When it comes to SEO, competition is fierce: while some sites manage to position themselves on strategic queries, others remain at the bottom of the SERPs. That's why negative SEO can also be used to prevent competitors from ranking well on search engines.
Negative SEO or 'Nseo' is an unfair practice aimed at slowing down or stopping a competitor's site from ranking well. Nseo can therefore be included among the methods of black hat SEO.
Can your website be affected by negative SEO? How can you protect yourself against such practices? Focus on a malicious practice that can have a considerable impact on your ranking in the SERPs.
This is the most common form of negative SEO and the easiest to implement. All your competitor has to do is copy one of your content pieces (blog or description) and paste it on several sites. When faced with duplicate content, Google makes choices: it will therefore only reference a single piece of content.
Backlinks are external links from third-party sites that point to your site. In principle, backlinks are an integral part of an SEO strategy and an excellent way of climbing to the top of the SERPs. However, backlinks use the reputation of third-party sites. Thus, if a malicious competitor wants to harm you, all they have to do is use your site's link. They then spread it on sites that have been penalized or blacklisted by Google to create toxic backlinks.
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The opposite strategy is also often popular for malicious hackers. They contact the owners of the sites on which the link is found and ask them to remove it. More often than not, the hackers pretend to be you. Thus, with just a few clicks, get their way. The most experienced pirates will mainly attack sites with the most authority so that the consequences of negative SEO are even more rapid.
Like duplicate content, this method of negative SEO is particularly easy to implement. All the hacker has to do is write a few negative reviews on Google My Business. This then dissuades potential visitors from clicking on your site.
While website piracy is becoming increasingly rare, it is very difficult to protect yourself against all the methods of negative SEO. To avoid falling victim to negative SEO, put in place a few good practices, as well as keep a constant watch.
