{"id":6954,"date":"2017-06-20T13:29:27","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T13:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/?p=6954"},"modified":"2023-12-05T11:58:19","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T11:58:19","slug":"4-tips-help-guard-negative-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/4-tips-help-guard-negative-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Tips to Help You Guard Against Negative SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s face it.<\/p>\n

Negative SEO is real.<\/p>\n

You can deny it all you want, for as long as you want, unless you get plagued by it. Negative SEO can seriously hurt your website\u2019s ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).<\/p>\n

Even in today\u2019s digital marketing world, it is quite possible to seriously damage a website with negative SEO. And you\u2019d be surprised to know that there are more people than you\u2019d like to imagine that would involve in negative SEO practices.<\/p>\n

So what can you do about it?<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t just let it happen to your website which you have worked so hard to build and optimise for search engines.<\/p>\n

Of course, not.<\/p>\n

The good news is that there are things you can actively look for and do that guard you against negative SEO. In this blog post, we highlight 4 tips that will protect your site against negative SEO.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see what those tips are.<\/p>\n

1. Regular Link Audits<\/h2>\n

Regular link audits are very helpful for search engine optimization. These audits help you find new backlink opportunities and duplicate the strategies that are working so well for you.<\/p>\n

Regular link audits also work well when it comes to weeding out bad links to plague your website. With regular audits, you can spot if you are becoming a victim of a negative SEO attack in the form of bad backlinks.<\/p>\n

What do you have to do?<\/p>\n

Every now and then, just keep an eye out on your link profile growth. See if there is any suspicious activity.<\/p>\n

But what kind of suspicious activity? And how can you identify that?<\/p>\n

So here is a simple (logical) rule that you have to remember.<\/p>\n

More often than not, your backlink profile will be steady. Ideally, it will be gradually and steadily growing. But unless you have been actively working on a backlink campaign, you won\u2019t see a large spike.<\/p>\n

In case you do see a large spike (like shown in the following screenshot), that should be a red flag for you \u2014 especially if you didn\u2019t run any extra backlink campaign.<\/p>\n

\"4<\/a><\/p>\n

A link farm spam attack can point thousands of backlinks to your website \u2014 the type of backlinks you don\u2019t want your site to be associated with.<\/p>\n

Although you can use a link auditing software, the best way is to do manual link audits. As mentioned earlier, manual link audits not only help you identify spam attacks before they spiral out of control, they can also reveal some golden backlink opportunities.<\/p>\n

Once you do find you are getting link-spammed, inform Google and disavow those links<\/a> as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

2. Search for Scraped Content<\/h2>\n

Scraped content is another form of a negative SEO attack that can leave your website crippled.<\/p>\n

We all know how important content marketing is. Spammers and SEO attackers know that, too. How it usually works is that spammers steal your website\u2019s content and paste it on their websites as it is.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t stop there. These attackers also often combine content scraping with a link farm attack to spam your website.<\/p>\n

Once your website gets demoted in the search rankings because of that farm attack, their content (which was originally yours) get ahead of you in Google\u2019s search engine results pages. That\u2019s how they steal<\/strong> your traffic.<\/p>\n

The best way is to keep an eye if someone\u2019s stealing your content. Use a tool like Copyscape<\/a> to see if anyone is plagiarizing your content. In case you find someone stealing your web content, follow these steps:<\/p>\n