In recent years, SEO has undergone major transformations. As a result, SEO professionals and digital marketing experts have dramatically changed their strategies. Ranking on Google for competitive keywords is no longer as easy as it used to be. In addition, since black hat SEO has become harder to implement and less effective, a new type of SEO has emerged »called Negative SEO«.
You may have noticed a sudden drop in organic traffic to your website over the past few months and not been able to find a reason for it. Although it is unlikely, negative SEO could be the culprit. In this article, we will help you understand the concept of negative SEO and learn how to protect your business from it.
What is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO is a malicious attempt to damage a business’s visibility in search engine results. Essentially, negative SEO occurs when a competitor uses black hat SEO tactics to try to damage the rankings of a competing website or page.
The idea is to make the target website appear as if it is using spammy SEO tactics that are against search engine policies. This can be an incentive for search engines to prevent that website from achieving its SEO goals. They may also try to tarnish the business’s image in the eyes of users so that they do not click on the website’s links.
For years, Google spokespeople have been advising webmasters to ignore threats and attacks and instead focus on improving their websites. This is because search engines are constantly improving their ability to detect and ignore negative SEO attacks.
So, if you see a drop in keyword rankings or organic traffic, it is likely not due to negative SEO. However, many marketers believe that these attacks can damage rankings and brand reputation. As a result, it is essential to familiarize yourself with the different types of negative SEO and how to combat them.
What is Google’s view on negative SEO?
Google’s official stance on this, as of 2021, is that negative SEO does not work, and it has been consistent for years.
John Mueller likened negative SEO to a »meme«, and »Gary Ellis« made similar statements:
»I have looked at hundreds of alleged negative SEO cases, and none of them have been the actual cause of damage to a website. While it is easy to blame negative SEO, the reason for the drop in traffic is usually something else that you are unaware of, like an algorithm update or a website issue«.
Nonetheless, many SEO experts agree that relying solely on Google’s statements is not always the best idea. Therefore, it is better to say: »Negative SEO can still work, but it is significantly less of a problem than it used to be«.We will explain how this argument can be true by looking at ways to counter different negative SEO techniques.
Is Negative SEO the same as Black Hat SEO?
Negative SEO is sometimes mistakenly called Black Hat SEO. But remember that Black Hat SEO is a general term for any SEO technique that violates search engine guidelines to gain unfair rankings.
Whereas Negative SEO is a specific tactic of Black Hat SEO where someone intentionally tries to damage another website’s search rankings by using various methods such as creating low-quality backlinks.
Negative SEO Techniques and How to Deal with Them
Here are the most common types of negative SEO attacks and how to identify, address, and prevent them.
Hacking
Hacking and cyberattacks are a type of negative SEO. Hackers can gain unauthorized access to a website and damage its SEO in a variety of ways. For instance, they can remove or modify your content, redirect URLs to spammy pages, or insert destructive code that harms your users.
Since Google is all about protecting its users and has a negative view of any website that hosts malware (or links to websites that do it). If Google cannot remove the website directly from its search engine results (SERP), it will add a »This website may have been hacked« label to the results associated with that website. Users are more likely to not click on a result with such a label. Consequently, if your website is marked as hacked, you should expect a drop in the rankings and view of your website.
How to detect a website hack?
Of all the negative SEO attacks, the easiest to detect is hacking. To prevent this damage, you can:
- Scan your website regularly with security software.
- Enable security notifications in Google Search Console.
- Check for any sudden drops in your SEO results.
Of course, it is better to look for a way to prevent these attacks before they occur.
- Install a security plugin.
- Use strong passwords. (»password1« is not enough to log in to your WordPress. Using a strong password will help prevent brute force attacks.)
- Keep your content management system (and plugins) up to date. Enabling automatic updates is the best option.
- Link Removals
Some competitors may try to remove your external backlinks. To do this, they will contact the referring website and request the link to be removed, while representing your business.
Whenever you have encountered disappearance of your quality backlinks, even if you do not suspect negative SEO attacks, it is better to investigate the matter more closely.
In most cases, there is a logical reason for the removal of the backlink. For example, the page on which your link was located may have been deleted, redirected to another page, or its content has been updated.
However, if you do not find any obvious reason for the loss of your backlinks, it could indicate a link removal attack. In such cases, it is better to contact the websites that previously linked to you and ask why the link was removed.
This way, you will quickly find out if someone has sent a fake link removal request. Even if there is a justifiable reason for removing the link, they may decide to reinstate it after you follow up.
How to Monitor Lost Links?
Semrush
You can use the Backlink Audit tool in Semrush to monitor backlinks. Then go to the »Lost & Found« report. Click on the »Lost« tab to see the links you have lost in the last three months.
According to the reports in this section, if you have lost a valuable backlink, you can contact the reference website and ask them to restore the link.
Also, to prevent losing links in the future, enable automatic link review.
Click on the gear icon and open the »Recrawl schedule« option.
Specify whether you want to check backlinks weekly, biweekly, or monthly.
Then enable the email notification option and save the settings.
Ahrefs
The next way to detect link removal attacks is to use the Ahrefs tool alerts. In addition to showing all new links which have been referred to your website, Ahrefs backlink alerts can also notify you of missing backlinks.
