What is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO

Think of a game of chess. In this game, your opponent tries to destroy your spine one after another using every technique and way he knows. The ultimate goal of a chess game is to let your opponent down and win the game.

In negative SEO, the competitor tries to lower your site’s position in Google search results and thereby reduce your site’s visibility.

But might you ask how my site looks and feels?

IWhatwe call SEO Negative are often the same black hat techniques that are so traceable to Google that penalties are not

For example, suppose you are on the front page of Google’s SEO tutorial, but your competitor is ranked 3 or 4. Since the keyword position on the results page is important, the site below you decides to target the penalty for the penguin algorithm by purchasing backlinks in the SEO keyword.

To have a proper strategy for dealing with negative SEO, we first need to know the most common techniques used to do this. It is only through the knowledge of various negative SEO methods that we can ensure our site against sudden attacks by competing sites. Now it’s time to get acquainted with all kinds of negative SEO:

1. Malicious linking to the competitor’s site

In this technique, the attacker does not have access to the site or the content of your pages, thus concentrating all of his activity on malicious links to your site. Accessing the information from a web site hosting or admin panel is a difficult task and requires crossing the site’s security barrier.

Google’s Penguin algorithm is tasked with checking the health of backlinks to the site and penalizing the offender if they are certain that backlinks have been purchased to gain Google results. It’s simple enough for people to think that they should be penalized by malicious linking to their competitors.

External Negative SEO is actually a very low value external link for a competitor’s site.

Penguin’s algorithm for checking the health of a site’s backlinks; it considers the number, validity, text of the link, and the timeframe for creating the links. People who use these techniques usually consider the following points in linking:

1. Links are generally sites and blogs with low domain reputation and high spam score.
2. A lot of links will be created in a short period for your site’s homepage or pages that are well viewed and positioned.
3. The same keywords are used for linking as Anchor Text, which is exactly your site’s keywords.
4. The sites that link to you have nothing to do with the topic or concept of your site.
5. The links to your site are all phallus.

These activities will result in a short period, lots of quality links, and of course, targeted to a specific phrase for your site. As a result, your site has lost its credibility with Google and is facing a severe decline.

Methods of Preventing and Combating Malicious Linking

Imagine your site’s reputation as a cup of tea and the external links, sugar dissolved in it! Now a competitor site is using malicious links to try to increase the amount of sugar in it, which will make your tea too sweet. Too much sweetness makes the penguin algorithm suspicious or even fine on your site.

What do you do when your tea becomes too sweet? Here are some ways:

Transfer the tea to a larger glass and add a little water

In this way, we try to increase domain credibility with valuable backlinks and reduce the impact of malicious links. The result of this strategy is that in the end your site will be more credible than before and you have used this attack to your advantage.

You can use the Link Explorer tool on the Moz site to check the distribution of site links and spam scores. This tool helps you to have a detailed analysis of the links to your site, landing pages, linked phrases, and spam scorers of each domain. The following image is an example of a spam scatter backbone display.

Of course, increasing your site credibility and getting valuable links is not an easy task and if not done properly can make your tea sweeter. Appropriate strategies for doing this are thoroughly reviewed and trained in an external link training workshop.

2. Empty the glass slightly and pour the tea over it again

In this way, as we increase the site’s credibility, we also remove some of the malicious links that were created. A tool called the Disavow Tool has been introduced by Google’s console to introduce malicious links to Google.

With this tool, you can link to pages and domains that link to you but have low spam and high spam score on Google so that they do not affect your site’s ranking and credibility. To make this work better, we suggest that you continue your white hat linking activity and add valuable and valuable backlinks to your site.

Identifying malicious links and how to use the Disavow Tool in the Google Search Console tutorial is thoroughly reviewed.

2- Hacking the site and changing the content of the pages

Internal SEO techniques are far more sophisticated and sophisticated than their external methods. Because doing so requires direct access to the admin panel or web site. Internal SEO techniques are applicable when your site is hacked by a hostile person.

Hacking sites in the past had no purpose other than glorification or exponential power, and usually resulted in a black page with the hacker’s name and profile quickly removed by the site administrator.

Today, if anyone has access to your files and information, they will rarely use it for self-disclosure and will try to keep you from crossing your security layers.

Once your site has been hacked, the intruder will have two options. The first is by using your site’s resources and credentials, creating new pages or editing your content in a way that links to your site, which we discussed in the article Beyond the Black Hat.

The second method is not intended to destroy your site and usually involves activities such as:

1. Production of low value and high-quality pages
2. Backlinks for malicious and pornographic sites from your pages
3. Restrict access by Google robots to important site pages using noindex tag or robots.txt file
4. Show different content to Google robots and original content to users
5. DDOS attacks on the server to leave the site out of reach of users
6. Enable malicious scripts and code on pages to extract digital currencies
7. And …

All of the above can reduce the value and credibility of your site to Google and cause you to lose some keywords.

How to deal with site hacking and malicious content generation

To prevent this approach from negative SEO, the most important thing to do is to maintain site security. Websites are accessed from three different layers of security: user information, coding security holes, server security holes.

