Understanding Negative SEO: What it is and how to help your website
In the current world of digital marketing competition, several business entities spend their resources to increase their search engine ranking and organic traffic to their business sites
What Is Negative SEO
Negative SEO refers to exercises that are meant to have a negative impact on any competitor’s search engine ranking. Contrary to the optimized SEO where the aim is optimized for better performance, a negative SEO is designed to stain the site and its search engine results. Such actions can result in penalties with the search engine, for instance Google, and could greatly reduce the reputation of a business.
Methods Used in Negative SEO
Depending on the level of skill employed or the tool used to launch the attack, negative SEO can be basic or complex. Here are some of the most common tactics:
1. Backlink Spam: Linking a large number of free sites with low-quality or links with irrelevant contents or contents that are full of spam to the website of a competitor, is perceived by search engines as a black-hat SEO.
2. Content Scraping: Taking and reposting a website’s content across the internet can earn the site duplicate content penalties, which hurts the rankings.
3. Hacking and Malware: When the hacker seeks to exploit a website through hacking or injecting malware they stand the risk of making the site unreliable.
4. Negative Reviews: Thepracticeofwritingand submittingnegative fake reviews on a company or business’s digital presence, such as Google My Business or review websites, can negatively impact a company’s growth by reducing the chances of any potential clientele visiting or even buying from the complained about business owing to the negative reviews left by the fake reviewer who has a hidden agenda in the first place.
5. Keyword Cannibalization: Developing web pages with related terms on fake websites in order to cause confusion to search engine and thereby reduce the target website’s keyword ranking ability. De-indexing: The process of trying to make a competitor’s site no longer come out in search engines through submitting fake removal requests.
How to Avoid Dangerous Negative SEO
While negative SEO can be challenging to detect and combat, there are steps you can take to safeguard your website:
1. Monitor Backlinks Regularly: To track changes in your backlink profile and look for trackers, use Google Search Console as well as the tools Ahrefs or SEMrush. By utilizing Google’s Disavow Tool, disavow costly links.
2. Invest in Website Security: Use the firewalls, use SSL certificates and ensure that the used software’s are up dated from hackers and other types of malware.
3. Track Content for Duplicates: To avoid falling victim of the scrapers it’s wise to use plagiarism detection tools such as Copyscape.
4. Encourage Genuine Reviews: Promote your company on social media by leveraging the wisdom of consumers and asking them to provide positive feedback. Always acknowledge complaints and bad comments immediately and politely.
5. Monitor Website Performance: Constantly monitor your website analytics so that you’ll be able to recognize any sharp loss in traffic and/or ranking positioning which are signs of affiliated negative SEO.
6. Stay Informed: Learn what is new in SEO and what new threats may occur in cybersecurity field to be ready to prevent them.
conclusion
Negative SEO seems and is, in equal measures, a cold snapshot of the underbelly of competition online. If you stay watchful, alert, and learn ways to protect yourself and act quickly to threats if they arise, you can prevent yourself from being on the radar and keep your website business going strong. Just a quick reminder, the only effective strategy against malicious SEO and other unethical practices is preventing them, or at least minimizing their impact on your site.
ALSO READ THIS: Mastering Video SEO: Working With Ad Revenue: A Guide to Increase Your Video Exposure
