To fulfill the needs of today’s information seekers, the field of search engine optimization (SEO) is dynamic and always changing. Ranking on the first page of Google Search requires thorough keyword research, content generation, social media strategy, and on-site optimization. We can say that a strategy that is seemingly time-consuming will be more successful at addressing what your audience requires.
It goes without saying, there are a few bad examples as well. Some people are hesitant to invest the time or resources required for the proper development of their websites. To dethrone legitimate competitors and take the top spots, they would much rather employ shady techniques like negative SEO tactics. Negative SEO is a strategy that some experts employ on purpose to deliver quick results for their clients. As for others, they unwittingly fall prey to it because they are unaware of alternatives.
In order for moral businesses like yours to maintain their competitive positioning, it is crucial to recognize the bad SEO players on the market and take swift action. Only go for Affordable Local SEO Services Company in Melbourne that does not take the route of Negative SEO.
Understanding Negative SEO
Negative SEO, or Black Hat SEO, is unethical SEO practices in proper terminology. People use these techniques to gain better rankings on search engine results pages. They target the keywords that their competitors are using for their websites. In the past, it was simple for negative SEO to take over your website with questionable banner ads. However, poor SEO today is far more complex and sophisticated.
Negative SEO examples include:
Link farming is the practice of directing low-quality connections to your website from websites built expressly to host pointless, spammy, or unrelated links. The cheap SEO services provider in Perth does not follow this practice.
Duplicate Material:
One of the simplest ways spammers use to penalize your site is to copy and paste your content and publish it on several websites throughout the internet.
Running invisible scripts from the header or footer templates can modify content.
Online evaluations that are unfavorable to you might be damaging. Spammers frequently pick social media as their platform of attack, setting up profiles on Facebook or Twitter in the target company’s name and publishing low-quality posts to harm their reputation.
De-indexing the website involves editing the server’s robots.txt file to take you out of search results.
Forceful Crawling:
Negative SEO practitioners can easily harm websites by slowing them down. Negative SEO experts can lower or de-rank your site by forcibly crawling it, overloading the servers, and eventually crashing the site. You can avoid the Negative SEO experts with the help of an Affordable Local SEO Services Provider in Melbourne.
Click Fraud:
A carefully trained CTR bot clicks on a listing after searching for the site’s primary keywords and branded terms, only to swiftly return to the search engine request page. Once Google suspects the site’s owner of trying to “game the system,” the site is removed from search results.
Malware addition:
If malware infects your website, Google may notify users that “this site may be compromised” before forwarding, which will result in a sharp decline in traffic.
What Is Google’s Position on Negative SEO?
Google obviously wants everyone to abide by the rules. The discovery of Negative SEO by Google Webmaster in 2012 startled and alarmed the internet community of webmasters and marketers. Since then, Matt Cutts, the Google Webmaster, has reassuringly stated: “In my experience, there are many people who talk about negative SEO, but very few people really try it. And even fewer who truly achieve success.” He continued by saying that small firms shouldn’t be concerned about becoming the subject of negative SEO because that strategy is supposedly only employed by larger, fiercely competitive companies in extremely specialized areas.
Does Google Take Any Action Against Negative SEO?
Google is working on a variety of projects in the background. But, they are unable to describe in detail what happens with each update since spammers would instantly begin working on exploits for the new algorithms.
Google’s public response to worries about Negative SEO was the “link disavow” capability, which was released in October 2012. With the option to block backlinks to their website and/or domain, this webmaster tool alerts webmasters to manual spam activity or unnatural links. Google makes it simpler to keep an eye on fraudulent behavior by tackling the issue at its source through a straightforward text file of URL listings.
How to Protect Your Website From Attacks by Negative SEO
The assurances from Google are insufficient for the proactive website owner. Fortunately, there are a number of proactive measures to safeguard your website.
1. Turn on email notifications:
Search Console by Google. Now you can keep your website’s information and problems top of mind at all times. Once you understand what is happening, you may use more sophisticated techniques to avoid negative SEO. They include monitoring website backlinks, disavowing (or removing) suspect backlinks, and protecting your website from malware and hackers.
2. Pay close attention to your backlinks:
Through an email summary of changes, online visibility management tools like SEMrush assist you in keeping track of your backlinks. Negative SEO practitioners’ go-to tool is creating backlinks from low-quality websites in order to harm websites.
3. Keep a close eye on your crucial backlinks:
Once more, a tool like SEMrush is quite useful. Mark your most crucial backlinks and request notification if they are taken down. You can get in touch with the webmasters of the websites and request that important backlinks be reinstated so you don’t lose your search ranking. A local SEO company in Melbourne can also provide the required guidance.
4. Protect your website from malware and hackers:
It’s never been more crucial to strengthen the security of your website against dangerous malware assaults, what with all the high-profile hacks and expensive data breaches in the news these days. Fortunately, there are simple and inexpensive actions you may take to accomplish that, including:
- Using a secure administrator password
- Turning on two-step authentication when it’s available
- Keeping your website updated
- Adding security plugins (HubSpot users can learn more about the tool’s built-in security here).
- Implementing a system of automatic backup
5. Keep an eye out for content copycats and thieves:
If there are duplicates of your content elsewhere on the Internet, Copyscape and Grammarly can help you locate them. They can also help you improve the writing on your website and prevent unintentional plagiarism.
Utilize your social page dashboards to actively participate in social media management. You may use social listening tools from HubSpot, Hootsuite, and Social Mention to get notifications whenever your name is mentioned on social media. In order to prevent negative publicity from escalating, be sure to directly and swiftly address any issues that are brought up. You can also hire an Affordable SEO services provider company in Perth to help you out.
7. Quicken the loading of your website:
When your website’s loading speed slows, Google Analytics Alerts will alert you. You can figure out when and why. You might need to turn on cache, uninstall plugins or add-ons that use a lot of resources, reduce the size of your images, delete extra code, or take precautions against spammers.