When it comes to making your website rank, you need to ensure that your SEO is up to scratch and part of that is removing any Negative SEO. There are many different forms of negative SEO, some of which may have been carried out accidentally, while others could have been done in order to jeopardise your website.
In this article we will cover everything you need to know about Negative SEO and some of the best ways to combat it.
What is Negative SEO?
In the most basic form, Negative SEO is anything that goes against Google’s code of practice and will result in penalties being given to your website. This will depreciate the value of your website and cause your visibility in search engine results to drop considerably. Some of the types of negative SEO include:
• Paid linking
• Stealing content
• Duplicate content
• Deliberate over-optimisation
• Porn spam
Why do people use Negative SEO?
The main reason anyone would use this tactic is to downgrade the competition’s website and therefore gain an advantage within the industry. It is also done to try and suppress bad news stories about an individual or company as a form of Search Engine Reputation Management. Some cyber criminals also carry out targeted attacks for political, financial and even personal reasons.
Unfortunately, these tactics do have a tendency to work quite effectively which is why it should be your top priority to protect your website from these attacks. Before you start getting seriously worried about being hit by a Negative SEO campaign, it is important to note that:
• Sites with strong domain authorities are less likely to be affected by negative SEO
• Most legitimate SEO agencies will not engage in this tactic
• Google is aware of negative SEO and has systems in place to help them recover from this issue
• Monitoring your backlinks and reviews regularly will help to give you early warning to any negative campaigns.
How to set up a defence
There is no programme or software you can put in place in order to stop your website being attacked by a negative SEO campaign, although there are many practices that will help to ensure that you aren’t as heavily affected. By ensuring that your SEO campaigns follow the rules of Google and build a strong foundation, then it will be very obvious when negative SEO is being used.
Having a good search engine optimisation agency working for you is the best defence against spammy attacks and purchased links. There are many tactics that can be employed to counter these issues and keep your website performing well. To find out more, come and talk to us today!
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