What is Negative SEO - A New Internet Threat Hits Mainstream
Business owners already deal with competitors everyday. It's a whole other story when it comes to marketing their business online. The competitors they have to deal with on a daily basis can damage their company's reputation in many different ways. These are the things that I will be talking about, they are referred to as Negative SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
There have been many issues with negative SEO in the past but now it's right in the middle of the mainstream online business community. Google takes people manipulating their page rank results seriously so they allow the negative SEO. This allows the risk of your website being banned.
Some competitors will do what they can to get your website banned from the Google index. Webmasters have seen their page rank disappear to the cold depths of cyber space simply because of negative SEO attacks. There's a possibility that your site can even be taken off of Google completely! Very crafted experts look at the websites that have been banned from Google, research how it got banned and then use that information to get their competitors website banned.
The downside, Google doesn't tell you how you can deal with these issues to prevent your website from being banned. Top authority websites have nothing to worry about because they have too much authority. Negative SEO attacks wouldn't impact how they are indexed, it's the small ones that are more at risk. If the negative SEO is effective then Google will send the business owner an "over optimization penalty". The business owner can appeal this. When a penalty is given Google will tell you to fix your website by removing any links you may have that are likely to be breaking their guidelines.
That may fix the problem unless you don't know who put the links on your site, can't find the links, or can't remove them your only other option is to explain it to Google and let them look into it. Businesses and their competitors are always going to be around as long as they can make money off of destroying each other.
Make sure to take this information seriously. It will be helpful in the future if you ever want people to find your site. The more you know about negative SEO the more you have an idea of what to look if this problem ever arises.
For more information visit: guardian.co.uk
