{"id":142458,"date":"2020-11-26T18:35:19","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T18:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=142458"},"modified":"2020-11-26T18:35:19","modified_gmt":"2020-11-26T18:35:19","slug":"the-anatomy-of-a-negative-seo-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/11\/26\/the-anatomy-of-a-negative-seo-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"The anatomy of a negative SEO attack"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"well\">\n<h3>30-second summary:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO can just as easily destroy websites&#8217; rankings as it can build them up.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Newer websites or startups with smaller backlink profiles are the most vulnerable to negative SEO attacks.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Webmasters need to regularly monitor their backlink profile to make sure their site is not keeping company with any questionable web properties.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Negative SEO can be remediated through manual outreach or Google\u2019s disavow tool, but high-quality link building campaigns are the best way to minimize the impact of low-quality links.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the early days of search engine optimization, a variety of black-hat techniques allowed SEOs to dominate the first page of search. Cloaking, keyword stuffing, backlink spam, and other strategies could catapult websites to the first page. But those days are long gone. Google\u2019s algorithms are extremely powerful and can easily result in a negative SEO attack. Not only will black-hat strategies no longer work &#8211; they will destroy your site&#8217;s rankings and even prevent your domain from ranking permanently.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So for those out there on the internet who are not interested in seeing your domain move up the first page, black hat SEO is an easy way to harm your website. Many new site owners are so eager to get any backlinks that they can, they allow low-quality links to populate their profile without ever thinking about where those links are coming from, or why those other site owners linked to them in the first place.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Negative SEO attacks are real. I\u2019ve helped many clients recover from them. They can come from competitors, hackers, or seemingly out of nowhere, but without a quick response, a website\u2019s reputation with search engines can be permanently harmed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/linkgraph.io\/google-algorithm-update-history\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google algorithm updates<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or technical issues with your website can impact your keyword rankings, an unexpected drop could be a sign of negative SEO. The good news is, the anatomy of a negative SEO attack is clearly recognizable. If you take quick action, you can protect your website and minimize the damage.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>The websites that are most vulnerable to SEO\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reality is, every time your site moves up a spot in the SERPs, you knock another site down. It\u2019s not fun to imagine that other people would use negative SEO to harm your efforts, but if you offer great service or product that could take business or traffic away from someone else, then your site is at risk.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Any website can experience a <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">negative <a href=\"https:\/\/linkgraph.io\/negative-seo-ebook-strategy-to-fix-seo-attacks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SEO attack<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, but local businesses and startups with less than 300 referring domains are the most vulnerable. The smaller your backlink profile, the more impactful any low-quality or unnatural links will be. If 50% of your links are spammy and you\u2019re a brand new site, Google crawlers are going to look at your backlink profile and assume your site is trying to cheat your way to the top.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For new webmasters, in particular, it\u2019s critical to pay close attention to every backlink you acquire. This is also true when you pay for the services of a link building company. Some site owners are hesitant to pursue <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/11\/16\/top-strategies-behind-link-building-success\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">link building<\/a> because they have had negative experiences with SEOs in the past who engaged in these spammy techniques that ended up tearing their site down rather than building it up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As your backlink profile grows, spammy links will not have as much of an impact on your domain authority or rankings. Still, it\u2019s good to keep an eye on the referring domains and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/linkgraph.io\/why-anchor-text-diversity-is-good-for-your-backlink-profile\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">anchor text diversity<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of your backlink profile.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>How to identify a negative SEO attack<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a variety of common negative SEO techniques that people may use to harm your website. After handling negative SEO attacks with my own clients, these are the most common types I\u2019ve come across and that I encourage webmasters to be on the lookout for.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>1. Toxic backlinks<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Backlinks from low-quality sites that have low domain authority, little relevance to your industry, or very little site traffic should always be suspect. If you receive a large influx of these low-quality links, they may be coming from a link farm that has the infrastructure to build a massive amount of links quickly. If you\u2019re a new site with a large percentage of toxic links, Google will likely assume you\u2019ve been participating in black hat manipulation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-142464 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/list-of-links-1024x654.png\" alt=\"A negative SEO attack can be cause by toxic poor quality backlinks\" width=\"640\" height=\"409\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/list-of-links-1024x654.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/list-of-links-300x192.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/list-of-links-768x491.png 768w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/list-of-links-1536x981.png 1536w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/list-of-links.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3><b>2. Comment spam links<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One way SEOs used to manipulate their site authority was by leaving backlinks in the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/search\/docs\/advanced\/guidelines\/prevent-comment-spam?hl=en&amp;visit_id=637407340566034288-3586174742&amp;rd=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">comment section of blogs<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or forum sites. If you suddenly receive backlinks in the comment section of older blogs with no relevance or traffic, someone might have placed them there maliciously. If it\u2019s an SEO agency that placed the link and you paid for it, fire them immediately. Google indexes those links in the comment section, and it will not look favorably upon your site if you have a lot of these unnatural backlinks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-142465\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/comment-spam-1024x860.png\" alt=\"Spam comments could cause a negative SEO attack\" width=\"640\" height=\"538\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/comment-spam-1024x860.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/comment-spam-300x252.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/comment-spam-768x645.png 768w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/comment-spam-1536x1289.png 1536w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/comment-spam.