A negative SEO attack refers to the use of immoral tactics to hack/sabotage rival website rankings in search engines. These can be highly damaging, and it can take a while to salvage your website’s reputation.
Types of Negative SEO Attacks
There are a variety of attacks that can happen to your website. This type of behavior is known as ‘Black Hat’ SEO. The following are common types of attacks that can happen;
- Hacking
- Removal of key backlinks
- Ruining your online reputation
- Pinning spam links to your website
- Content leaks
- Attaching fake social media profiles to your website
- Creating links that use inappropriate language
If you do experience a negative SEO attack, an LLC can protect the business owners, because of its unique liability protection. The importance of this should not be underestimated!
How To Detect An Attack
Comment Spam Links
A common way that people can sabotage your site is by leaving backlinks in comment sections. One way to spot this is if suddenly you begin to get comments on old/dead content this is an immediate red flag and is most likely being done with malicious intent.
Unusual Activity
Pay attention to your links and anchor texts and make sure that they are your own legitimate content. The risk otherwise is that an anchor text gets lost within a body of text that looks like your own but is actually taking your users elsewhere.
Fake Negative Reviews
Negative reviews may not seem like a big alarm bell, but the more these negative reviews are left on your site, the lower your website will rank will be on google. This is because Google uses bad reviews as a way to render through what websites rank where.
How To Stop A Negative Seo Attack
1. Set up Google Webmaster Tools Email Alerts
Setting up Google Webmaster email alerts is a great way to keep on top of things, as Google can alert you when malware is detected, pages are not indexed, server connectivity issues, and more. The alerts save you from checking manually.
2. Keep Track of Your Backlinks Profile
You need to be able to keep track of your backlinks profile and ensure that they are not creating links or redirects to your website. One way to be aware if someone is trying to create these low-quality links is to use tools such as Monitor Backlinks or Open Site Explorer. These kinds of tools will alert you when your website either gains or loses any backlinks. Having a tool like this in place will save you from manually checking your backlinks. Upping your security with solutions such as M2SYS will also make your website more secure.
3. Monitor Social Media
Pay attention to how your brand is being represented online. An easy way for spammers to attack your SEO is to create fake social media accounts and ruin your brand’s reputation through negative and inappropriate content. There are tools available for you to check where and who is using your brand names, so this is worth checking out.
4. Regular Checks
Another easy way to prevent a negative SEO attack is to regularly check your website, the comments, the backlinks, and to check for duplicate content. Duplicate content can affect your rankings significantly. It will benefit you to use tools such as Copyscape to see if your content is being used elsewhere without you knowing.