Search engine optimization continues to change every year, and digital marketers are tuning their SEO strategies to keep up with the competitive nature in search rankings.

Over the years, Protecting your website continues to be a strong demand; unethical practices like Black Hat SEO can sabotage websites and bring them down in search results, a website owner’s worst nightmare.

NewSunSEO is a Myrtle Beach SEO company that provides services to protect any local companies from negative SEO attacks, call us today to schedule a appointment!

As black hat SEO tactics get harder to perform, and less likely to effect site performance, a new SEO strategy known as, “negative SEO” is becoming the next thing.

Unethical search engine optimization tactics are able to damage a website’s safety, site speed, and lowering a websites rankings in search results.

Negative SEO practices can damage websites and rankings on major search engines.

Such attacks can make all the good SEO efforts previously implemented seem valueless, if not aware.

This blog post will help you understand how to protect your website from negative SEO and tips on how to avoid falling victim to negative SEO tactics.

Negative SEO Attacks can include:

Negative SEO is the use of black-hat or unethical methods to undermine a competitor’s ranking in search engines.

There are many ways to attack negative SEO.

• Removal of important backlinks
• Adding Spammy links to website
• Hacking of website
• Fake reviews
• International duplicate content

Are Negative SEOs a real threat?

There is no doubt about it. Negative SEO is a real problem, and many websites have had to address it. It is easier to prevent it than fix it.

You can search Fiverr for negative SEO to find more than 15,000 people who are willing to work for $5.

Black hat forums are filled with stories about people who have used this technique successfully.

Google’s Disavow Tool has been released to assist webmasters in dealing with this issue.

However, the tool should only be used as a last resort and with caution.

Matt Cutts has the answer to negative SEO.

The tool usually works in 2-4 weeks. Is it possible to afford to have your website suspended for a month?

You can’t! I’ll show you how to prevent these attacks and keep your business safe.

How to Prevent Negative SEO Attacks

1.Set up Google Webmaster Tools Email Notifications

Google can alert you by sending email notifications when:

• Google will penalize you with a manual penalty
• Your website pages are not indexed on Google
• Server connectivity issues
• Website is being attacked by Malware

Create a Google Webmaster Tools account and connect it to your website.

Click “Webmaster tools preferences” when you log into your Google webmasters tools account.

Enable email notifications to get alerts immediately about all kinds of issues. Click “Save.”

The next step is monitoring your backlink profile.

2.Keep track of your Backlinks Profile

The backlink profile will make a website owner aware of any negative SEO tactics.

Therefore, it will show the insertion of low quality links within your site and redirects.

To check if someone has built low quality backlinks to your website, you can use tools from other sites such as Ahrefs.

1. Insert your domain into Ahrefs Open Site Explorer tool. In the left menu, choose Backlink profile > Referring

domains report.

2. Click the Domain Rating (DR) metric to sort the domains from the lowest DR to the highest.

(Learn more about Ahrefs Domain rating and URL rating here: https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-metrics/)

3. Low URL rating (UR) and Domain rating metric doesn’t always mean spam. It could mean the site

where the link originated from is new. Make sure you identify each suspicious link further. Look for

indications of spammy links like ones originating from foreign websites that don’t pertain to your

business.

4.When you find a domain that doesn’t belong, click the number under the “backlinks” colum for

analyze further details. Look at the anchor text of the link. If the link doesn’t relate to your business or

looks suspicious, this can be a great indicator of spam links .

5. If you click on a suspicious link, you can check if the content on that page is low quality.Also, you

can utilize Afherfs site explorer to check for spam links in the Anchors report.Furthermore, if you can

see a lot of irrelevant anchors, then the spam links are more than likely to have a negative impact.

Before removing any spammy links through Aherfs, it is strongly recommended to conduct the

removal of these links from Google Search Console. First, create a file .txt file of all the spam links you

wish to remove and export from your Aherfs account. Than, submit the file to the Disavow tool within

Google Search Counsel.

3.Protect your best backlinks

A negative SEO attack to remove your links will sometimes entail the spammer using your name to

contact the owner of the link and requesting to remove your backlink.

How to prevent negative SEO from damaging backlinks :

• When communicating with webmasters, ensure your email account is associated with your domain to prove you’re not an imposter.

For example, your email should look like this: [email protected]

• Than, Sort backlinks by “page rank and social activity” to keep track of your top links.

To protect backlinks, add a tag to the links you value most. If any links were to be removed, you would be notified immediately.