1- user-side security

It is interesting to know that the most common method of hacking for web sites is a poor site administrator password! Yes, many of us think that by adding a simple password, we will increase the speed and efficiency of logging into the admin panel without realizing that this simple mistake can have irreparable consequences for you.

Usually, sites managed by multiple people will have less control over this because the person you choose to manage your orders may not have enough information about the security of a site and the consequences of not doing so. So the first step is choosing the right password and, of course, hiding the login pages for others.

2- Security in site coding

The next step is to follow the security tips when coding the site. For example, there may be space for users to submit files to a portion of your site. If you do not review and clear the files before sending them to the server, malicious code may be sent to your server and access to its information may be compromised. The intruder becomes possible.

If you use content management systems like WordPress, you should regularly update your kernel and extensions and improve security with reliable security extensions like IT Security.

3. Server or host security

The next step is to keep the server safe from possible attacks. If your server does not have the tools to prevent these attacks, it can easily block CPU and RAM resources by blocking requests or requests and blocking access to the site.

If you do not have enough knowledge to maintain server security or use shared hosting, there are tools such as Cloud Flare that will do this for you.

Google will notice the site hack before you!

If you have registered your site in the Google Search Console tool, Google robots will regularly check your site and pages. Any sudden changes to the content of the pages or the creation of undervalued pages are quickly detected by these robots and are notified through the Security Issues section.

The following image is an example of a Google report on hacked pages on your site. Each report provides you with detailed information about the type of intrusion and the address of the malicious pages. Once the site has been fixed, you can submit a review request to Google using the Request a Review button.

Google will notice the site hack before you

If Google finds out that your site has been hacked, this site may be hacked in the search results. Even malicious pages may not appear in search results.

3. Branding and publishing critical content on the Internet

When you become a reputable and powerful brand you will probably take your site’s security tips very seriously and have valuable and reputable backlinks across the internet. Under these circumstances, it will be virtually impossible to use the two previous techniques and your enemies will try to destroy your brand personality and identity.

Internet users have become accustomed to researching a company or product before choosing it, and they will be hesitant to make decisions when they search for your name with many pages of past customer experience or critical feedback.

Some of the most common SEO-related brand destruction activities are:

1. Remove your company from Google Maps or insert negative reviews in this space
2. Publish critical articles and negative experiences in free blogging forums and services
3. Publish specialized and analytical articles to evaluate and compare your services with competitors unilaterally and purposefully
4. Report your site pages through Google Spam Fighting Form
5. Post negative comments on your site’s products or services page

Getting customers to trust is a difficult task, and every small mistake can change their view of the quality of your products and services. As a result of these methods, all your efforts to convert a user into a customer will be lost in a moment.

How to prevent the destruction of our brand on the Internet?

It is a little difficult to answer this question, the important point is that it is usually used for brands that are well known and valid but do not have a direct and strong relationship with their audience. These techniques are effective when you are not paying attention to customer satisfaction.

If the brand’s activity on social networks is relevant and timely, responds to criticism and quick questions, online PR is planned consistently and purposefully; no one can destroy your brand using negative SEO techniques. And even if such activities are out of reach, your loyal customers are likely to respond.

As a result, the best solutions to prevent these techniques are:

1. The constant monitoring of the Internet is to measure the satisfaction of users of your products and services.
2. Targeted activity in social networks and continuous communication with the audience.
3. Publish news and information related to your business on specialized sites and news agencies.
4. Report malicious pages and baseless comments to site administrators and Google.

What are the chances of success in using negative SEO?

Google’s spamming team has always emphasized in recent years that negative SEO and related techniques do not affect search engine rankings. Reducing the impact of backlinks, identifying malicious sites, and making Disavow Tool and Spam Report available indicates that Google has a strong determination to combat negative SEO.

Of course, this does not mean that we neglect to check the status of our site and its external links. As an SEO expert, you are always checking the index of pages, loading speed, downloaded links, etc. As a result, any sudden or unexpected changes to your site’s ratings and site statistics can be a warning signal to Google’s probability of fines and Seo be negative.

Implementing SEO techniques is usually a difficult task and will cost a lot to a belligerent but is not difficult to prevent.

The more you emphasize generating valuable content and user satisfaction, the more credibility and position your brand has with Google and people, and the more credible you are, the less likely these techniques are to affect your site.

Negative SEOs often target our weaknesses. These attacks, apart from their potential consequences (which can be remedied), will help you work on growing your brand.

Conclusion

After reading this article, you may think that negative SEO is not that far out of reach and you can make it easier for your business to compete.

Before deciding, consider that Time and focus are your most important assets for success in SEO. If you spend this capital on hurting your competitors, you will virtually avoid focusing on your business, which will allow new competitors to enter the field.

Competition in any business will grow everyone in the business, and if the competitive environment between you is contaminated, everyone who enters the game will eventually lose.

You’ve probably seen examples of competitors’ ads on Google, what was your feedback on that? When your customers understand your unethical and immoral behaviors for success, they will be less willing to use your services and products.

If you also see examples of other brands being destroyed or using negative SEO techniques, please share with us in the comments section of this page.