleasure of annoying others.
How to protect yourself against negative SEO attack?
Fortunately, there are several ways to protect against and even prevent negative SEO attacks:
- Keep an eye on your website
The best way to guard against negative SEO techniques is to monitor your site regularly . Use tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics to keep tabs on your organic traffic performance.
If you suddenly notice a significant drop in either, it could be a sign of negative SEO in progress. Also be alert for any unexpected changes in your link profile.
- Be careful with creating backlinks
Bad links can easily harm your site, so it’s important to be very selective when it comes to linking. Avoid link exchanges with dubious or suspicious sites and ensure that all incoming links come from reliable and relevant sources.
If you notice a sudden spike in suspicious links pointing to your site, it is best to disavow these links using Google Search Console to avoid any risk of penalties.
- Changing SEO settings:
Let’s be honest, would you notice if someone changed the alt text on your images to make it less effective? Many fundamental SEO techniques are designed to be done and then forgotten, leaving you vulnerable to these attacks. Even a small change can lead Google to completely ignore a website.
- Changing redirects:
Search engines don’t like error pages, they are considered bad. Sites that automatically redirect from bad pages usually aren’t penalized too much, but if you change, disable, or encrypt your redirects, you may lose ranking spots.
The good news is that negative SEO attacks are harder to pull off and easier for a competent team of programmers to fix.
The likelihood of negative SEO attacks
It’s not difficult to find negative SEO services, but are they worth it? With everything we’ve discussed here, you would think that negative SEO is taking over and it’s impossible to keep up. Google is pretty good at detecting negative SEO. For example, if someone tries to overtake you with links, it is very likely that the link from that page will only be counted as one more vote.
This is unlikely to really harm you. Also keep in mind that while Google actively combats Black Hat SEO practices, some of them may go unnoticed for a while. This means that negative SEO attempts do not guarantee that the victim will be penalized by Google. They can even have the opposite effect and help the target obtain a better ranking!
Hacking attempts aren’t very difficult to avoid either, provided you use a robust system to protect your website (and keep it up to date). Also avoid using easy admin passwords, just because you think no one will want to destroy your modest website. As they say: prevention is better than cure. In general, negative SEO can be expensive, labor-intensive, and risky. On the other hand, success is not guaranteed, and even if it works, it can be easily fixed as soon as the target person realizes what is happening.
How to protect your website from negative SEO
Detection
The first step to protecting your website is to spot the signs of an attack, such as a sudden drop in organic traffic. This can be easily noticed if you regularly monitor your traffic with Google Analytics. A sharp drop in organic traffic can sometimes indicate a penalty from Google. You can also set up an email notification service that will notify you by email if your website is no longer indexed or receives a manual penalty.
If you know you haven’t done anything wrong, it could mean your website is under attack. The sooner you know, the sooner you can react and minimize the damage.
Google Disavow
Google’s answer to negative SEO is the Disavow tool. Basically it’s saying, “I don’t like or trust this link, please don’t count it for my ranking.” By rejecting low-quality links, you prevent your website from being associated with them and protect your ranking and reputation.
Using the Disavow tool also shows Google that you care about the quality of the links pointing to your site. This will be taken into account when Google’s Webspam team considers punishing your website if they discover a flood of low-quality links pointing to you. To find these bad links, you can use Ahrefs or SEMrush. These tools allow you to examine your links in depth and directly create a Disavow file to disavow links.
Diversification of traffic sources
In addition to detecting and rejecting bad links, another important step to take to protect your website from negative SEO is to diversify your traffic sources. If you are too dependent on organic traffic from search engines, a negative SEO attack can have a huge impact on your site. By having other traffic sources such as social media, ad campaigns, direct traffic, and referral traffic, you can mitigate the effects of a drop in your organic traffic.
Continuous monitoring
Finally, it is important to continually monitor your site for signs of attack or suspicious behavior. This can be done using traffic and security monitoring tools, such as Google Analytics, SEMrush, and security plugins for your site. If you notice suspicious or unusual activity, it’s important to act quickly to protect your site from future attacks.
Review your SEO settings
This is not related to any specific issue, but you should check your SEO settings regularly. This includes checking your robot.txt from time to time or randomly checking the internal coding of your pages (titles, image alt tags, etc.). An SEO tool with regular crawls can help you detect certain anomalies more quickly.
Identify scraped content and duplicates
Identical content can not only lead to cannibalization issues, but can also result in sites or certain pages being completely filtered from search results. Attackers can duplicate all or part of your website to sabotage its performance in search results.
To detect malicious behavior related to copying your content or your site, you should regularly check the web with tools like Copyscape or Siteliner.
