Top Tips for Protecting Yourself Against Negative SEO

There is growing concern over the impact negative SEO can have on any particular site. Negative SEO is a deliberate attack against a competitor’s site in an attempt to harm their rankings. Most SEOs maintain that negative SEO, although plausible, is still a rarity and cannot be used to blame for sites built on poor SEO foundations. Opening up a negative SEO debate, Rand Fishkin invited people totake down SEOmoz with negative SEO. Although they have since received a link warnings notification, they have yet to be affected in the rankings, most likely due to their strong SEO foundations.

What Does Negative SEO Involve?

There are many negative SEO tactics employed by competitors; some are more effective than others. Since the Penguin update, which was designed to prevent sites with spammy backlink profiles succeeding in the rankings, a popular method has been to point thousands of low quality paid links to a site. This is done in the hopes that it will trip Google’s algorithmic filter into dropping it from the rankings. More recently, competitors have attacked valuable backlinks by requesting removal directly from the webmaster.

Tips for a Good Defense Against Negative SEO

Unfortunately, if someone has the money and determination to take down your site, chances are they could do it. Having said that, the effort, time and costs involved is rarely worth it. Negative SEO is still relatively infrequent but it is definitely something to be aware of.

The best ways to protect yourself include:

• Solid SEO Foundations
• Monitor Ranking Metrics Closely
• Clean & Authoritative Link Profile
• Good Link History

If you are concerned that your site has been hit by negative SEO or that you may be at risk, call us today to find out how you can protect yourself from falling rankings and foul play.