There are two ways to “win”: to be better than the other or to make the other less. While most people are honest and believe in the virtues of hard work and discipline, unfortunately not everyone.
Negative SEO is a set of bad SEO practices performed by a third party to intentionally lower your rank on search engines and harm your visibility.
How to spot a negative SEO attack?
Instead of trying to improve a site’s ranking, the goal of negative referencing is to demote a competitor site or, sometimes, to make it disappear from Google altogether.
This practice is an employed by malicious people, often competitors.
How to spot a successful negative SEO attack?
Look for evidence manipulation of your SEO profile and your metrics to check if someone has negatively affected your search engine rankings.
3 indicators allow detecting a negative SEO attack. If you undergo the second or the third case, the first is necessarily already effective.
1. A sudden drop in traffic
If a sudden drop in traffic is noticed on your metrics – assuming you have changed nothing in your habits – this could be a sign of negative SEO.
2. Manual notification of penalties (by a Google employee)
There are two types of penalties Google, manual and algorithmic.
Normally, you can’t spot an algorithmic penalty without a marked drop in traffic. But if the penalty is manual, you will receive a nice brief message from a Google employee letting you know that they have taken action against your site.
Again, a negative SEO attack has triggered if.
3. Ranking of individual keywords
If the number of visits to your site is plummeting, your ranking on the SERPs may be too.
To keep tabs on your word rankings-most important keys, use free tools like Ubersuggest, Freekeywordtool.net, or Keywordshitter.com.
6 tips to avoid negative SEO on your website
In your sector, as in all sectors, competition is fierce and some use unfair weapons to bring you down by all means. Here’s how to monitor your SEO.
Make a regular SEO review of your net linking
Each company should regularly check its profile of net linking so as not to be fooled by negative SEO.
So you can detect any suspicious activity on time. If the chart shows a sudden drop or rise which is not of your making, it may result from malicious activity. In the event of a fall, the ranking of your website will drop as will the SEO of your keywords-keys.
To avoid this risk, watch your profile of connections thanks to the Google Search Console, for example.
Check the speed of your website
If your site is running much slower than usual for no apparent reason, then the suspicious activity may be the cause.
Use software to calculate the speed of your site. PageSpeed Insight, designed by Google, is particularly reliable.
Find out if they have removed the content by a third party
Another fraudulent way to lower a website’s ranking is to delete the content altogether. Once deleted, these smart guys paste the content on their website.
The attackers then claim that this original content is theirs. And it therefore led Google to consider the copied content as original… And the index before you upload your content.
One thing leading to another, your referencing and your ranking in the SERPs will be penalized.
There are tools to help protect yourself from attempts to dispose of your content. A commonly used tool is Copyscape. You can enter the URL of your content into the software to see if there are any duplicates of your content on the web.
If you learn that they have plagiarized your content, the next step is to make sure the webmaster removes the content. If he refuses, take the action by reporting it to Google. Simply complete the Google copyright form to report duplicate content made from your site.
Always keep an eye on the CTR
A click-through rate, also known as CTR, is a way to find out how many people have visited your site and how many of them clicked on an internal link.
This allows you to assess the quality of the content offered and its ability to generate traffic. Some negative SEO attacks aim to disrupt your click-through rate.
The only way to detect this attack is to regularly monitor the CTR of your main keywords.
To do this, you need to sign in to Google Search Analytics. You can then obtain and analyze the CTR of your keywords.
Once the assessment is done and if you find anything fishy, immediately contact Google to speak out against these negative SEO attacks.
Search for fake social media accounts
Another negative SEO trick is to create fake accounts of your business on different social media. If you find a social media page that is not yours, attempt to have it removed.
All you have to do is report it. It is also possible that a spammer changes the pages of your website to redirect visitors to theirs.
Even though most small businesses don’t have to worry about this, attackers can still use this trick to improve their rankings. They will use your link popularity and your eminent authority to redirect your visitors to their site!
It is easy to counter such attacks. When you do your site audit, click on the “redirect” section. There you will see all the redirects added to your website. If any are abnormal, report them to Google.
Optimize your site’s security measures
Cyber attacks on the internet are common, and they can also damage your site and your business.
So make sure your security software is up to date. Your content management software (CMS) should be fully equipped with strong and reliable encryption.
Negative SEO: what to remember!
Every website can receive negative SEO attacks. Fortunately, Google is here to help you report attacks and fix them.
As you can see, there are many ways to reduce the risk. Finally, note that the better your SEO will be, the more chances you have to arouse the greed of your competitors and hackers. It is therefore important to remain vigilant and to be informed at all times.
