Negative SEO is when you sabotage your competitors’ search rankings using black-hat SEO, illegal, and other unethical methods including website hacking, building spam links, copying and pasting a competitor’s website content all over the internet, pointing links to a competitor’s website by using keywords like Viagra, poker online, gambling, etc., posing as your competitor and requesting the removal of their best backlinks from the linking website, and creating fake social profiles to review-bomb and ruin the company’s reputation online.

Negative SEO is a dangerous threat to businesses of all sizes, but especially to larger online businesses. For example, a lot of companies like to use Fiverr to save on cost, but search “negative SEO,” you will find many sellers offering to help you disavow spammy links and improve your online reputation. Some of these sellers may know what to do but others might be scams, making the threat even more dangerous. Knowing about it and preventing it is much easier than fixing it. Google has a Disavow Tool to help deal with this problem. It takes anywhere from two to four weeks to work, but by then, the damage to your website may already be done.

If your website is relatively new, has poor-quality content, or previously contained some spammy links to it can be a never-ending battle. Webmasters may think they are victims of negative SEO when they drop in rankings could result from a Google algorithm update or getting filtered out by the algorithmic filtering. If unsure check your content adheres to the latest Google guidelines, optimize your content, make sure it is up to date, and audit your backlinks. If you are struggling with this, here at Miller Media we have web consultants that can review your website and help you determine if you are vulnerable. We also offer ethical SEO services if you need our assistance long-term.

Call 248.528.3600 today to protect your website’s SEO.