What is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO-a “black hat” tactic aimed at sabotaging a competitor’s website search rankings.
Negative SEO types
- Hacking a website
- Creating toxic backlinks with spammy anchor texts pointing. to the website
- Scraping a website’s content and creating duplicates of the website
- Posting fake negative reviews
- Removing the website’s backlinks by sending out fake removal requests to webmasters
How to prevent a Negative SEO Attack
- Set up alerts in Google Search Console
- Perform regular site audits for technical issues
- Perform regular backlink audits
- Perform regular duplicate content audits
- Use the Disavow tool for spammy looking backlinks. Monitor online reviews. for legitimacy
- Avoid thin content by creating unique, engaging & helpful content
Spotting and proving a negative SEO attack is tricky. Here’s how you can differentiate.
Possible signs of a Negative SEO attack
- Hijacked website
- Changes to robot.txt or sitemap
- An significant increase in spammy backlinks & lost or removed quality backlinks
- Cloned website or content
- Spotting mass fake negative reviews
What is NOT Negative SEO
- An existing backlink profile containing many toxic backlinks
- Organic ranking drops due to algorithm changes or filters
- An increase in negative reviews from legitimate customers.
