Should I be Scared of Negative SEO?

Negative SEO has been a buzzword in the tech industry lately, especially among website owners and developers. Almost every SEO expert knows that Google discourages the use of paid links that can be used to manipulate website authority and rank. Based on recent events like the latest update to Google’s search algorithm, Penguin (and it’s predecessor Panda), Google has ramped up efforts to prevent people from ranking highly through the use of unethical, ‘black hat’ SEO techniques. Site owners were notified whether Google determined that their site was found to be the victim of a malicious attack. Google-bombing can occur in a few different forms. Usually, it refers to a situation in which a competitor purchases links and points them at a website made by the victim of the attack. This aims to “torpedo” their rankings, due to the fact that these purchased links are probably going to be low-quality ones that would usually cause Google to look at your website in an unfavorable light. Another form that Google bombing can take is when a website is hacked to inflict malicious damage on a given website. More so, simply reporting to Google that a certain website (the victim’s) is using black hat tactics to Google can be considered an example of negative SEO. Is the threat of all of these potential attacks from people who want to hurt your rankings reason enough to panic? Before you start to get too stressed because of potential negative SEO that your competitor might use against you, it helps to understand first the following points: 1. Once a website has a strong domain authority it is not vulnerable to any malicious tactic that might be used against that website 2. You have to monitor SEO factors that competitors might manipulate. These include reviews and backlinks (negative reviews, trying to create backlinks to your website in a ‘spammy’ way). 3. Businesses involved in a campaign often experience major risks (if they get found out their own reputation might be tarnished), so legitimate businesses would often not opt to do such. This is Nothing New Concerns about malicious seo tactics are actually not new at all in the industry. Such concerns have been there for many years already. Google itself claimed that doing harm for other websites is really hard. There are many malicious tactics that some web experts use. However, if you know how to protect your website, you can certainly relax and rid yourself of much concern over this particular issue. The best defense against negative SEO is to have a solid SEO-focused foundation. It is also important to have a constant monitoring to look into the ranking metrics to identify any potential “foul play.” In addition, having an honest and open relationship with Google can help you maintain high rankings without having to worry about malicious attacks from competitors. Many website owners raised concern over negative SEO since they thought it was a big factor in the way that Google determines whether their sites are considered spam. To be safe, one good thing that website owners and developers should know is that Google does not actually penalize websites for bad links that point at them. They might just ignore certain links, but they do not automatically penalize the website. This can be a step in defusing concerns over malicious SEO. In a nutshell, while negative SEO its effects on your website is a concern; you should not panic. There are methods of fighting it. Primarily it is a matter of preparation, so you need to know the things you can do to avoid getting hit by tactics that your competitors might use against you in one way or another.