HOW TO PREVENT NEGATIVE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION(SEO)?
HOW TO PREVENT NEGATIVE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION(SEO)?
We have discussed SEO and its related techniques until now. But do you know there is a Negative SEO as well that could be harmful to your brand? So if you are wondering what it is and how to avoid it. Then we have got your back.
In this blog post today, we are going to explain Negative SEO. Why is it harmful and ways to avoid the same? So without any further delay, let's get started.
What's Negative SEO?
Negative SEO is a kind of strategy used by the competitors to decrease your rankings in the search engine results. It may include deliberately building spam links to the site, hacking the website or content scraping. If you want to avoid being a victim of Negative SEO, then you must get to know about it in detail.
How did Negative SEO originate?
Google launched a Penguin update in April 2012, which made strong actions against websites with manipulative links. Although it helped Google provide better and fairer results, it also gave birth to " Negative SEO.
"So if you are serious about creating a brand name and avoiding such hazardous digital traps, then let's have a look at this detailed guide of "how to prevent Negative SEO?"
Can Negative SEO be harmful?
Yes, it can be quite harmful to your brand as it adopts every possible measure to decrease your website rankings in the search engine results pages. When you are well known to the types of Negative SEO, you can easily prevent yourself from the same. So let's dig deeper.
Types of Negative SEO and how to avoid it?
1. Scrapers
This technique involves scraping your website content and copying it to other sites multiple times. Such a practice makes Google suspicious about your website due to content redundancy. In most cases, Google is smart enough to detect the source of content, but sometimes the scraped content gets indexed first.
How to prevent it?
There are plenty of tools available out there that can help you detect whether your fake copies of your content are available over the Internet. One such useful tool is - Copyscape. Another versatile tool is - Awario. This particular tool helps you detect your scraped content spread over the Internet.
2. Link Farms
This technique involves the interconnection of websites and is based on Grey Hat Technique. The Public Blog Network or PBNs are one of the examples of Links Farms, which is specially created by a notorious individual for link building. Such type of SEO attack involves links from a group of sites.
How to prevent it?
It is quite challenging to prevent such Negative SEO, but if you detect it in the early stage, then you are in the safe zone. As soon as you discover it, you must reject spammy links from your backlinks profile. SEO SpyGlass is a tool that offers various webmaster tools to help you prevent such attacks.
3. Fake Reviews
Fake Reviews add one of the most common types of Negative SEO strategy. It is quite easy to manipulate the reviews so that it may portray a negative of a company. You must be very careful about such malicious activities.
How to prevent it?
As soon as you spot a fake negative review, you can flag it for removal by following the
steps as follows:
- First, navigate to Google Maps.
- Search your company via address or name.
- Choose your business from the given results.
- On the left, scroll down to Review Summary.
- Select the review you want to flag and then fill out the form.
Let's hear some positive news!
While there are countless methods of Negative SEO, you can prevent it through early detection and some essential awareness. When your website has a bunch of good quality links, you are less likely to be affected by the Negative SEO.
The best way to avoid this hazard is to have a lot of good content with a lot of natural, high-quality links. As mentioned earlier, you can make use of the SEO SpyGlass tool to monitor your backlink profile.
Final Shot
We tried to explain Negative SEO in the most straightforward way possible. The tools and preventive measures mentioned here can be proved to be helpful for you. Never miss out on such tips and hacks so that you never get the victim of such digital traps.
