Negative SEO is usually caused by backlinks to your site from spam or very poor quality sites. It could be an attack from competitors or just no-good spammers. The end result could be a Google penalty, loss of search visibility and loss of traffic.
You’ve put lots of work to improving your SEO. Neglecting to prevent bad backlinks can hurt your traffic and cost you leads and conversions.
Here’s what you need to do….
Get Updates
The first step to preventing negative SEO is to catch spam backlinks early and often. Google Webmaster Tools offers daily email notifications summarizing new backlinks and visitors stats. Other tools do similar functions but the point is to recognize when a spam site begins adding backlinks so you can take action before it begins to affect your SEO.
Monitor Top Backlinks
Some attackers will attempt to remove backlinks from your best backlink sites. Again, knowledge is everything and you should monitor your top backlink referers. In the event of any unusual activity you can act upon it.
Report
Google uses popular review sites like Yelp when evaluating search results. Taking care to monitor these channels and report false reviews or activity is crucial to maintaining good SEO. You will also see increased traffic coming from these review sites.
Disavow Bad Links
If attempts to contact and ask that spam backlinks be removed have failed, your next option is to disavow that domain. Google allows domain owners to block certain domains and sub-domains from consideration when calculating search rankings.
Staying on top of your website’s SEO requires lots of work and most companies need the assistance of a professional team to make sure their site remains squeaky clean. Contact us to see how our inbound marketing services can improve your website’s search rankings or save you from a search penalty.
