The threat posed by negative SEO should not be underestimated. You run the risk of losing visibility and revenue from organic search.
It is our goal in this article to provide you with strategies to counteract negative SEO. If this is what you’re looking for, stick around until the end.
What is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO is the practice of sabotaging a competitor’s search engine rankings by employing black hat and unethical techniques.
Hacking your site, withdrawing the best backlinks your website has, copying your content and disseminating it throughout the internet are all examples of negative SEO attacks. Another possibility is to build thousands of spammy links to your website.
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Is negative SEO a real threat, and should you be concerned?
Yes, without a doubt. Negative SEO is a real issue that many online sites have had to cope up with. It is far easier to prevent this issue than to repair.
To assist webmasters in resolving this issue, Google has introduced a tool called the Disavow Tool; however, users should exercise extreme caution and use the tool only as a last resort.
Methods to protect your website from negative SEO
Let us now look at some strategies for keeping your website safe from negative SEO.
Conduct regular link audits
In spite of the fact that conducting regular link audits should be considered good business practice for any company, doing so can literally save your business if it is ever the target of a negative SEO attack. Monitoring the growth of your link profile is by far the best way to find suspicious behavior before it gets out of hand.
Protect your website against malware and hackers
Security is of the utmost importance
The very last thing you want is for someone else to post spam on your web page without your knowledge.
Many things can be done to safeguard your website, such as creating a strong password for access, regularly creating backups of database and files, or installing antivirus software to ward off malicious software attacks.
Examine for duplicate content
Content duplication is a common technique used by spammers.
They copy your website’s content and distribute it wherever they can.
Websites that have a lot of duplicate content are at risk of being penalized and losing search engine rankings.
Using a plagiarism checker tool, you can determine if your website contains duplicate web pages.
Set up email alerts from Google Webmaster Tools
The idea is to receive email notifications whenever there is an issue with the server connectivity of your website, whenever your web pages are not indexed, and whenever there is an attack on your website by malware.
Ff you set up email alerts on the Google webmaster, you will be informed about any issues related to your website’s health.
Logging in to your account and enabling email notifications will allow you to stay informed about a variety of issues.
Tools Keep your best backlinks safe
Spammers will often try to take down your best backlinks. In most cases, they will use your name to contact the owner of the linked website and request that the webmaster remove your backlink.
Keeping track of your most valuable backlinks is one way to avoid this situation.
Monitor Backlinks is one such tool that can help you with this.
Navigate to the list of backlinks you have and sort them either by Page Rank or by the amount of social activity they receive.
Keep an eye on your social media mentions
Occasionally, spammers will create bogus social media accounts using the name of your company or website.
Before these profiles gain followers, try to remove them by reporting them as spam.
Concluding thoughts
If you want your website to be successful, ensuring its safety and making a good impression on search engines are of the utmost importance. I sincerely hope that the methods presented here for avoiding negative SEO are of use to you.
What other methods do you employ to combat negative SEO?