Negative search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the unethical practice of purposefully damaging the search engine rankings of a rival. Link spam is the most common method used to do this, with the goal of undermining the authority of a website in Google’s eyes.
It is safe to overlook negative SEO assaults, according to officials of Google, since Google has the ability to identify and reject spammy links that are of poor quality. Nevertheless, the SEO community continues to have skepticism over this.
Their suspicion is partly based on the fact that Google has proved its ability to punish webmasters for engaging in manipulative techniques, in addition to the fact that certain negative SEO strategies have been found to be successful.
How To Prevent From Attack?
- Google considers link spam to a competitor’s website the main component of bad SEO. The “punishment” for link spam is expected to be a search engine penalty.Attackers also dilute the website’s subject value and correlate it with spammy search phrases by linking to it with unrelated, spammy anchor texts.In the worst instance, a website might be penalized and removed from Google.
- Negative SEO also affects local search and reviews. An attacker may flood your site or Google business page with nasty reviews.This may damage your business’s reputation and local search results.
- Black-hat SEO often involves website hacking. Attackers might edit your robots.txt file, put pages to “noindex,” or insert links to spammy websites if they acquire temporary access to your website.
How To Spot Negative SEO?
- Check your backlinks for spammy, irrelevant links. Backlink checkers like Semrush and Ahrefs may spot dodgy connections.
- Material scraping or theft may occur if your website’s material appears on other sites without authorization. Your search engine visibility may suffer.
- Make sure to keep an eye on your internet reputation and respond quickly to any unwanted attempts.