In the past few weeks, you’ve noticed a drop in leads, and your SEO performance seems to be slipping despite your best efforts. Traffic has slowed to a crawl, and your search rankings are dropping. For many business owners, this shift can be alarming, especially if you’ve invested in building a strong online presence.
Perhaps your keywords have lost their competitive edge, or the market is oversaturated with optimised content, making it harder for your business to stand out.
Or maybe, you’re falling victim to negative SEO attacks.
Let’s examine negative SEO, the common types of negative SEO attacks, and, most importantly, how to detect and prevent these harmful attacks on your business.
What Is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO refers to unethical and malicious tactics to undermine a website’s search engine performance. Unlike traditional SEO, where efforts focus on improving rankings through high-quality content, relevance to users, and creating a good user experience, negative SEO is designed to damage a site’s credibility and ranking on search engines. This set of practices falls under “black hat SEO,” which refers to manipulative tactics that violate search engine guidelines.
The goal of negative SEO attacks is to weaken a competitor’s position, reduce their visibility, and impact their business. These attacks come in all shapes and sizes, from creating spammy backlinks to duplicating content. The tactics used can manipulate search engines into penalising a site, often misinterpreting the harmful activities as attempts to artificially derank websites.
If left unchecked, negative SEO can damage a site’s integrity, reduce organic traffic and ultimately lead to business losses.
So, let’s explore the specific types of negative SEO attacks, the precise methods to detect them, and how to prevent them from thwarting your hard-earned SEO ranking from grace.
8 Types Of Negative Seo Attacks
1. Spammy Backlinks
Attackers may create large volumes of low-quality, irrelevant backlinks pointing to your site. These backlinks often contain unrelated or spammy anchor text, which can signal to search engines that your site is attempting to manipulate rankings. If search engines detect these unnatural links, your site could be penalised, leading to a significant drop in rankings. Here are some examples of spammy backlinks.
Link Farms are networks of low-quality websites created solely to link to other sites. They are often filled with irrelevant content and designed to artificially inflate SEO rankings.
Unrelated Or Irrelevant Content Sites: Websites that are irrelevant to your industry, such as a finance site receiving backlinks from pet grooming or gambling pages, indicate spammy intentions.
PBNs (Private Blog Networks): Groups of websites controlled by one entity to manipulate rankings, featuring thin content and multiple outbound links to unrelated sites.
2. Content Scraping And Duplication
Content scraping involves copying your website’s content and reposting it across other sites. This creates duplicate content issues, confusing search engines about the original source.
In severe cases, search engines might even rank the copied content higher than your original page, impacting your visibility.
3. Fake Reviews
It’s common to receive negative reviews, but watch out for fake reviews or harmful comments. These fake reviews act like smear campaigns and post disparaging comments on websites or social media, creating a negative perception of your business and potentially influencing user behaviour and search engine results.
4. Negative Comments
While it’s true that you can never truly please everyone with your services, attacks may come from seemingly legitimate comments. These comments could be inflated, one-sided, misleading, and ultimately manufactured.
Potential customers could read these comments and choose one of your competitors instead and can tarnish the reputation of the business. Search engines like Google take user signals and content sentiment into account. A high volume of negative feedback and comments might influence how search algorithms perceive the quality and credibility of a website, potentially leading to lower rankings.
5. Website Hacking And Malware
Hacking attacks may inject malware, redirect links, or spammy content into your site. These intrusions can make your site appear unsafe, leading to user trust issues and search engine penalties. If Google detects that your site is compromised, it may blacklist the site, making it inaccessible from search results.
6. Keyword Stuffing And On-Page Manipulation
Attackers may exploit keyword stuffing or other manipulative tactics directly on your pages. By injecting excessive keywords or irrelevant content, they aim to make your site appear spammy to search engines, which can lead to penalties for “unnatural” on-page optimisation.
7. Forced Crawl Errors
A forced crawl error attack involves bombarding your site’s server with requests, potentially causing server overload and crashes. This can slow down your site or make it temporarily inaccessible, hindering search engine crawlers from indexing your pages correctly and impacting your site’s performance in search results.
8. Negative Social Signals
INegative social signals refer to harmful activities or interactions on social media platforms that can damage your brand’s online reputation, reduce engagement, and potentially impact SEO.
In the context of negative SEO, attackers may intentionally use negative social signals to harm a business. Here’s how negative social signals might appear and how they can affect your brand:
Flooding Hashtags With Irrelevant Or Inappropriate Content: Competitors or attackers may hijack your branded hashtags, associating them with irrelevant or inappropriate content. This can confuse users and create a negative impression of your brand when they search for hashtags.
Fake Accounts Posting Negative Content: Sometimes, fake accounts are created to post misleading or harmful content about your business.
These fake accounts might leave negative feedback or share damaging content with your hashtags, harming your brand’s perception.
Low Engagement On Genuine Content Due To Negative Campaigns: If your social media presence is flooded with fake negative interactions, genuine followers may be discouraged from engaging with your content, leading to a drop in likes, shares, and comments.
This low engagement can reduce your social credibility and may indirectly impact SEO.
8 Ways To Detect And Prevent Negative SEO
We have discussed the types of negative SEO and its detrimental effects on your website ranking. Fortunately, there are effective ways to detect and prevent these harmful tactics.
Recognising the warning signs and taking preventive measures can help protect your website from these attacks and gradually restore your SEO ranking. Here are eight key ways to detect and prevent negative SEO effectively.
