Negative SEO refers to practices aimed at harming a website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). This can include various methods, including but not limited to, acquiring large amounts of spam links that lead to the target website. These activities are considered unethical and, in some cases, illegal, and can result in penalties from search engines like Google.
Negative SEO has been known for many years but gained particular attention with the introduction of Google’s Penguin update back in 2012. The Penguin update changed how Google handled spam links by penalizing websites that received an unnatural amount of such links. This was a significant shift from earlier practices where bad links were simply ignored in link evaluations.
Methods of Executing Negative SEO
- Link Farms: Creating or buying links from link farms that produce large quantities of low-quality links.
- Scraping and Duplicating Content: Copying content from the target website and distributing it broadly on dubious platforms to create content duplication.
- Malicious SEO: This includes hacking a website to directly implant malicious code or hidden links.
- Negative Reviews: Orchestrating fake negative reviews of businesses to harm their online reputation.
Protection Against Negative SEO
- Regular Monitoring of Backlinks: Using tools like Google Search Console to monitor and assess the quality of incoming links.
- Quick Response to Harmful Links: Using Google’s Disavow Tool to disavow harmful links.
- Strengthening Website Security: To prevent hacking and the injection of malicious code.
- Maintaining a Good Online Reputation: Actively working on reputation management, including responding to customer reviews and engaging on social media.
Recent Developments
Over time, Google has integrated the Penguin algorithm into its main algorithm, Hummingbird, making it more granular in its approach to identifying and penalizing websites involved in link spam. This has made negative SEO more challenging but not impossible, and it remains a risk that website owners should be aware of.
Negative SEO was once a serious threat to any website dependent on organic search traffic. Today, it is not as common as it used to be but can still pose a threat to a website.
