How to prevent Negative SEO

How to Prevent Negative SEO

We live in busy times where change is inevitable. Everything is being transformed by the hour to meet the new demands created. So is the case with SEO.

The marketing world is one most affected by this dynamism. We all aspire to be on top of the game at all costs- survival for the fittest. Marketers use SEO to attract traffic to their websites or blogs, which later translates to customers or potential buyers.

However, some want to play dirty, where negative SEO creeps in. The dark side of SEO is slowly eroding the once exciting, level playing field for all.

What is Negative SEO, then?

Negative SEO alludes to undermining another site by implementing unethical and black hat techniques. Who else noticed ‘black hat’ in that description? Sounds scary, right? I almost thought it was a black cat; how I freeze at the sight of such-but, I digress.

What negative SEO does is that it tends to reduce the rankings of a competitor's site when unleashed. It does this by creating many spam links and directing them to a site, and in turn, Google penalizes that site.

What Forms Does a Negative SEO Take?

Some of these forms of negative SEO include:

·        Defaming through fake accounts

·        Creating many spam links to a website

·        Getting rid of your website's backlinks

·        Unethical website hacking

·        Negative reviews

·        Deleting and redistributing your content

Things are getting creepier. Imagine the sweat and devastation that would befall you if your company’s website was hacked? How many secrets would be exposed? Picture how you'll be able to walk across the streets with your head bowed so low in disgrace because of the defamation.

Indeed this is a situation no one would like to be associated with at this age. From the negative SEO definition and forms, it seems uglier than a vampire from the series Vampire Dairies – the number of nightmares I had because of this!

There are so many ways how to avoid negative SEO. However, if you are already a victim, there are also ways to fix negative SEO.

The Disavow negative SEO tool by Google is specifically designed to handle this. But, like many other anti-malware, it's still not effective.

Let’s hit the snake on the head now, shall we?

6 Great Ideas on How to Prevent Negative SEO

1.      Keeping Your Backlinks Safe

One of the forms of negative SEO is getting rid of your website's backlinks. Hackers will do this by contacting the owner of the website link, disguising you, and requesting the webmaster to delete your backlink.

Nevertheless, you can combat this by:

Employing the use of tools that help monitor your backlinks. Some of these include Google Search Console, Open Link Profiler, and Ahref, just but a few to mention.

These links can either be free or premium. I'd recommend the premium ones because they are more efficient than the free ones. Cheap is expensive, remember.

After creating your account, you'll be prompted to add your domain and connect it with your Google Analytics account.

2.      Defending Your Website from Hackers

The jitters that come with this name are unexplainable. Hackers are a threat to almost everything-they can even steal your wife. If they can steal from highly secured organizations, what makes you an exception.

Before you throw in the towel, here are some little dirty secrets you can use to keep these bugs away. I call them bugs because they are harmful and come concealed in miniature forms.

§  It will advantage you if you have a strong password with a combination of numbers and characters.

Don't use your birth date or your wife's name as a password, for heaven's sake. A kindergarten kid can easily crack that!

§  Back up your files and database daily

It will enable you to recover your important files in case of a malware attack by hackers.

§  Install the Google Authenticator Plugin 

It is for those using a WordPress site. It will prompt you to enter a code automatically generated before logging in.

3.      Assessing Your Backlink Profile regularly

Spammers will always try to create low-quality links to your website. By doing this, they create negative SEO against your website. Thus, it is crucial to check any malicious activity in the backlinks.

Tools like Open Site Explorer and Ahrefs can manually detect such activity and stop it at once. It will save you the agony of dealing with terrorizing redirect links on your website or blog.

However, you can use MonitorBacklinks.com, an online feature that alerts you when important backlinks from your website are removed or new ones are added. It is normally done via email, unlike manual checks.

4.      Monitoring Your Website’s Speed

Speed is crucial for any website. Most visitors will be turned away easily if a site takes too long to load. Negative SEO will slow down your site's speed.

You can use web-crawling software to check for any activity slowing down your site in such cases. After determining the cause, of a negative SEO for this case, you can get help from the webmaster or your hosting company.

Pingdom website speed test is one online tool you can use to ascertain the speed of your website at any given time.

5.      Disavowing Using the Google Disavow Tool

I bet you can say 'disavow' and 'disallow' ten times without messing. Disavow means rendering a certain backlink null and void. It will make Google not consider it when evaluating the ranking of your site or page.

This tool is among the Google Webmaster's Tool packages. It will help remove any unnatural linking - your page ranking will not be affected.

Wait, there is one more arrow left.

6.      Making the Site Negative SEO Proof

It implies that you resort to another means of generating traffic apart from SEO. There are so many ways of killing that stubborn rat in your kitchen. You can put the kitchen ablaze, right?-just kidding.

Some of the ways you can use to generate traffic include:

·        Podcasting

·        Using YouTube

·        Social networking

·        Building an email list

Final Take

Negative SEO 2019 is killing many businesses. Prevention is, however, better than cure. Apply the above-mentioned secrets, and you will be safe from this bug.