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In theme with our recent blog about modern SEO, we thought it would be a good time to discuss what negative SEO is, how it can impact a website and what website owners can do to avoid and repair negative SEO.
If you feel that your site has been harpooned by negative SEO or you simply want to optimize your site the right way the first time, don’t hesitate to contact the industry professionals at Epic Web Results. We are stilled at using modern SEO best practices to properly optimize sites so they can be effective lead-generation tools that can help grow a business or practice.
What Is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO is essentially the use of unethical practices to try to negatively impact a website’s ranking in search engines. Also referred to as black hat SEO, negative SEO can be knowingly or mistakenly used by people like:
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Negative SEO can have real impacts on websites’ rankings and traffic. Here are some of the signs of negative SEO and what you can do if you notice them. Professionals who may be trying to optimize a website but don’t know how to implement SEO strategies and, in so doing, misuse them
- A business’ competitor or anyone who simply doesn’t like a business
- A hacker who may simply be trying to cause harm for the sake of being able to.
Some of the specific forms that negative SEO can take when it’s used include:
- Paid links pointed at your site – The sudden existence of many links pointed at your website can indicate that some party may be trying to use negative SEO to get your site red flagged by Google.If this happens to you, it’s best to disavow questionable links to your site (here are directions for this) and to work with Google closely to avoid having this tactic have longer term impacts on your site’s SEO and ranking.
- Writing a lot of fake reviews for a site – Because a sudden flood of fake, glowing reviews for a business can make it look like a business is paying for reviews, Google is ready to red flag such incidents. As a result, writing these reviews can be a negative SEO tactic used by competitors to try to get a business’ site in trouble with Google (or other search engines).For this negative SEO tactic, regularly monitoring your business’ reviews and clicking the “report a problem” link when you suspect a review may be fake can be critical to catching this before it causes you some real headaches and trouble.
- Content being stolen from your site and duplicated on other sites – Sometimes, negative SEO can involve a third-party site stealing content that was original to your site before that content has been indexed by search engines. There are certain tags that may be used when adding new content to your website (in order avoid having it be stolen and used by other sites).Here, the best tactic for avoiding the negative impacts of this strategy can vary, so it’s best to work with Epic Web Results to find out more about what may be your best options.
Although negative SEO can come in various forms (only some of which were discussed above) and can be used by various people to try to intentionally torpedo a website, there are various things that business owners can do to effectively protect their websites from a negative SEO campaign. We will discuss these things in a few upcoming parts of this blog series that will be posted soon – be sure to check them out!
Effective Internet Marketing Solutions at Epic Web Results
At Epic Web Results, our skilled industry professionals are up to date with the latest advances in Internet marketing and SEO best practices, and we are highly adept at designing and maintaining optimized websites that will soar to the top of search engines.
To learn more about our customized, innovative Internet marketing solutions, contact the professionals at Epic Web Results by calling (800) 501-9724 or by emailing us using the contact form on this page.
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