How to add a tag:

• Click “edit” when you select the backlink you want to tag
• Add a relevant name to the tag so it can be found easily
• then repeat this for the remainder of the links you would like to monitor

4. Protect your website from hackers and malware

Security is extremely important when preventing negative SEO attacks. Malware on your website is not something that keeps your business safe.

Take these steps to protect your website:

• For wordpress users, install the Google Authenticator Plugin to create a 2-step verification code.
• This will make your enter a code from Google Authenticator each time you log into your WordPress website.
• Use special characters and numbers to create a strong password.
• Regular backups should be made of your files and databases.
• Ask your hosting company if your site allows users to upload files.
• They can help you install antivirus to protect against malware.

5.Monitor for Duplicate Content

Content duplication is one of the most popular techniques spammers use.

They will copy and paste your website content wherever they can. Your website could be penalized if most of the content is copied and posted everywhere.

Copyscape.com allows you to check if there are duplicate pages on your website.

You can simply add your website or the body of the article that you wish to verify and it will tell you if the content has been published elsewhere without your permission.

6. Monitor Your Social Media Comments

Spammers may create fake accounts on social networks using your company name or website name.

Report these accounts as spam to stop them from becoming popular.

You can use tools such as Mention.net to find out who’s using your brand name.

You will be notified if someone mentions you on any social media platform or website. From there, you can decide if you want to take action.

Register and click “Create an alert”. Name your alert and enter the keywords that you wish to be alerted. Multiple languages can be used.

Click “Next step.”

Mention.net will search for the following sources. You can also add domains that you don’t want to be included.

Click “Create an alert” to receive notifications whenever your keyword (company name), is mentioned in social media, blogs and forums.

7.You can monitor the speed of your website

Your website may suddenly load very slowly. This is not due to spammers sending thousands of requests every second to your server.

Spammers may take down your server if you don’t respond quickly.

Pingdom.com is a great tool to monitor server uptime and load time.

Register for an account to receive email alerts when your site is down.

Contact your hosting company immediately if your website is attacked.

8.Do not be a victim of your own SEO strategies

You should not use techniques which are not approved by Google to

hurt your website’s rankings. These are the types of things you

shouldn’t do:

• You should not sell links from your website without the “nofollow” attribute.
• Do not publish too many low-quality guest posts.
• Do not create too many backlinks linking to your website with “money keywords.” Minimum 60% of your anchor text should include your website name.
• Do not buy links from blogs networks and do not buy links for SEO.
• Do not link to sites that have been penalized

9.Don’t Make Enemies Online

There’s no reason to make enemies. Never argue with clients, because you never know who your client is.

There are three types and reasons spammers spam:

• For revenge
• For entertainment
• To rank higher than the competition in search engines

How to combat negative SEO against your website

Here’s what to do if you find out that someone is using negative SEO tactics against your company.

1. Make a list with the backlinks you should remove

You can remove bad links from your website by looking at the URLs that have been recently added. You can add tags to any bad links.

These can be manually checked and you can determine which links are hurting your rankings.

If you get email alerts about new backlinks that you don’t know of, create this list immediately.

2. Remove Bad Links

Once you have identified the backlinks that you need to remove, contact the webmaster and ask for your link to be removed.

To find an email address, you can use Whois.com/whois if you don’t see the contact page.

Enter the root domain of your website and search for “Registrant email.”

If you are unable to get a response from the hosting company, or if your link remains unremoved, you can ask them to remove spammy links.

Many hosting companies will assist you in removing the links.

Check out WhoIsHostingThis.com to see who hosts the website.

3. Create a List

If you’ve received a penalty manually, the Google Disavow Tool can be used.

If none of these methods work, you can create a disavowlist that you can submit to Google Webmaster Tools.

This list can be created on your MonitorBacklinks.com Account here.

Conclusion

Website security is vital for websites that want to be successful. Here are some ways to avoid negative SEO.

• Google Webmaster Tool allows you to create email alerts.
• With tools such as MonitorBacklinks.com, you can track your backlinks profile to receive email alerts whenever new links are discovered.
• Protect your website against hackers and malware. Use the Google Authenticator plugin to protect WordPress.
• Copyscape.com will help you find duplicate content.
• Mention.net allows you to find mentions of your company name in social media and on websites.
• Pingdom.com allows you to monitor website uptime.
• Negative SEO should not be used against your site.
• Do not make enemies.

What are your other ways to avoid negative SEO?

NEWSUNSEO – Myrtle Beach SEO Company

NEWSUNSEO is a Search engine optimization and website development company dedicated to helping businesses reach higher search engine rankings.

If you feel your company could benefit from our Myrtle Beach SEO company, give us a call today to revive a free proposal!