Since Google originally issued the Penguin update in April 2012, the SEO business has significantly transformed. This upgrade specifically targeted sites that engaged in the practice of generating spammy backlink profiles, making it far more difficult for any SEO company to engage in less-than-white hat link-building practices. Regrettably, while striving to eradicate one black hat SEO strategy, Google unintentionally paved the way for another: negative SEO.
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What is Negative Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Negative SEO refers to the practice of using black hat SEO methods on another website. Typically, an SEO assault is launched by a frustrated rival and their henchmen with the intent of lowering the ranks of that site. A reputable SEO company is willing to follow the regulations. They publish your material, advertise you on social media, and adapt to Google’s algorithm adjustments.
However, there are instances when you find yourself on the wrong end of somebody who doesn’t share your scruples. They engage in deviant behavior. They may attempt to clog your site with thousands of spammy links, overwhelm Yelp with fake reviews, or completely hijack your website.
Fortunately, with diligence, you can typically detect harmful SEO efforts before they cause irreversible damage. Whether you are a victim, suspect you may be a victim, or wish to defend yourself from a possible assault, the following are a few steps you may take to safeguard your business against negative SEO:
How to Identify Negative Search Engine Optimization?
Verify the robots.txt File: You may be preventing crawlers from visiting specific pages or your entire site. This is especially prevalent if your site was recently renovated or a new one was launched.
Look for the Robots Meta Tag: Some users use the noindex robots meta tag to prevent search engines from scanning and indexing a website as an alternative to or complementing a robots.txt file.
Canonicalization of Pages: Verify that your rel=”canonical” tags are linking to the correct pages. A typical canonical issue is referring the canonical tag of every page to a separate page. This results in search engines concentrating all of your link juice and authority in one location.
Crawl Problems: Use Google Search Console to look for crawl errors and other problems that may be preventing bots from indexing your sites.
Read More:- Is Negative SEO Hurting Your Traffic? What It Is And How To Avoid It?
How to prevent SEO attacks?
- Conduct Periodic Link Audits
On the occasion of a bad SEO campaign, regular link audits might save your firm from financial ruin. Monitoring the evolution of your link profile is by far the most effective technique to identify suspicious behavior before it spirals out of control.
- Keep an Eye on the Speed of your Website
The speed of a website is a significant ranking element. If your website is getting increasingly slow and you’re unsure why you should employ crawling tools to hunt for anything odd.
If you cannot locate anything and the problem persists, you may be the victim of forcible crawling. Forced crawling places a high burden on the server, which causes your site to slow down and maybe crash.
- Conduct a Scraped Content Search
In recent years, content marketing has been the buzzword, but not everyone has the same level of creativity when it comes to coming up with new ideas for content. As a result, scraping has become far too common.
Scraping has terrible repercussions. If the duplicated material is indexed before yours, your page’s value may be diminished, and your site’s ranking may suffer as a result.
- Boost Your Security
While negative SEO is not very widespread, cyber assaults are increasing year after year. Ascertain that your software is up to date, that you have applied all necessary security updates, and that your CMS software is equipped with strong encryption to secure your users.
The best way to protect yourself against bad SEO is to take all required safeguards to ensure that any assault just bounces off you. Platinum SEO is a professional SEO company that specializes in preventative maintenance to ensure your site’s success.
