In this weblog, we will be discussing ‘Negative SEO- What it is, the origin of SEO in India, types of negative SEO, and how to safeguard against it.
What is ‘Negative SEO’?
Before that, let’s understand what SEO actually is.
SEO means ‘Search Engine Optimization ‘. It is the process that is basically used to evaluate a website’s technical configuration. It also deals with content relevance on the website and used links. It works to make a website’s pages can become much easily findable, more relevant, and popular with user search queries, and as a consequence, search engines rank them better.
Now, it’s quite understandable that ‘Negative’ SEO means the exact opposite. That is somehow making lower ranks on search engines, difficulties arising in finding pages, and unpopular among users.
So, how does it happen? How does suddenly a website lower down in terms of rank and how can your competitors do so? Most importantly, how can you safeguard against negative SEO? Does google do anything to stop it?
Before answering all of that, you need to understand what’s the origin of ‘SEO’-how it actually started?
Origin of ‘SEO’ in India
If we talk about the 2000s, very few people knew about SEO, and there were just a handful of companies that offered digital marketing services in India. However, that was quite understandable as we see the growth of media, FB, Instagram, and ACM (Accelerated Mobile Pages) around the period of 2008.
After that, several new digital marketing agencies started operating in India. Many organization owners, after this pandemic period, understood the importance of gaining higher visibility for their brand on Google.
This also led to competition among investors and companies. Top ranking websites had much more chances to get users’ attention and hence the greater good in marketing.
So, a lot of practices were used to disgrace the content, attached links, and such to deduce the ranks by Google. Types of ‘negative SEO’ and ways kept changing by the ranking system by google.
Let’s have a look at the top 6 types of ‘negative SEO’ that have outgrown with time.
Types of ‘Negative SEO’
- Spam links: Adding low-quality links to your website by hackers, which opens to nowhere. It affects user interests and attention and also the google interoperation of ranking of the website.
- Copying Content: Copying your provided content on websites and posting on some other websites to confuse google about the original content provider. The irony is, with your content posted, those fake websites may have better ranks than yours.
- Changing/Editing Content: This happens when hackers find a loophole in the design interface of the header or footer templates. They can edit and run fake content on your website.
- Unwanted Crawling: Slowing down websites is a smooth way for bad SEO practitioners to cause damage. By using forcefully crawling the site, taxing the server load, and in the long run crashing the website online, those SEO practitioners can decrease or de-rank your web page.
- Fraud Click: A specially programmed CTR bot looks for the website’s essential key phrases and branded terms, then clicks on the list, only to get to the search engine request page.
- Malware: It’s too harmful because when malware happens to attack your website, even before forwarding this information to the backends of the website’s owner, Google warns users “This site may be hacked”
Top 6 Steps to safeguard against ‘Negative SEO’
There are several steps that you can take to prevent and safeguard against negative SEO.
1) White hat against black hat
It is the procedure of building links without breaking Google’s pointers. Such hyperlinks are difficult to make, but trust me, the juice is worth the squeeze.
- To be one step ahead-building pleasant backlinks is virtually critical to your internet site’s survival.
- Without good one-way links, it’s almost impossible to rank high on Google for competitive keywords.
- To buy links, make good relationships within your niche and collaborators.
2) Frequently check your website rank & Set inbound link indicators
As part of first-class practice search engine optimization, you should be tracking your backlink profile weekly. This includes putting inbound link signals to ensure that you are looking for spammy links.
3) Try not To "Ruffle Feathers" or "begin beef" with absolutely everyone in your niche
Increase good relationships within your area of interest and make sure that you have the popularity because it helps you to regain even when your website has suffered a lot.
Let’s accept it, the main cause for terrible SEO strategies is to control the search outcomes so the sufferer’s google search rankings decrease or are even lost. Who gets profit from this? Your competitors.
4) Put up a reconsideration request with Google Webmaster equipment
It is much easier to deal with the problem directly with Google. There may be a crawler error or something within the mix that led to your unfair penalty. Get it clarified with the large G and pray for Google’s forgiveness.
5) Become aware of spammy hyperlinks
Yes, Negative SEO is actually happening. You have to be very much aware of new methods that hackers have been adopting. Must make a courtesy file with Bing to help you discover if there may be any terrible SEO happening.
6) Disavow Google
Make their payback!
If you somehow find the hackers, you need to get them panelized. Getting these men penalized is a powerful way of discouraging them from trying to harm your website or anyone’s other once more.
