Have You Heart Negative SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

Much has been written about negative SEO (Search Engine Optimization), after Google’s recent Penguin update. Does it really exist? Can it be to used hurt your website? What can you do to avoid problems?

What is Negative SEO?

It refers to tactics that certain companies use to manipulate the organic Google rankings of their competitors. Those website that used spammy links to get higher rankings are penalized by Google’s Penguin update.

One of your competitors could submit your site to paid link networks and your Google rankings would drop if low quality links really hurt the Google rankings of a website. That’s what negative SEO is about.

The following things that your competitors could do:

Duplicate your website content on spammy sites;

Use known spam link generators to link to your site;

Fake business reviews so that they don’t appear natural;

Does Negative SEO Work?

Some SEO experts think that negative SEO isn’t possible while others are sure that it is possible to harm a competitor’s Google rankings. Therefore, it is a very controversial topic among SEO experts.

Google could simply ignore the spammy links, instead of penalizing websites that have backlinks from spammy sites. Actually people who try to promote their sites with these links would waste their time and other website owners wouldn’t be hurt.

What Can You Do to Prevent Problems?

Please do the following if you want to make sure that your website doesn’t get penalized by Google:

1)       Do not use spam ways to promote your websites;

2)       Ask the website that publishes fake reviews of your website to remove the fake reviews;

3)       Use white-hat Search engine optimization methods to promote your website. if you need, you can get help from a reliable and professional SEM agency, like adSage.

4)       Ensure your website is not too dependent on Google. You’d better get visitors through other sources, like offline ads, online ads, links on other websites, etc;