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3><b>3. Exact match or unnatural anchor text<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Natural anchor text will most often include your brand name, the services or products your business offers, or more generic wording like, \u201cClick Here.\u201d If all of your anchor text has the exact keyword you\u2019re trying to rank for, that will come across as manipulation to Google. If the anchor text is irrelevant, it will confuse Google bots about the content of your site. It\u2019s important to pay attention to the most common ways that other sites link to yours so if new links don\u2019t share at least some similarity, you can investigate them accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>4. Fake negative reviews<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although negative reviews don\u2019t have as drastic of an impact on your site authority as your backlink profile, Google does crawl and render those sites when considering whether to rank web pages. Local and small businesses with bad reviews, in particular, will not rank, so in addition to reviewing your backlink profile on a regular basis, site owners should also be monitoring the important review sites in their industry. Most major review sites allow you to report reviews if you have reason to believe they are fake.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are other types of negative SEO that I haven\u2019t listed here such as content scraping, links hidden in images, and more, but the above are very easily identified using <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/search.google.com\/search-console\/about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google Search Console<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or any type of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/linkgraph.io\/free-backlink-analysis\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">backlink analyzer<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Familiarizing yourself with the many ways that others may try to link to your site in a harmful way will help you be able to identify those problematic links right after they show up in your backlink profile.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>How to perform negative SEO remediation<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Digging yourself out of a negative SEO attack is never fun, but it can be done. If you\u2019re being a responsible webmaster and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2015\/08\/11\/the-perils-of-negative-seo-what-you-need-to-know\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">monitoring your backlink profile<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> regularly, you should have a solid understanding of what a healthy backlink profile for your website looks like, and will therefore be able to recognize the moment that something appears off.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you believe that the influx of links is indeed the result of nefarious intentions, you have a few options to repair the damage, and hopefully, before Google penalizes your site. Some of these options are more expensive than others, but if you\u2019re not an experienced webmaster, it is probably best to get the guidance of an SEO expert. If you remove the wrong links, you can end up performing negative SEO on your own website by mistake.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>1. Request removal<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first step with any link is to reach out to the webmaster to ask for the link to be removed. Admittedly, this is not always successful. However, before you move on to option two, you want to make sure you have exhausted every effort to have the link removed before requesting Google to get involved. If the link was the result of comment spam, the owner of the blog may be willing to moderate or delete the comment. There have been webmasters who have charged my clients a fee to have links removed. Depending on the price you\u2019re willing to pay, you can choose to do so or move on to other options.<\/span><b><\/b><b><\/b><\/p>\n<h3><b>2. Disavow file<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2012, Google added the disavow tool in Google Search Console to give webmasters more agency in their off-site SEO. The reality is, no one can fully control the websites that choose to link to theirs in a harmful way, so it\u2019s not really fair for search engines to penalize your site as a result. Google recognized this and created the disavow tool, however, they still advise site owners to use it sparingly. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2015\/10\/26\/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-disavow-file\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">disavow file<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is essentially a list of links that you want invalidated on your domain, or that you don\u2019t want Google to consider when evaluating the quality of your website. There are detailed instructions on <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/2648487?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">how to submit a disavow file<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the Google Search Console help center. Take note though that these links aren\u2019t actually removed, Google just no longer takes them into consideration the next time they are crawled and indexed. If you\u2019re using an SEO software that measures the quality of your backlink profile, you will likely have to submit the disavow file there as well if you want their metrics to accurately reflect how Google understands your site.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>3. Link building campaigns<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">High-quality, contextual link building is different from black-hat SEO in that it uses original content to earn links on relevant, industry-specific publications. The best SEO agencies will <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/linkgraph.io\/link-building-increase-your-site-authority\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">increase site authority the right way<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, through techniques that are Google compliant and don\u2019t harm your rankings in the long-term. If you are not actively trying to earn high-quality links for your website, not only are you missing out on the opportunity to improve your overall keyword rankings, you place your site in a more vulnerable position. If you pursue consistent link acquisition and build up a healthy backlink profile before a negative SEO attack occurs, you are more well-positioned to avoid a Google penalty.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is certainly frustrating and unfair when negative SEO occurs, but there is really nothing that a webmaster can do to prevent it. So in the case of negative SEO, preparation is the best medicine. Knowing what to look for will help you be more prepared to take immediate action and minimize the damage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i>Manick Bhan is the founder and CTO of\u00a0<\/i><i>LinkGraph<\/i><i>, an award-winning digital marketing and SEO agency that provides SEO, paid media, and content marketing services. He is also the founder and CEO of\u00a0<\/i><i>SearchAtlas<\/i><i>, a software suite of free SEO tools. You can find Manick on Twitter\u00a0<\/i><span class=\"css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/madmanick\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>@madmanick<\/em><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LinkGraph CTO, Manick Bhan, discusses the most common types of negative SEO and details how site owners can perform negative SEO remediation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":142466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[560,168,27715,27460,369,37,1067,215,388,50,22,21423,27949,32,27382,27992,27993],"content_type":[],"class_list":["post-142458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo","tag-anchor-text","tag-black-hat-seo","tag-disavowing-links","tag-domain-authority-da","tag-evergreen-content","tag-google","tag-google-penalty","tag-google-search-console","tag-link-building-campaigns","tag-link-building","tag-seo","tag-seo-attack","tag-seo-guide","tag-serps","tag-site-authority","tag-unnatural-anchor-texts","tag-unnatural-links"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/The-anatomy-of-a-negative-SEO-attack.png","category":"SEO","timeago":"5y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142458"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=142458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}