What is negative SEO and how you can be affected

Every business has competitors which often include some unethical ones who prefer to blow in somebody else’s candle so that they can shine brighter. Such individuals attack competitor sites with unnatural, spammy links, or even DDoS (Denial-of-service) rather than working on their websites in order to improve user experience. This is known as negative SEO.

The most surprising thing is that this topic is not discussed as frequently as it should be among the SEO and webmaster community. It is a risk that everyone new or old to this community, should prepare for. In this article, we will discuss what negative SEO is and how it can affect your website, but according to experts of Healthy Links they never suggest this way for any client.

 

What is negative SEO?

In simple terms, a negative SEO attack is meant to harm your website ranking. As discussed earlier, it is often done by your competition in order to create more space for themselves and malign your website. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is a competitor’s job. It can also be an act of vengeance.

 

How can you be affected?

Negative SEO attacks are Black Hat SEO techniques. These are very obvious in nature such that Google has to penalize them. This is done on your website by your competitor so that you get penalized. The penalty is that your ranking gets lower and you appear below them in search engines. Mainly ratings of keywords get affected, and this is where it hurts the most as your business relies on keywords.

The worst part of these attacks is that they are very hard to differentiate from a classic black hat link building tactic. This means that anyone can do black hat SEO, and then blame it on someone else. It usually starts with spamming. The site under attack is spammed with porn or payday loan links, with keyword-rich anchor texts. These tactics, however, have grown more complex. According to experts of the Ranking Factors this way cannot help you to improve your website SEO.

 

Fake social media profiles:

Social media is an essential tool that can be exploited by your competitor to malign your ranking. Your competitor can make a fake social media profile under your name and spread false information about your business which can cost you. You can even end up losing your clients and audience, which can hurt your business.

 

Link Farming:

This involves directing low-quality links to your website. You might be wondering that there are always bad links on your website then how is this different? Well, in this case, the individual uses interconnected sites (also known as link farms) and continues to do so constantly. These links use anchor, which in most cases, is your most important keyword. This basically fools search engines thus manipulating your ranking.

 

Final Word

In order to make sure that your site is safe, always keep an eye on your rankings by using any of the tools available online. You should be concerned when your ranking suddenly drops from the search engine. Moreover, you can also check the loading speed of your website, and if it is slow, then your site may be under attack.

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