What is Negative SEO, and how to detect it?
Still unsure about the term negative SEO? You have ever heard about Search Engine Optimization as SEO is essential to reach your site on top search results. But there also exists another type of SEO named Negative SEO, which is a real threat. In the past, it was easy to rank on competitive keywords, but now it has become challenging due to blackHat SEO.
If you are sincere with your business and want to rank it on Google Search results, you must avoid blackHat SEO. Fortunately! Here, you’re going to know all the exact information about Negative SEO and a complete guide on Securing your website from Negative SEO. Keep reading!
What is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO refers to using some malicious methods to rank your site on Google’s first page. Yes, these methods were effective, but not now as before because they’re penalized by Google. Those websites that are penalized by Google don’t take time to the dropdown. Therefore, we recommend you ever not choose harmful SEO methodsfor ranking your website.
Types of Negative SEO
There are a lot of tactics through which negative SEO is performed. You will wonder how they work and drop website ranking to very low after few excellent results. Who wants to be penalized by Google for a whole month? No one! So, if you want to detect negative SEO of your site, then don’t ignore this post; read it thoroughly!
1. Link Farm
In the past, this type was prevalent as it involved internal linking of two or more websites. For example, there are three sites, A, B, and C. When they do interlinking, A gives a link to B & C, and the same for others as B gives a link to A and C. Such a type of fake interlinking is called link farming.
Google launched the Penguin strategy for those who buy negative SEO tactics, but this tool detects Link Farming. The site is manipulated with such a type of interlinking; Google penalizes this site for one month. Try to avoid it and be honest in your matters.
2. Scraper
Scraping is a technique to steal your site’s content and create duplicate content on different websites. When Google detects plagiarized content on different sites, it’s possible for your site to be de-ranked. To avoid this issue, check your website’s content with a plagiarism checker tool named Copyscape, which will show duplicate content along with source links of sites where spammers have published your content.
3. Fake Reviews
Posting fake reviews, either good or bad, is against Google policies. Some jealous competitors leave negative reviews on your site; it will affect your business but not directly affect your SEO performance. (We do not offer such a service, because it is against the law.)
4. Heavy Crawling
It’s another type of negative SEO which may load your site. As a result, your site’s loading speed will slow down. In that case, you should contact the host company to recommend a suitable treatment for this issue. Sometimes, the speed slows due to some viruses attacking the site.
5. Hacking and Malware
Some hackers access websites and change settings like changing the robot.txt files to remove the site from search visibility. Plus, they also install some malware on your sites. If spammers hack or attack the SEO of your site, Google drops your site on Google Search Engine. To prevent any hacking, you must create a strong password such as capital, small and unique letters, and numbers. Also, set a 2-step verification method to get notified on Login of your WordPress site. Again, we don’t offer this service–very illegal!
How to detect Negative SEO?
Yes, I will tell you it’s possible to detect these blackhat tactics by using different tools.
• Google Webmasters
It usually detects malicious activities on your site and alerts the web owner.
• Monitor Backlinks
You can use this tool to check out the backlinks of your site and your competitor’s site. Plus, it also gives information about keyword ranking on Google.
• Cognitive SEO
This tool analyzes spam links on-site and helps you to remove these unnecessary or harmful backlinks.
• Google Alert
This tool alerts you about the latest events related to your business to create original content. Plus, you’ll get notifications when your site name is used anywhere.
• SEMrush
One of the best and most popular tools has many SEO tools and includes a risk detecting feature that detects negative SEO. It detects all toxic links and sends them to Google disavow for maintaining SEO rank performance.
• MOZ
It explores all links on-site and gives a spam score for a given site.
• Ahref
It’s a premium tool that performs analysis, monitors your domain, and detects competitor’s website or SEO scores. Try Ahref negative SEO analytics to protect your site.
• Open link Profiler
Through this tool, you can analyze all kinds of links, including wrong links on your site.
• SEOptimer
This tool allows you to audit your site in terms of SEO. Plus, You’ll get different aspects and recommendations about your site’s SEO through it.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is doing negative SEO legal?
As negative SEO is not a criminal offense because it does not rely upon distributed denial of service attacks or anything beyond offpage SEO methods. No doubt, negative SEO involves creating backlinks. Creating backlinks is a form of free speech.
2. Is negative SEO a real threat?
Absolutely Yes! Negative SEO is a harmful threat, and a lot of websites are dealing with this threat. It’s not easy to fix it, but prevention from negative SEO is feasible. Many people have succeeded by using Blackhat techniques, but Google launched Disavow tool to assist web admins in avoiding this problem. This tool takes 2 to 4 weeks to fix negative SEO issues.
3. How to prevent my site from Negative SEO?
There are many methods to fix or prevent negative SEO, such as connecting your WordPress site with different bad backlink checker tools to check and remove them. And, you may check duplicate content via the Copyscape tool and ask Google disavow not to de-rank your site. Use different SEO analytical tools to analyze your SEO score and follow their recommendation to avoid negative SEO.
Final thoughts
The central theme of writing this article is to explore your minds with a real threat for your websites, especially business websites. Awareness about any threat is essential! That’s why we share an ultimate guide on this topic. Thus, we highly recommend you to know about Negative SEO and avoid it to secure a site. Use recommended tools and Stay safe with your business!