There has been rapid progress in the SEO industry with ever-increasing competition every day. It is crucial to have an in-depth understanding of SEO to impact businesses and brand awareness. The competition leads to a few players taking advantage of the existing loopholes in the field, giving rise to extensive negative SEO. Some of the negative SEO include:
- Having several fake social media handles or profiles
- Using indecent keywords
- Content duplication or scrapped content
- Attaching toxic backlinks to websites
- Hacking websites
Negative SEO is misleading and will ultimately get online users to undesired destinations in search of online solutions. For instance, when planning to custom dissertation, you need to do due diligence to get to the best solutions available online. Otherwise, you may fall prey to scammers due to negative SEO.
So, what is Negative SEO?
You probably need to understand what you are safeguarding against to put in place the right measures. In a nutshell, negative SEO is the practice of using unethical techniques and black hat to sabotage the ranking of a competitor in search engines. Attacks through negative SEO come in different forms.
The hacking of a website is usually not in the best interests. The objective has always been to bring it down. Those many spammy links being built on your website are something you should be wary about. Others involve the copying of your website content and sharing it all over. This is not acceptable by search engines and can get penalized as negative SEO.
Some people may point keywords with indecent words such as poker online and Viagra among others to taint the image of your site. Fake social media profiles can also be created with the sole intention of damaging your online reputation. Several things constitute negative SEO and must be tracked down before it is too late to do so.
Dealing with the threat of Negative SEO
Negative SEO is a real threat to anyone serious about building a strong online brand. It is indeed a problem for people that have not taken the time to study and understand it, especially in ways that can affect their progress. You should put in place measures to prevent negative SEO more than waiting to fix the problem when it attacks.
There are many stories to lure you and take advantage of you if you lie in ignorance. Online competition gets horrible when it takes the negative SEO path. Website owners should, therefore, tame it before it strikes.
Most search engines are trying to develop new algorithms that can curb these attacks and malicious practices. However, you can also take measures to secure your site and content from negative SEO. You can try these authentic steps to protect your site.
Lookout for backlinks regularly
Hackers and spammers build mediocre, bad, and low-quality links as they seek to introduce Negative SEO on particular websites. To deal with the problem, you need to perform regular checks of backlinks. It is the best way to deal with potential external attacks.
Search duplicate content
To avoid Negative SEO pitfalls, you need to prioritize preventing content scraping. To avoid junk domain indexing, you should get rid of all plagiarized content. Doing this helps your site not to lose value when you link it to an Economic SEO. Plagiarism impacts negatively on your SEO efforts and that is why it should be avoided at all costs.
You can use Grammarly or CopyScape to check if your content is original. They make it easy for you to detect any plagiarized content. If there is duplicate content, you can seek the webmaster’s services to assist you in removing the content. Make sure you only published original and unique content on your website.
Look for traffic spikes
Monitor the trend of the traffic on your website. If you notice any sudden rise or fall, it is a sign that there is something you need to pay attention to. In most cases, when the traffic falls suddenly, there could be some unwanted activities going on and worth investigating. You can make good use of Google to track your site visitors. Other tools that are useful in detecting traffic activity include:
- Page Speed Optimization tool
- PageSpeed Insight
- GTMetrix
- Website Grader
Get to know how your site is performing from time to time. Any suspicious trends in performance are enough signs that you should check on your site’s security especially, guarding against negative SEO.
Check Google My Business
Google My Business is a platform that registers several businesses. If the affected business uses the Google platform, you should look out for negative reviews from spammers. Your online business’s reputation heavily depends on the reviews, and to build a strong brand, you should deal with negative reviews.
Set Email Alerts
Leverage the utilization of your website by monitoring its safety. You can automate the monitoring and setting up email alerts to notify you of any occurrences of concern to you. Such alerts are beneficial when:
- There is a malware attack
- Pages are not indexed
- The server is experiencing downtime
- Google sends a manual penalty
Make your password stronger
The first task to securing your website is by using a strong password. There are several techniques that you could use to come up with a strong password. An excellent way to generate a strong password is to use a series of symbols, numbers, and letters. You might also consider using a two-factor authentication plugin.
Conclusion
Preparation is the best way to deal with the harmful effects of Negative SEO. There are many avenues through which your site can be attacked. Therefore, it is important to remain aware of everything that is happening with it around the clock. The security of your website should remain a priority. Publish original content only. Guarding against negative SEO starts by keeping your house in order. Do everything right before seeking protection from external attacks. Do not be a victim.