Negative SEO uses unethical strategies like spammy links or fake reviews to harm a competitor’s search engine visibility and rankings.
What Is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO refers to the use of black-hat techniques or unethical strategies designed to damage a competitor’s rankings in search engines. Instead of improving one’s own SEO, it focuses on lowering the visibility of rival websites—intentionally triggering algorithmic or manual penalties from Google.
These attacks are usually done from outside the target website and can go unnoticed if not monitored properly.
Common Types of Negative SEO:
- Spammy Backlink Attacks:
Building hundreds or thousands of toxic backlinks to your site using spammy anchor text. - Content Scraping & Duplication:
Copying your original content and distributing it across low-quality or spam websites. - Fake Reviews & Brand Attacks:
Posting negative reviews or false claims about your brand across forums or local listings. - Hacking & Malware Injection:
Infecting your site with malware or injecting spammy links to get your site penalized or deindexed. - Forceful Crawling (DDoS):
Overloading your server to slow down or crash your site, affecting user experience and rankings. - Link Removal Requests (Impersonation):
Pretending to be you and requesting the removal of your high-quality backlinks from other sites.
How to Detect & Prevent Negative SEO:
- Monitor backlinks regularly using tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or Semrush
- Set up Google Alerts for your brand name and content
- Use a disavow file to reject harmful backlinks
- Check for duplicate content using Copyscape or Siteliner
- Keep your CMS, plugins, and site security updated
- Track page load times and suspicious server activity
Does Google Handle Negative SEO?
Google claims its algorithm is smart enough to ignore bad links and mitigate most negative SEO attempts. However, in severe cases, manual intervention like submitting a disavow file or contacting Google support may be necessary
