Having website that is having a good rank with adequate traffic is one of the main reason for SEO. The better you're seen on the web, the higher the chance you can convert those incoming visitors to purchase your products and/or services. But the competition is not seeing your success as something that you can get away with alone, and they want a piece of it.
In term of SEO, there is a the positive SEO that is aimed to build your reputation on the web in the eyes of search engines, and there is the negative SEO that is aimed to do otherwise.
Negative SEO is rare. Matt Cutts from Google was quoted in a Forbes article on negative SEO: "I won't go out on a limb and say it's impossible. But Google bowling is much more inviting as an idea than it is in practice."
As rare as it can be, Google admits that negative SEO by link building is possible. Years ago, link building was all about getting as many backlinks as possible, without regard for their quality or relevance. As more links was always better, people hunger for that desire. This created spammy contents that ruined Google's search results. When people started complaining about the search engine giant's diminished performance, Google took action by releasing the Penguin algorithm.
The algorithm aims to penalize abuse of unnatural links. Since the Penguin started circling the World Wide Web, negative SEO became a discussion among web developers and SEO enthusiasts. The reason for this is because links that were once able to increase one's rank, can now decrease its rank. Since anyone can put links of the web, this opened the door for a new "mercenary" in the field, and negative SEO was born.
Negative SEO occurs when someone makes attempt to lower a website's rankings in search engines. Usually, the person creates a campaign that is used to point point thousands of poor-quality, spammy links at a competitors' website in order for the search engines to catch them red handed and make its rank plummet.
Link building is one method. There are many ways that negative SEO can be implemented.
Any websites can be penalized, or have their rank and visibility suppressed by search engines' algorithms. Google, the most notable search engine, has engaged in manipulative link building that sees whether unnatural link building has been done. The result can be penalty or a demotion.
Before 2003, Google said that "there is nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index". However, in 2003 onwards, Google said "there is almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking….".
Negative SEO is rare. People are usually busy improving their sites beside opting to decrease others. By saying the word almost, Google is trying to say that possibility may happen.
Google is working hard to prevent any negative SEO from happening. One of the ways that Google did was keep improving their algorithms, and announced a disavow tool to allow website owners to tell Google not to count links that they felt could damage their site.
Someone may have the highest chance to decrease your rank by hacking your website and server. For example, deleting things on the server and chance the robots.txt file to block certain parts of your sites. But other than that, the chances that they succeed is not common.
The Signs of Attack
Since there is no way to be a hundred percent sure that your competitors won't do any negative SEO on you, you can keep track of your website's performance by seeing how your backlinks are growing. Keep in mind that suspecting something as negative SEO is usually a false positive.
But if the situation does happen, the following list is some of the signs that possibly be a negative SEO for you:
- Huge incoming links from irrelevant forums. Usually from forums that are open to public (without registration), or spammy forums. Posts can be done by human members, or bots, that still have minimum post count.
- Huge incoming links from sites with
.ru,.cz,.cn,.pl,.ro,.bg,.biz,.com.ar,.com.brand.info. - Huge incoming links from spammy blog posts.
- Links coming from adult related websites, gambling websites, loan websites, etc..
- Links coming from different sites that are identical. A high chance that the owner is the same.
- Links coming from a site, appeared in a random rotation on a large percentage of the pages, in two locations, either in the sidebar navigation or in the footer.
- Too many 301 redirection.
- And so on.
Google is working hard to remove negative SEO, but you can never be sure that their algorithm can catch all negative SEO and discount it.
John Mueller from Google once said "It's a tricky situation and not something where I'd say that we can guarantee that we always get it 100% right. But, from the cases I've looked at I think we've done a pretty good job."
You may worry that your competitors doing all those to decrease your rank. But concerning it shouldn't be on your priority list.
If your website is moving in a competitive niche, or may have had been penalized in the past, you just have to monitor all your backlinks and see how they perform. Have a regular link audit at least once a month, or frequent enough to find and clean those unnatural links you might have. But if your website is not moving a a competitive niche and never had done manipulative link building, you have almost nothing to worry about.