Negative SEO impacting client rankings - How to combat negative linking?
-
I have a client which have been losing rankings for the key term "sell gold" in Google AU. However, while doing some investigating I realized that we have been receiving links from bad neighborhoods such as porn, bogus .edu sites as well as some pharmaceutical sites. We have identified this as negative SEO and have moved forward to disavow the links in Google. However, I would like to know what other measures can be taken to combat this type of negative SEO linking?
Any suggestions would be appreciated!
-
Hi Melanie,
If your competitor is doing Negative SEO to your site, I believe the only option is to use the Disavow Link Tool. Pointing low-quality links to competitor's site is the most common method of Negative SEO and i believe that is one of the reason why Google rolled out the Disavow Tool.
If you are having trouble determining which links are low-quality, Matt Cutts recommends two ways:
-
Use the Webmaster Tool to sort the links by date and compare it to when you received the Unnatural Link Email from Google. This help you determine which few links are unnatural comparing the date and time.
-
In the email that Google sends you, sometimes they try to include samples to give you an idea what is unnatural.
My 2 cents.
-
-
Hi,
Negative SEO is in effect only if you receive an un-natural message in Web master Tolls (so a manual penalty) or if you get an algo filter applied (the only one for links si penguin).
So if you didn't receive any messages from google via Web master Tools and Penguin is not in effect - that means there is no current issue with Negative SEO - so the drop in rankings is not really from this bad links you are seeing.
There is one other possibility - when those bad links started to pop up you might have seen an increase in rankings and traffic and and after some time google spot those bad links and cut them out (by cut them out I mean ignore those - they don't matter in your ranking process). if that was the case after the push up you wills ee a drop - to previous levels.
You can check that with a visibility tool to see if the patterns applies to you or post the url and some of us can have a look.
My 2 cents. Hope it helps.
-
Further to Heathers quite correct comments... You also have to keep an eye on the latest links tab in Google Webmaster Tools. It is also worth posting a reconsideration request as a preventative measure if there has been a large influx of spammy links.
-
Melanie, yesterday I watched a video by Matt Cutts explaining that the disavow tool is your best bet when it comes to combating negative SEO. It's frustrating though because it takes a bit of time to come into effect.
Good luck.
Heather
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How much value does these have on SEO?
how much value doesn't having an address a phone numbe an https rather than http i appreciate any help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Black Seo --> Attack
Hello there, Happy new year for everyone, and good luck this year. I have a real problem here, I saw in MOZ link history that somehow the "Total Linking Root Domains" is growing from a medium of 30 - 40 to 240 - 340 links and keep it growing. I guess somebody make me good joke, cause i did not buy any link :)) even cn, brasil, jp links, my store is from Romania. How I can block these links I think google will make me bad instead. What should i do? Thank you so much. With respect,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shanaki
Andrei 0tYg1wB.png0 -
Link building freelancers or referrals to link building freelancers
Hi, Are there many freelancers in this community that advocates the MOZ linkbuilding philosophies? Or does anyone have references for link building freelancers at a reasonable rate? Thanks, Jack
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jackgao840 -
Local SEO
My website was ranked on top of all keywords on Google Local results but in january 2013 it has droped to 2nd page on all keywords. After my checking i had found keyword staffing on place page which i have removed two months back. During last two months site was on 2nd page but now it is dropping more. Website is listed on all major local directories. What is the best way to handle such website case for local seo to get back rankings ??? what should be our new plan or strategy ??? I will be very thankful to all of you for best suggestion.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mnkpso0 -
Negative backlinks
Hi I have heard that penguin penalizes a site for bad backlinks. Do you think that it is true? Do you think that is possible for someone to penalize my website adding my link to some spam website? I'm worried that someone could do it...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | darkanweb0 -
Link farming and related websites
In my niche I have about 17 sites I have created. They all provide unique content, html, and all have a variety of uses that differ from each other mostly, some repetition but not really. All these sites are related to the same niche. I do link to each other in my sites. I don't go crazy and link every site to every other site or span links on footers. I somewhere in the content link here to there. Not even consistent, just linking to related pages from others. I was wondering if this is something I need to be careful about or could I get hit with link farming?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cbielich0 -
White Papers! Is this still good for SEO
Does publishing a white paper good for SEO? We are trying to decide to publish one or not for the purpose of SEO. If it will not help, we will spend money for other things.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AppleCapitalGroup0 -
Buying Links
Hello, I have talked to many SEO companies about their services and rates. I noticed that all of them will buy thousands and thousands of links once you first join. That is why they always want a start-up fee, so they can purchase the links. I know the best method is doing it the ethical hard way of asking sites to link to them, but I dont have time to do that. I mainly want to know where the SEO companies buy their links from. I am figuring that them buying the links are not negatively affecting the sites or they would lose their clients if they got into black hat links. It must be good inorder for them to keep their clients. I was interested in buying links, but do not know who to trust. Does anyone have a recommendation?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | neeper670