Is Negative SEO Real & What Is It?

There’s been a lot of buzz about negative SEO recently. Many people wonder if it’s real or a myth, and if it’s real, they wonder if it’s something that they should be worried about.

While the use of black hat SEO tactics to promote one’s own site has definitely decreased, people are attacking other websites with negative SEO. In short: negative search engine optimization does exist and it can do serious damage to a site.

Is Negative SEO Real & What Is It?

Negative search engine optimization happens when an individual tries to lower the ranking of someone else’s site in a search engine. There are several techniques that can be used, with some being minimal and occurring over a period of time, and others can happen immediately and seriously impact a site’s ranking.

Here’s a look at 3 common negative SEO tactics that you should be on the lookout for.

Spammy Links

One of the most frequently used negative SEO strategies is spammy links. With this strategy, link farms (sites that are interconnected) are used to create spammy, poor quality links that direct to a website.

With this type of negative SEO, a spammer creates several poor quality SEO backlinks by composing content that contains matching anchor text on several low quality sites. To a search engine, it appears that the site that’s under attack is doing a bad job of creating a link building campaign. Those who use this tactic purposely create links that seem unnatural and don’t abide by Google’s policies for the sole purpose of getting a site hit by penalties so that its ranking will drop.

Aggressive Crawling

This type of negative SEO involves the owner of another site aggressively crawling the site of a competitor in order to develop heavy server load. The goal is to prevent a search engine from crawling a site, which would result in a lower ranking for that site.

Copying Content

Copying content and displaying it on other sites is another negative SEO tactic that can lower a site’s ranking. When search engines discover duplicate content on several sites, typically only one version of that content is selected for ranking purposes.

Usually, search engines are smart enough to notice the original content; that is, unless they discover the version that was stolen first. If spammers copy new content right away and repost it to other sites, Google and other search engines may be fooled and the ranking of site that’s under attack could be impacted.

The Solution: Link Monitoring and Disavow Files

Like any disease, it’s best to catch a negative backlink campaign before it spreads and wreaks havoc on your website. Without proper monitoring, it might take weeks before you realize the drop in traffic and rankings. The longer these spammers have to build their campaigns, the more damage they can do to your pages.

Omaha SEO Company

We are premier internet marketing company providing Omaha SEO services as well as a wealth of additional services to clients both locally and across the US. Our goal is to continually over-deliver to each and every client we work with. We are a team of SEO experts, web design wizards, social media master-minds, and online reputation management specialists. With over 10 years of experience we have developed a system that insures the success of our clients.

Our SEO agency is here to ensure your website is optimized to rank high. Our goal is top position. Exactly where the best most qualified traffic is. Give us a call for your FREE Consultation.