As if improving your search engine visibility wasn’t tough enough already, business owners and marketers now have a new wrinkle to worry about: negative SEO.
Because negative SEO is a relatively new phenomenon, we’re going to share a couple of key details with you so you know what to look out for:
How Negative SEO Works – in the last couple of years, Google has started cracking down on old-school SEO tactics like keyword stuffing and link-farming. As a result, having low-quality links pointing to your website actually works against you in Google’s eyes.
Some businesses are taking advantage of this by intentionally building those kinds of links and pointing them at competitors. The goal, of course, is to improve their own search rankings by diminishing a marketer in the same industry.
How to Know if You’re Affected by Negative SEO – other than a sudden drop in search engine positioning, the easiest way to notice the effects of negative SEO is to see an unexpected rise in new links pointing at your website (usually from unknown sources).
What You Can do About Negative SEO – luckily, a competitor won’t be able to do much damage to your search visibility if you’re paying attention. That’s because Google lets you disavow links to your website, meaning that they won’t count against you.
Also, it’s important to note that the effects of negative SEO are relatively small compared to the benefits you get from producing great content and having high-quality links. In other words, the more good search engine optimization you’re doing, the less you have to worry about negative SEO affecting your business.
