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Negative SEO

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23 Nov 2022
Dharmesh Patel


Negative SEO

Understand More About Negative SEO And Ways To Tackle It

If you are associated with the online world, you know what Negative SEO actually stands for. But, if you are a first-timer or still confused about the term, then this article will explain it completely to you. Negative SEO is targeted to be a malicious practice, which is aimed at sabotaging the search ranks of the competitor’s website. It is a significant part of black hat SEO due to its malevolent nature. There are different forms of Negative SEO available these days and some of the most common examples will be:

  • Hacking a website
  • Creating toxic backlinks with spam anchor texts pointing to the website
  • Scraping website content and then creating duplicates of all the websites
  • Posting some fake negative reviews regarding the website
  • Removing the backlinks of the website by sending fake removal requests to all the webmasters

Ways to detect and then tackle negative SEO attacks:

An attacker is here to combine multiple efforts to make your website fall off the SERPs. To minimize the consequences of such an attack, there are some pre-emptive actions that you might want to consider.

Prevent website from getting hacked:

For negative SEO to work, it is important for the hacker to hijack your website wholly. You might have access to a website while an attacker has installed various spam signals that you cannot detect.

  • For detecting security breaches, you need to set up notifications in Google Search Console and then run site audits regularly for fixing any technical issues.
  • Moreover, you can use this tool to offer a top-level overview to tell you if there is any sign of a website getting hacked.
  • Finally, use the FTC-compliant assistant to report any hacking.

Combat fake backlinks:

Google might not see negative SEO as a serious back hat SEO tactic, but using Disavow tool might be a good thing if you were hit by a negative SEO attack when someone generates toxic links pointing to the website.

  • Whenever you see someone generating toxic backlinks pointing toward your site, you have to disavow them with the same process of fixing manual action from Google
  • In some cases, you need to go manual from one link to another, collect them as per the chosen criteria, and then disavow.

Protect your site from fake backlinks:

There are some simple actions you need to take while protecting your website from fake backlinks. There you have a summary of actions to take.

  • Use backlink audit tool for website regularly and then watch out for toxic store metric for detecting suspicious changes in backlink profile.
  • Check the trend and value of the website’s authority score. A drop in score might indicate that there is something wrong with the backlink profile.
  • Regularly updating the disavow file is mandatory if you get new toxic backlinks that you didn’t get the chance to remove.

Checking out the scraped content and some website doppelgangers:

The identical or same content will not just trigger cannibalization issues but will further result in websites or specified pages getting completely filtered out in search results.

  • Attackers might look for chances to duplicate the whole website or even some parts of it to sabotage your performance level.
  • For detecting such malicious behavior related to copying content or the entire site, make sure to audit the website regularly using tools like Siteliner or Copyscape.
  • If you ever come across a site copying your content, then contact the provider where the fake site has been hosted and explain the reason why it should be taken down.
  • Make sure to use the power of Google form to report it and then demand it gets taken down.
  • Use the FTC Compliant assistant to report the said imposter right away without wasting time from your side.

Find and then report fake negative reviews about your site:

Posting fake reviews will vary depending on the said case. Fake reviews will hardly ruin the reputation of a larger retail company but can hurt a smaller business firm. As per Google, reviews do have impacted your SERP performance and then fake reviews are going to harm it.

  • Making people fall for such feedback will demand well-crafted reviews. Spreading negativity will degrade the site’s reputation and the traffic will then go down.
  • For this, the attacker needs to try really hard to ruin the reputation of the website and there is no guarantee if that effort will work. 
  • Still, you have to check out for such activities by monitoring online reviews well.
  • In case you think the review is genuinely fake then you have to report it to the site’s administration where the “review” gets published. 

You can read more about these fake reviews and negative SEO practices from online sources. So, try to find out those answers right away through thorough research.

Report the current fake backlink removal request:

Make sure to watch out for all your valuable backlinks. You have no clue when the attacker will start sending out fake removal requests asking your referral domain to remove the links.

  • There is hardly any guarantee that the webmaster where the link was posted will not follow such fraud requests. 
  • For detecting the disappearance of these valuable links, you need to set up notifications to track lost and found backlinks in the backlink Audit tool.

Getting all your questions answered:

The points, mentioned above, clearly portray how to tackle negative reviews from the get-go. But, if you are still skeptical and need to know more about negative SEO, then asking experts some questions and getting your issues resolved will be a great call to address. Understanding the steps associated with negative SEO is important and that will help you to tackle every move, even better. So, get your queries resolved the right way for a better response.