All that you need to know about Negative SEO to counter it effectively

Negative SEO has emerged as a practice that impacts many good businesses and brands across the internet because of its intractability and undetectability by search engines. Negative SEO or Black Hat SEO is a tactic where some unscrupulous people use unethical tools to manipulate search engine results making your website rank lower than it is already ranked.

Sometimes, Negative SEO can result in a company getting completely banned from search engines which can be catastrophic. This is why any company investing in SEO should understand how to counter negative SEO effectively.

How Negative SEO happens and how it can harm your website and your brand

Negative SEO is used by unethical competitors to damage the organic ranking of your website on the search engine and by building bad backlinks to your website. Negative SEO is difficult to detect and hence becomes a major problem for a website that is falling in SEO rankings and does not understand why it is happening. This can mostly include.

• Duplication or hacking of your website.
• Building of backlinks that reflect unfavorably on your website.
• Comment spam and other measures.
• You can get many high-quality backlinks for your website, boosting your SEO.
• Your website’s visibility can be enhanced.

Negative SEO can be harmful to your brand and brand image as it can create a negative feedback loop on google algorithms as well as with people interacting with your website on their own. The various methods used can result in your SEO falling drastically and many other issues related to search engine functioning appearing. The various tools used by Negative SEO sites can be.

• Sending spam links to your websites that lead to your website getting penalized by Google.
• Building of backlinks that reflect unfavorably on your website.
• Stealing content and posting it on their own website to push your results out in order.
• Making false copyright claims on images and material on your website.
• Using the same keywords as yours and pushing your organic content down.

How to detect Negative SEO and improve SEO performance for your website

If despite using sound and organic SEO services your website still runs into issues it may be time to invest in detecting whether negative SEO is the root of the problem. Google Search Console is a free service designed to allow web admins to monitor the performance of their website or blog in organic search results on Google. You can see the algorithm performance and track the data of website traffic on your website using this platform.

The option of ‘traffic from search queries’ is relevant here as it helps you understand which keywords make people click on your website. This can help you detect if there is a decrease in traffic due to the tactics of Negative SEO.

If there is an unexplained sharp decline in your keyword SEO performance it may mean that there is Negative SEO on the action here. You can figure this out after making sure that the drop in keyword performance is not due to some other factor.

Using Google Analytics to understand the trending data of your website and seeing any unusual drops throughout the data period can also supplement this information. There can be a decrease in the quality of links or there may be content-related issues for the ranking pages of your keywords. This may signal Negative SEO impacting your website.

Using Organic SEO services to good effect again and removing Negative SEO

To improve SEO and your search rankings again after you have detected the presence of Negative SEO in the stream can be a tricky task but only organic SEO services can regain the performance while you put in place the deterrents needed and make sure that the Negative SEO is not hurting your performance anymore.

Google Webmaster tool alerts

This tool can help you know when Google has penalized your website, or even when you have server connectivity issues and getting attacked by malware

Track your backlinks

You should always be aware of the different backlinks created to your website and the low-quality links that are connected to it. There are online tools available that allow you to check for backlinks that you can track easily.

Protect your quality backlinks

Spammers can also try to remove your quality backlinks. So it is important that your best backlinks that reflect well on your website are secured. You may keep these links in check for protection.

Keep checking for duplicate content

Make sure that the content you use on your website is original, but also make sure that no one else is using your content and reaping the benefits from your organic SEO services and activity.

Keep track of your social media mentions

Social media is also a potent tool for bad SEO and can be leveraged against you, hence you should keep track of all the social media mentions you are getting and make sure that they are not used for Negative SEO.

Have your own website strategy be sound

Your own SEO strategies being healthy and organic can help a lot in making sure that Negative SEO remains deterred and your website does not get penalised easily. Make sure to follow the best organic SEO services for better results for your website.

Leverage Organic Search engine Optimization Services to remove Negative SEO

• Create a backlink removal list for the ones you need to be removed.
• Try to remove those backlinks, this can be done by a variety of ways.
• Use the Google Disavow tool to create manual penalties yourself.
• Your Google Disavow list can also be shared with the Google Webmaster tool for results.

These strategies can help you save your website from unethical practices like Negative SEO and help you leverage the benefit of a more resilient website and healthy organic SEO services for your website to land on top of search engine results and drive growth.