Negative SEO is a practice targeted at harming the search rankings of the other site, usually a competitor.
The main methods of the Negative SEO can be divided into the following types:
- Website attack. The most effective yet costly option, which refers to hacking a website while undermining the target site’s SEO performance. As a result, the website can greatly lose its rankings in search engine visibility.
- Spamming attack. Generate toxic backlinks with spammy anchors pointing to the website. This method can often be automated by employing specific link farms, public clog networks (also known as PBNs), and other automated software.
- Duplicate site creating. That practice includes creating a fake site with a similar URL and identical content taken from the original website.
- Negative reviews. By sharing negative comments regarding a certain website can’t ruin the site’s functioning, but instead, that can have an enormous impact on its reputation. As a result, the target site can notice a significant traffic drop with much fewer visitors.
- Fake requests on the backlink removing. The main SEO goal is to improve the SERP positions of your site, which can be another reason for the attack. Some scammers can send you requests to convince you to remove the specific links to sabotage your SERP rankings.
In fact, there are plenty of methods that can help you to ensure the site’s security. For instance, you can turn on the Google Search Console security alerts and regularly complete the site audits to detect and fix the technical issues on it. Additionally, you can use the specific software for getting a detailed analysis of the possible hacking risks.
