How To Avoid Negative SEO

Using negative SEO can be detrimental to your website, and can even get your website banned from search engines like Google. Avoid using negative SEO at all costs, and focus on building your SEO to grow your traffic organically. 

It’s important to check your site daily for any suspicious activity so you can catch negative SEO tactics before they cause harm.

What Is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO is any activity that negatively affects your search engine ranking. For instance:

• Black Hat SEO—manipulating a website’s indexing programs.
• Toxic Backlinks—links from sites that weaken your SEO.
• Removing Backlinks —sending out fake removal requests to a website's webmaster.
• Website Hacking—gaining illegal access to a website.
• Duplication —creating duplicates of websites or content and spreading the fakes on the internet.
• Copyright Infringement—copying and distributing your content.
• Inappropriate Keywords—pointing to your website via pointless keywords.
• Broken Links —links that go to an error page or go to the wrong location.
• Broken Images —images that don't load or are no longer available.
• Poor Page Speed —slow loading speeds for your page.
• Fake Reviews —posing as someone else or creating multiple fake accounts that post false, negative reviews about a business.

How To Notice It

One of the most obvious signs of negative SEO? Receiving a penalty notification from Google. They can also let you know if there’s a drop in your website’s speed, which is another big sign of Negative SEO.

If you have a sudden drop in search traffic, then it’s highly possible you are a victim of Negative SEO. A drop in your search traffic can also mean your keyword ranking dropped as well.

If you receive link removal requests, then someone may be trying to remove quality links from your website, which can hurt your SEO.

What Looks Like Negative SEO, But Isn't

Sometimes, negative SEO can be tricky to spot. And negative SEO isn't always the reason that your website's traffic has suddenly dropped off, but it should always be investigated to make sure that if it is negative SEO that's causing your loss in traffic, you can stop it as soon as possible.

Since Google's algorithm is always changing, it can sometimes mess with search engine results which may cause a drop in your traffic. During Google's updates to the algorithm, they often do split testing which can cause your website to be lost in the results.

Another reason you may see a sudden drop in traffic is due to Google's algorithmic filtering. Google's algorithmic filtering filters out certain keywords and can remove them from search results completetly. To find out if your keywords have been filtered out, you can perform keyword research to see if you've been affected. It is still unknown why Google does this.

What Can You Do?

In order to avoid negative SEO, you can perform link audits. Additionally, you can set up alerts through Google Webmaster Tools.

Then, check the speed of your site through your hosting company.

For backlinks, you can add tags that will notify you whenever they are removed.

Google typically notices duplicate content. There are tools you can use to find duplicate content.

If your website has been hacked, then you need to take action right away.

1. Contact your website host. They most likely will offer support.
2. Quarantine your website.
3. Assess the damage.
4. Identify the place of vulnerability.
5. Clean and maintain your site.

And if you need support with any of these steps, then contact Worldlight Media.

We, not only design, develop and build websites but also help to ensure you avoid negative SEO. We take the guesswork out of both building and maintaining a secure website. So you can rest assured your reputation and intellectual property are safe with us.