On my Two Cents Worth Podcast yesterday you may have heard me going off about Negative SEO. Not surprisingly many questions have started rolling in concerning Negative SEO and can it hurt a site’s ranking. Let me see if I can clarify the definition of Negative SEO and then move on to what it can do to you.

Negative SEO typically refers to one of a few different techniques designed to drive down the page rank of a competitor. One of these techniques involves paying for links and pointing them straight at the competition’s website. This can certainly have an impact especially considering the changes that Google has implemented through their Penguin updates. Two other equally underhanded, and potentially illegal, means of employing Negative SEO include posting a massive number of top quality reviews at a competitors site so that it seems that they were paid for and hacking the site to add a great deal of malicious or suspicious code.

The easiest of these techniques to employ is the use of external links. This is simply due to the fact that site owners have little to no control over these incoming links. Or do they? Here is a little piece of mind to help you sleep better at night:

  • Most businesses that are trying to stay legal will not take the risk of using questionable tactics such as these
  • Keeping up with SEO factors that could be tweaked by your competition can be much easier than you realize
  • The stronger your domain authority, the less likely it is that you will fall prey to negative SEO attacks
  • The review tools that Google employs make it a great deal easier for affected sites to get back on track once the smoke clears

Keep your nose clean, keep an eye on your competition and what they are doing, and keep posting quality content that generates honest to goodness positive backlinks and reviews. You will be surprised how much less likely you will be to fall prey to Negative SEO tactics.

Please check back for our next article which will offer a more detailed breakdown on some of the Negative SEO tactics employed by unscrupulous black hat driven groups.

If you haven’t heard the Two Cents Worth with Danny Hall podcast covering Negative SEO, simply click here now