Content Scraping
Content scraping is when someone copies your content and reposts it on another website. Most of the time, people are just looking to get free content and do not intend to damage your website; nevertheless, it can still be a negative SEO attack.
When faced with duplicate content, Google will only choose one version to display and rank and ignore the others because it does not want to give users results with almost identical content.
You can hope that Google is smart enough to recognize your website as the main source of the content, although more often than not, this takes place.
But sometimes your content may be published on a reputable website, and Google will take this authority as a sign that the content must have come from there, and the copied version will be displayed instead of the original one. This can reduce organic traffic to the main website.
How to detect a content plagiarism attack?
The quickest and easiest way to find out whether your content has been plagiarized or not is to copy a paragraph of your content and search it on Google (“using quotation marks”).
Note that Google only searches up to 32 words and ignores anything in the search box that is longer than that.
Google Search Console
If you suspect that some of your URLs may be affected by content duplication, you can check their status in Search Console at any time. You should look for the option »Google-selected canonical«.
You will find this option after pasting the URL into the address bar of the Inspection section of Search Console. If you see the inspected URL in this section, it means that Google has considered that URL to be the most authoritative version of the content. If you see another internal URL there, you confront a duplicate content issue. If you see an external URL, it means that you encounter a negative SEO attack.
Malicious Link Building
Creating a large number of low-quality links to your competitors’ websites is probably the most common form of negative SEO, and it is also one of the most fundamental way. These links may stem from spam comments or private networks (PBNs).
There are generally two main approaches to spammy link building for negative SEO:
- Sending thousands of low-quality links to your website.
- Creating a large number of links with exactly the same anchor text as the keyword for a particular page, so that the anchor text ratio of the website is unnaturally high.
Both approaches are designed to get your website penalized by search engines; but fortunately, these tactics are easy to spot.
How to identify spammy link building?
You can use the Referring domains and pages graphs in Site Explorer Ahrefs tool to quickly identify sudden growth in your backlink profile.
Site Explorer > Enter domain > Overview
Keep in mind that sometimes, a sudden increase in referring domains can be a good sign. For instance, one of your posts may have gone viral or your link building campaign may have gone well. However, it can still be a sign of a negative SEO attack.
To take a closer look:
- Open the Backlinks report.
- Change the view mode to “One link per domain.”
- Apply the Dofollow filter.
- Select the New Backlinks filter.
- Specify the period of time associated with the growth.
- Sort the results according to domain traffic in ascending order.
At this point, you will probably observe patterns in the referring pages and anchor texts. You can filter them out as well.
Be careful not to click on suspicious websites and links, as they may pose security threats to you.
The above method is suitable for large-scale attacks where a large number of links are sent to your website. However, if you want to detect attempts to manipulate the anchor text ratio:
- Open the Anchor Text Report.
- Select Dofollow Links.
- Check the Ref. pages column and see the percentage of anchor text used.
If the percentage of keyword-rich anchor text is abnormally high, it is a sign of bad link building practices or even a hidden negative SEO attack.
In such cases, you should ask the websites in which your website link is inserted to remove the links as much as possible. If this solution does not work, use disavow of the links.
- Review Bombing
You probably check other users’ reviews before you go to a restaurant or when you shop online. Google’s snippets can accurately display ranking and review criteria in search results, in such a way that capturing users’ attention and influencing them (positively or negatively).
How to identify fake reviews?
The simplest way to recognize fake reviews is to check for brand reviews in Google search results. While Google uses an automated spam detection system to remove fake reviews, it is a good idea to manually review comments so you can take action quickly if you miss one.
To remove a fake review (or any review that violates Google’s policies), you can submit a request through your Google Business Profile.
Unauthorized Hotlinking
Hotlinking allows webmasters to load media such as images directly from another website, rather than hosting them on their own server.
Unauthorized and excessive linking can be considered a negative SEO attack. It puts pressure on the hosting website’s servers, which slows down the website and ultimately leads to lower rankings. This type of attack is also known as »bandwidth theft«.
How to prevent hotlinking?
To combat unauthorized hotlinking on WordPress websites, you can use plugins like All-In-One-Security.
Add the following code to your .htaccess file (replace “samplesite.com” with your website address):
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://(www\.)?samplesite.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|jpeg|mp3|png|pdf|zip)$ – [F]
- Wrong Parameters in URL
URL parameters are values that are placed in the URL string of a page and are commonly used in e-commerce systems to filter and sort pages. These parameters can provoke in serious indexing problems, especially if your website is not configured correctly.
A page with very minor changes in content may be indexed multiple times. Negative SEO can easily take advantage of this situation. By linking to pages on your website with fake parameters.
How to identify wrong URL parameters?
To combat such attacks, it is better to take preventive measures from the beginning. However, the easiest way to identify this type of attack is to check the pages report in Google Search Console.
If you see a substantial increase in indexed pages, this could indicate a Negative SEO attack.
Conclusion
Website security and search engine results are very important for any business that seeks success. Negative SEO is one of the ways that competitors can jeopardize your brand’s SEO using various techniques. In this article, we have reviewed 6 of the most crucial Negative SEO techniques in addition to strategies to combat them so that you can prevent such attacks from occurring.
