The Truth About Negative SEO

Any word with the term “negative” attached is going to cause some sort of drama or controversy, and this includes the term SEO. Negative SEO has been a focus for webmasters and for Google for quite some time, and some even believe that negative SEO can work. This makes it a hot issue that is only getting more popular due to the recent announcement of the Google Penguin Update. Although Google is trying to stop negative SEO, it’s important for webmasters to be aware of everything that is connected with their website to make sure that they are not a victim of it.

For those who are unfamiliar, negative SEO is when one website either hacks into your website and makes negative changes, reports your website to Google for no reason, or purchases spam links and then points them to the sites of competitors. The idea is that your competitor will be penalized by Google; thus allowing your site to rise above. This is seen as unethical and in most cases it is considered worse than any of the other black hat SEO tactics.

How to Make Sure You are Not a Victim of Negative SEO

There are fortunately a few things that a webmaster can do to help prevent negative SEO from bringing down his/her site:

• Security Weaknesses – Malware and hacks can occur if you have any security trouble with your FTP logins. A hacker will then be able to come in and place malware onto your site and make negative changes to the site. Probably the first thing that a hacker would do is block the Google bots from finding your site by going into your robots.txt file. This is so minimal that many webmasters wouldn’t even know what hit them. Try and make sure that you purchase security software and pay attention to any updates that ever need to be made.
• Spam Reporting – Google allows users to report spam in order to help ensure that the search engine is putting out the best results for users. This makes it extremely easy for competitors to report your website a few different times and get Google to take a really good look. In theory, if you have a quality site then Google will not drop your ranking, but having many complaints from your competitors is something that could cause you problems. It’s important to be on the lookout and let Google know your concerns if you’re continually getting complaints about your website.
• Fake Emails – According to Rand Fishkin’s article on SEOMoz, there are some competitors who create fake email addresses and then email other sites telling them to take down all of the links that link back to the site that they are trying to outrank. Therefore it is important to have a good reputation and presence on the Internet so that sites will not believe these fake emails. Make sure your contact information is very clear on your website so that any sites that want to do extra research will know that the fake address is not really you.

There is also quite a bit of speculation as to other things that competitors have done to bring down the rankings of other sites including hiring people to create fake Google reviews or linking back to the site on spammy websites created specifically to bring down the competitor.

So What’s the Truth about Negative SEO?

The truth about negative SEO is that it does exist, it can work, and it can often be hard to notice. What is particularly scary about negative SEO is the fact that it takes longer and is harder for Google to track. If someone is sending fake emails or reporting something to Google, it’s going to take some research to really figure out what is going on. Other black hat tactics can be discovered fairly quickly with Google’s algorithms, but negative SEO has managed to get around this by putting a lot of effort into the scheme.

Fortunately, Google is trying to help solve the issue and is not letting up. The recent Penguin Update is just one of many attempts to stop spam and negative SEO. However, it is important for the webmaster to understand some of these risks and always keep them in the back of his/her head if the site ever drops below a competitor.

Have you ever been the victim of negative SEO? What did you do to help resolve the issue?

About the Author

I am one of the owners at CettaTech - Online Advertising. We provide Online Advertising to small businesses. Come and learn more SEO/internet marketing tips and best practices to implement into your website each day. Visit http://onlineadvertising.cettatech.com/Blog to read more helpful articles.