Negative SEO is when one is trying to purposefully bring a website down in ranking. Many times it is difficult to stay on the top then to reach there. Yes, companies have targets and sometimes people feel the need to go the quicker way then wait for it to rank. Want to know if you are a part of negative SEO? Let’s find out.
Perform link audits
One has to perform link audits on a regular basis in order to keep a check of any malpractice taking place. For example if you notice a sudden dip or rise in your link building activity then it should raise some flags.
Spammers generally alter the content or redirect the website to their content. The only safe way to stop this from happening is to keep a regular check. Make sure to monitor your link building growth so you can catch an attack before it costs you a lot.
Site speed
One should keep a check on the site speed which also affects the ranking factor. If you cannot find an issue and still feel something isn’t right, then you might have become a victim of forceful crawling. This means your website is carrying a lot of load and might even crash.
Content updates
Not everyone is good when it comes to content creation. Hence spammers go for scrapping. The process of taking the content from your website and copying it to other websites. Generally, attackers claim it as their own but they might attach a link as well.
Google – My Business
Every business works hard to build a good reputation to win customers. Sure, no one likes negative reviews but one offers them as a good learning experience to improvise. There are ways to handle bad reviews but one has to act fast.
Keywords
There are many inside attacks which could be difficult to find if you are not monitoring your keywords. If you notice a huge spike for no reason, contact Google immediately.
SERP Ranking
Let us give you a good reason to check your SERP ranking from time to time. Many times a drop in the rank, deindexing of a page or a robots.txt file saying ‘Disallow’ could be a sign of hacking.
One should use a rank tracking software to keep a check on the visibility of the website.
Security Upgrade
Cyber attacks are on the rise each year and one has to make sure that your software is up to date. One should apply all the security patches to the software you use to protect your user.
If not already, one should shift the website on https especially if you are a E-commerce website.
Negative SEO is rare but let us not take it casually. Google makes it a point to catch the culprit on time but one has to be prepared.
Recently, Google has launched a new tool to measure different aspects of a website including SEO. It is available in beta version at web.dev
It helps developers to use modern website methods to provide recommendations and analysis.
The tool takes care of the following things:
- Performance
- Progressive Web App Checklist
- Best practices
- Accessibility
- SEO
A detailed report can be downloaded in order to learn how great the impact is on the website. The reports come in on a daily basis. Hence, if a change has implemented now, it will not show until the next report.
Clients should understand the hard work that goes in an SEO implementation and have the patience to work with the team to achieve the goal. On the other hand, SEO experts should not panic on losing clients and jump into negative methods to impress them. It hampers both.
