One of the problems that can plague websites is negative SEO. If you are having trouble reaching your audience or your marketing campaign isn’t performing as expected, perhaps you are the victim of an attack that directly caused a drop in your search engine ranking. In this article, we will explain how to protect your website from negative SEO, and we will also go over the most common causes.
What is negative SEO?
What we consider negative SEO is any practice that causes your website to lose favor with search engines and drop to a lower rank. Nowadays, it is usually the result of an attack on your website. However, it may also be the result of black hat practices. This means that you may have inadvertently caused harm to your own website by applying techniques that are against the terms and conditions of search engines. The easiest way to avoid self-inflicted damage is to only associate with professional SEO companies and do your homework before partnering up with someone.
Nevertheless, most negative SEO comes from third parties that perform malicious actions and cause a drop in your rank. This is usually done by your competition or someone they hire to attack your website. Thankfully, most hackers follow a few repetitive patterns, which you can easily ward against.
Here is how to protect your website from negative SEO:
1. Perform audits to check for negative SEO
Your first step in battling the harmful effects of negative SEO is to find out where the damage is coming from. To determine if there are any problems with your website that might cause you to lose SEO, it is a good idea to perform an SEO audit. Audits can check for the most common culprits like indexing problems or toxic links. You will also get insight into your website’s weaknesses and how hackers can use them as opportunities to inflict harm. Once you know the root of the issue, it will be relatively easy to repair the damage and get your site ranking well again.
However, keep in mind that it is far too easy to point the finger of blame towards your competition and overlook many of the mistakes you could be making yourself. On the other hand, sometimes, the cause for your drop in rank is a simple change of Google’s algorithm or policy. Make sure you are up to date on the latest guidelines on how Google approaches SEO and site crawling.
2. Check for duplicate content
A very easy tactic that hackers can employ is to duplicate your content. This can range from re-uploading individual pieces of content all the way to copying your entire website. If this happens, search engines won’t see your content as original, and your site will lose authority and suffer a penalty. The best way to protect your website from negative SEO coming from content duplication is to use free software like Copyscape. There you can look up individual articles or even your whole site to see if it is duplicated somewhere on the internet.
While we are on the topic of duplicates, some hackers may try to create redundant citations of your company which Google can recognize as spam. You should always avoid multiple citations on the same website since, besides causing negative SEO, they can also confuse the user by spreading inaccurate information. Make sure all of your citations are verified. Merge duplicates you may have created yourself and delete any redundant or misleading information.
3. Set up notifications to inform you of changes
Hackers can be sneaky and very hard to detect. The fact that someone is tampering with your website doesn’t mean that all of your computer screens will immediately start displaying a skull and crossbones. Various forms of malware exist, and someone can be tampering with your website even without your knowledge. That’s why we recommend regularly scheduling SEO audits. However, there is something you can do to get instantly informed of suspicious behavior on your website. Google’s search console lets you set up notifications that will inform you if your website gets hacked. Google’s webmaster tools can even deliver email alerts when your pages aren’t being indexed or when you receive a manual penalty.
4. Monitor your backlinks
Another common tactic that hackers like to use is setting up many spammy links pointing to your site. Simply by virtue of association, Google can interpret this as a sign of your own website being weak. To protect your website from negative SEO coming from spammy links, you can disavow them. Unfortunately, this is done manually by going from link to link, which can take up a lot of time. It might be a good idea to hire SEO experts to handle that for you and run an in-depth backlink audit.
Alternatively, hackers may go after your quality backlinks and have them removed. They can do this by impersonating you and contacting the webmaster to get the link taken down. Luckily, you can prevent this with a bit of foresight. Always use a company email and contact webmasters exclusively through that. Regardless, you shouldn’t rely just on webmasters to keep the backlinks up. You should keep track of your best backlinks personally and monitor them for changes.
5. Follow a white hat SEO approach
We already mentioned that negative SEO could sometimes come from your actions. Don’t dig your own hole and cause your website to suffer. While it may be tempting to take shortcuts and buy many links for SEO, that tactic usually backfires. Google’s algorithms have gotten very good at detecting foul play, and we recommend doing everything by the book. Even though link building takes time, it will give you results in the long run.
The bottom line
The security of your website should be an important issue for any company. By now, you should have a good idea of how to protect your website from negative SEO. Just take a few simple precautions and constantly monitor the state of your site. You can also hire a professional SEO company, and rest easy knowing your website is in good hands.
Meta description: If you are ranking lower in search results – it may be caused by attacks on your site. Here’s how to protect your website from negative SEO.