1. Monitor Backlinks Regularly
Scenario: You notice dozens of backlinks from gambling or adult websites which don’t relate to your business. This influx of bad links could signal a negative SEO attack that harms your site’s credibility.
Solution: Use tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to monitor new backlinks regularly. Setting up alerts for unusual link activity lets you spot suspicious backlinks early.
If you find harmful backlinks, you can disavow them using Google’s Disavow Tool to prevent them from affecting your site’s rankings. Be careful, however, the last thing you want to do is disavow high-quality backlinks and negatively impact your organic rankings.
2. Set Up Alerts In Google Search Console
Scenario: You received a notification in Google Search Console about new crawl errors or warnings about unnatural links, suggesting malicious activity may target your site.
Solution: Enabling alerts in Google Search Console provides instant notifications of any unusual issues, from crawl errors to security risks. When alerted, you can quickly investigate and resolve these issues before they can damage your SEO.
3. Use Duplicate Content Checkers
Scenario: A competitor has copied your article word-for-word and posted it on their site, confusing search engines about which is the original source.
Solution: Tools like Copyscape or Grammarly allow you to scan the web routinely for duplicate copies of your content. Detecting and addressing duplicated content quickly ensures that search engines recognise your site as the original source. If you spot unauthorised duplicates, you can file DMCA takedown requests with the offending sites to remove the copied content, protecting your SEO from penalties.
4. Implement Strong Security Practices
Scenario: You find that certain pages on your site are redirecting users to spammy or irrelevant websites, which often occurs when malicious code is injected into your site.
Solution: Strengthen your website’s security by regularly updating your Content Management System (CMS), plugins, and themes. Use complex passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and consider adding firewalls or security plugins to protect against unauthorised access. Do not click on unsolicited links, and conduct routine security scans to identify any malware or malicious code early.
5. Track Online Reviews And Brand Mentions
Scenario: You suddenly receive dozens of negative reviews from freshly made accounts that appear on your GMB, suggesting they might not be from real accounts.
Solution: Set up Google Alerts or use tools like Mention to monitor reviews and brand mentions online. You can report fake reviews to the relevant platform if necessary by catching them early.
6. Monitor Site Performance And Server Logs
Scenario: Your website becomes noticeably slower, and you see an unusual amount of traffic from a single IP address, suggesting someone might be trying to overload your server with requests.
Solution:
- Regularly review server logs and monitor your site’s performance to catch unusual patterns early.
- Partner with your hosting provider to implement security measures like rate-limiting, which helps prevent server overloads.
- Monitor your site’s performance closely to ensure users have seamless access to your website.
7. Set Up Social Listening Tools
Scenario: You find a wave of spam links using your brand’s hashtags on social media, which may make users hesitant to engage with your content.
Solution: Use social listening tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to stay updated on mentions and conversations about your brand. Social listening lets you quickly catch negative comments or spammy links so you can address them promptly and keep a positive online image. Managing your brand’s social presence also helps reinforce user trust and credibility.
8. Conduct Routine SEO Audits
Scenario: Your site experiences a noticeable drop in traffic, and further investigation reveals it is linked to several low-quality, spammy domains.
Solution: Schedule regular SEO audits to detect any unusual changes, technical issues, or negative SEO threats affecting your site. Audits allow you to proactively address minor problems before they escalate, helping you maintain a secure and healthy SEO foundation.
How Harmful Is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO can have severe consequences for a website’s performance and reputation. If left unchecked, it can lead to significant drops in search rankings, decreased traffic, and a weakened online presence.
Moreover, recovering from a negative SEO attack can be very time-consuming and costly, requiring much effort to restore rankings and rebuild credibility.
Conclusion On Negative SEO
Negative SEO poses a serious threat to any website, potentially harming rankings, reducing traffic, and damaging online reputation. Understanding common types of negative SEO attacks and staying proactive in detection and prevention can protect your site’s visibility and credibility.
With so much at stake, it is difficult for businesses to constantly worry about being victims of negative SEO attacks. Best SEO can help companies and businesses maintain their lead on the top rank while quickly restoring victimised websites back to the top.
Get Your free 30-minute Strategy session with us today!
Frequently Asked Questions About Negative SEO
What Should I Do First If I Notice Unusual Drops In My Site’s Rankings?
Start by reviewing your recent backlinks to check for low-quality or spammy links pointing to your site. Then, verify your site’s security for potential hacks by using Google Search Console to detect other issues.
Should I Be Worried About Negative SEO If My Business Is Small?
Yes. Negative SEO can affect any site, regardless of its size. Small businesses are particularly vulnerable because ranking drops can significantly impact their visibility and ability to attract new customers.
How Can I Recover My Rankings If My Site Has Been Affected By Negative SEO?
Start by identifying harmful backlinks and reporting fake reviews. Although recovery can take time, consistent high-quality SEO practices will help restore your rankings.
Is There A Way To Tell If A Drop In Traffic Is From Negative SEO Or An Algorithm Update?
Yes. A sudden spike in spammy backlinks typically signals negative SEO, while algorithm updates tend to affect a broader range of sites within an industry.
Which Steps Should I Take If I Suspect My Competitor Is Targeting Me With Negative SEO?
Document any unusual changes you observe, such as a rise in spammy backlinks or suspicious accounts giving fake reviews. Monitoring tools track these patterns and report malicious behaviour to review platforms or search engines.
When Should I Take Action Against Suspicious Links Or Content On My Site?
Immediately. The faster you address the issue, the more damage you can prevent from negative SEO.
