What Is Negative SEO And How To Deflect It?

Posted by Rex Conner on August 3rd, 2023

Search engine optimization has always been a crucial aspect of digital marketing which lets an individual to build and expand online presence and help the target audience to find their services, products, or content. Though SEO knowledge is easily available nowadays but there exists another side of it which goes unnoticed by many. This rather darker side to SEO is known as negative SEO and is behind every inexplicable drop in search rankings. A negative SEO takes shape of an attack meant to diminish one’s SERP rankings, social media presence, and much more.

As you get to the bottom of what negative SEO is all about, you would want to know how to protect yourself from such an attack. Therefore, we have brought a few effective ways to deflect any negative SEO attack to help you out.

1. Keep a backlink catalog

Backlinks are the backbone of any SEO strategy as they help establish a solid search engine ranking. So, when your ranking suddenly diminish without any reason then it should indicate a negative SEO attack. To check whether your trusted backlinks are working or not, you can keep a log of all backlinks in a catalog. One can use either a tool or check all backlinks one by one to know immediately whether one has done toxic link-building or not.

2. Protect your content

We know the search engines such as Google, do not appreciate duplicate content and that’s why content duplication is a type of negative SEO attack. This is why one must protect their site’s original content using canonical tags to ensure Google acknowledges you as the original creator. You may also add a copyright notice and updated Terms of Service section to your site to discourage duplicating content. Whenever a duplicate content is spotted, one should report it to Google instantly.

3. Report fake profiles

Fake profiles are rampant on the internet because it started as a joke but now it’s a menacing way to threaten the authenticity of brands/individuals across social media channels. Whenever you spot a fake social media profile, it’s crucial to report it to the authorities right away before it can hurt your online reputation. You can either manually keep a track of all authentic social profiles or use one of the various tools to help you find fake profiles.

4. Monitor online reviews

As online reviews can become a powerful weapon in the hands of a negative SEO practitioner, you need to monitor them carefully. All of us are familiar when people post bad and fake reviews for a company but most of us didn’t know it was a negative SEO attack. By identifying and removing fake reviews, you can stop the negative SEO campaign before it damages you any further. But this doesn’t mean not engaging with authentic negative reviews to win back customers.

5. Protect site from hackers.

Even after you take care of the above, the most powerful negative SEO attacks of all can put your entire website at risk. Hacking attempts are not unusual as they can misuse one’s site, mess around with its coding, do a lot of damage in the backend, all without one noticing. To protect your site from hacks you will require regular site audits, Google search console to notify you of any security breach, etc.

Wrapping up

Negative SEO can destroy your months of hard work in just a few days which is why SEO experts need to know how to go up against it. Keeping the aforementioned in mind, it is possible to avert the attack of a negative SEO practitioner and safeguard your or your client’s online brand.