TRAFFIC
PROGNOSIS
NEGATIVE
Google has finally admitted that competitors can hurt your site with
negative SEO. Julia Logan explores counter measures and asks
just how real the threat is
NEGATIVE SEO HAS LONG BEEN
A SCARECROW for site owners, but
until recently Google denied it was
even possible. Its stance is now that it
“works hard to prevent” other people
from hurting your site.
The logic behind negative SEO runs
like this: if factor X is seen by Google
as lowering site quality and causes
a drop in organic visibility, then one
need only apply it to a competitor site
to make it drop in SERPs and lose its
visibility. For example, Google does
not like aggressive commercial anchor
texts in links pointing to a site; so if
we point thousands of links with these
anchor texts, the site disappears.
However, this is a simplistic
explanation. Successful negative
SEO campaigns are hardly ever this
obvious; most of those monkeying
this principle without understanding
its application to their case will fail.
So poorly executed negative SEO
campaigns can be easily identified,
diagnosed and countered. Well-
executed negative SEO campaigns,
however, may never be diagnosed –
and what can’t be diagnosed can’t
be cured.
Is it negative SEO?
A dearth of non-sensationalist
information and the lack of
understanding of the issue mean
there is a lot of misdiagnosing around
negative SEO. Intentionally directed
negative SEO happens less than people
think; often what’s labelled as such is
the result of a mistake.
Take the example of a competitor
of site A, automating its linkbuilding.
“Well-executed negative SEO campaigns
may never be diagnosed – and what can’t
be diagnosed can’t be cured”
Site A is old, so back when
everybody’s favourite linkbuilding
method was submitting articles to
article directories, it did the same.
The competitor used an automated
tool that scraped old articles related
to its niche, spun them and posted
to thousands of platforms allowing
automated submission. But it failed
to check the output of its tool, which
scraped the original author bios
too and didn’t remove author links.
The result was gibberish posted on
thousands of URLs, all linking to
not just their own site but the sites of
everyone in their industry. All it took
to fix this was the owner of site A
having a chat with their competitor.
What looked like negative SEO turned
out to be a careless error.
In another example, site B
discovered links to non-existent URLs
with spammy looking anchor texts
unrelated to their topic. The owner’s
first thought was that someone had
directed negative SEO at them. In
iGB Affiliate Issue 71 OCT/NOV 2018
25