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How Does Negative SEO Work?

Creating a high-quality website and a solid SEO strategy can be equally challenging. After all, Google uses around 200 factors to rank a website.  

Even though it’s rare, negative SEO is part of the digital marketing landscape. Negative SEO practitioners will play around with your SEO to damage your website’s rank. Read on to discover more about negative SEO and how a negative SEO monitoring service can help. 

What is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO involves using malicious practices that sabotage another website’s SEO. Attackers will use black-hat techniques to damage the search rankings of their competitors and get them penalized by Google. 

The reasons behind these attacks vary, but their most common purpose is to damage a competitor’s website. Negative SEO is not illegal in most cases, but it is unethical and not tolerated by search engines. 

Types of Negative SEO Attacks

In the past, negative SEO was limited to hacking and suspicious ads, but these malicious practices further developed. Today, you can find them in various forms. Here are some of the most common types of negative SEO attacks:

  • Duplicating content – One of the oldest negative SEO attacks is copying your website’s content on another website (such as blog posts and web pages). This will make your website seem spammy and even lead to penalties from Google.
  • Toxic links – They happen when someone links your website to link farms or untrustworthy low-quality sites to damage your rank. People can combine this tactic with duplicate content to further cause damage. Some even try to remove the positive backlinks you already have.
  • Fake reviews and accounts – People who use negative SEO can post fake reviews about your business. Some even create fake social media profiles of your company, employees, or business partners and use this to damage your brand’s credibility and customer relationships.
  • Slowing down websites – The speed of your website is more important than people think. With negative SEO tactics such as forceful crawling and sending a lot of traffic to the site (DDoS attacks), attackers can slow down your website and damage your site’s user experience and Google rank.
  • Website hacking – The oldest trick in the book still works. Attackers can hack and compromise your website content and code. For instance, you can see your original website while visitors will see a different page. This tactic is commonly used by overly aggressive companies. 

Hire a Negative SEO Monitoring Service

Unfortunately, many people decide to enter the world of negative SEO. However, this doesn’t mean they are unbeatable. Every website owner can protect themselves from negative SEO with the right tools.
But remember, you don’t have to fight attackers on your own.

At SEO Defend, we provide high-quality SEO monitoring and security. Our team offers protection against malicious negative SEO attacks and solutions for dealing with any possible consequences. With our services, you can avoid search engine penalties, improve your backlink safety, maintain proper website speed, preserve domain and page authority, track social media spam, and more.

Contact us today to learn more about our services and 30-day free trial.