Negative SEO Attacks: What Are They and How To Keep Safe?

94% of SEOs believe that negative SEO is real and can cause harm to websites​.

The world of SEO has many ethical practitioners, known as white hats, who work hard to improve search visibility using legitimate methods. 

However, there are also unethical operators, known as black hats, who attempt to undermine their competition through bleak tactics.

These negative SEO attacks can damage your online reputation, from flooding websites with spam backlinks to making them appear unsafe to hacking to introduce viruses and malware.

Businesses that are legitimate must be on the lookout for negative SEO.

This article dives into the most common negative SEO attacks to watch for, shares tips on protecting your site’s security and reputation, and provides a game plan for swiftly combating any negative SEOs before major damage is done.

Also read: 7 Cybersecurity Tips For SEO Agencies

What is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO refers to all the shady tactics and dirty tricks that black hat SEO operators use to try to sabotage a competitor’s search rankings and visibility. 

It is intended to deceive search engines by making a website appear suspicious, breaking webmaster guidelines, and utilizing spam tactics, which can cause its rankings to drop.

Google’s intelligent robots are constantly becoming more sophisticated in detecting this type of sabotage.

However, skilled malicious hackers can attempt to remain undetected and interfere with competitor’s SEO strategies.

By diligently monitoring your site’s backlink profile, user-experience signals, security, and technical SEO maintenance, you can discover negative SEO efforts early and prevent major damage.

But still, it pays to implement robust protection protocols and some counter-measures if you have rivals who can interfere with your business online. 

Types of Negative SEO Attacks?

Here are some of the most common Negative SEO attacks:

Spamming the Site with Garbage Backlinks

These black hats will blast a site with tons of poor-quality artificial links from low-quality sites in an attempt to make it look spammy to Google.

For example, Nguyen Van Duc and Pham Van Thien were accused of sending 100,000 fraud takedown requests. They were trying to remove the competitor’s content completely and harm their visibility on SERPs. 

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Hacking to Inject Malware/Spam

In more extreme cases, they will try to hack the site to inject spam content or viruses or get it flagged as a malware distributor by Google’s bots.

One of the examples of happening the same is the Equifax data breach in 2017. The site was hijacked and injected with malware, which allowed the hackers to gain unauthorized access to Equifax’s sensitive data. 

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Generating Fake Penalties

By spamming fake DMCA or copyright takedown requests, they trick Google into penalizing or deindexing the site wrongfully.

Also read: How Google Reviews Help With Local SEO

Fake Bot Traffic 

Blasting the site with fake bot traffic in an effort to skew analytics data and make it look like a site with no organic traffic to search engines.

For example, Devumi sold fake bot traffic to celebrities and businesses to make them look more popular online. They were fined 2.5 million.

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Generating Fake Reviews 

Leaving tons of fake negative reviews across review sites in order to harm the site’s reputation signals.

For example, Yelp has taken proactive steps to combat fake reviews as a way to address negative SEO tactics used by companies. Yelp has always been a popular choice for fake reviews because of its impact on consumer choices. In reaction, Yelp introduced a Consumer Alerts initiative to identify businesses believed to be manipulating reviews.

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Copying Full Content

Plagiarizing entire content pages across multiple domains to duplicate Google into thinking the target site is stealing.

For example, Yahoo had an incident of insider content theft, in which their own employee stole content data and tried to trade it with a competitor.

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Exploiting Security Holes

Finding and exploiting unpatched security vulnerabilities in things like plugins/themes to deface pages or insert spam.

For example, in 2013, Target had one of the biggest security breaches in history, during which cybercriminals stole the data of around 70 million customers.

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DDoS Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service attacks overwhelm your server with fraudulent traffic, causing it to crash and create massive downtime.

In 2016, for example, a DDoS attack occurred and affected a lot of popular sites which include PayPal, Netflix, Twitter, and many more.

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Mass Automated Signups/Comments

Bots create thousands of spam accounts, comments, etc., on your site to bloat databases and dilute real user-generated content.

Mass automated signups and comments became a common problem for WordPress, affecting the performance of many sites. 

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Malicious Ad Injections

Hackers inject spam ads, links, or malware through ad network exploits to damage your monetization efforts.  

In 2015, malicious ads were injected into Yahoo’s ad network. These ads were directing users to unsafe sites. 

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Negative SEO Services

There are shady companies that actually sell packages of negative SEO “services” to sabotage competitors.

A company named Jellyfish saw a sudden decline in their search rankings. Soon, they discovered suspected backlinks targeting their page. This was done to bring their rankings down by some competitors.

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Cloaking Redirects

Sneaky redirects move bots to spam/hacked pages while users see your regular content, tricking crawlers.

In 2006, BMW was involved in cloaking redirects. Google penalized BMW for using cloaking techniques to boost its rankings, and as a result, BMW experienced a great loss in its organic traffic.

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Domain Hijacking  

Exploiting security holes to outright hijack your domain and point DNS to their own malicious sites.

In 2016, a Brazilian bank, Banco de Brasil, was hijacked. The hijackers altered the bank’s domains to redirect customers to a fraudulent site.

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Positive SEO vs. Negative SEO

Here are some points contrasting positive vs negative SEO tactics:

Positive SEO	Negative SEO
Create high-quality, original content that helps users	Stuff keywords and produce thin, low-value content
Follow best practices for on-page optimization	Participate in private blog networks/link schemes
Build a natural link profile through outreach	Cloak or hide content from search engines
Focus on improving page experience signals	Steal or plagiarize content from other sites
Implement technical SEO housekeeping	Deploy cloaking or redirects to trick bots
Earn rankings through patience and hard work	Try to hack sites or inject spam/malware
Focuses on creating real value long-term	Seeks to manipulate rankings through any means
Follows search engine webmaster guidelines	Disregards rules and ethics for quick gains
Builds brand reputation and authority	High risk of search engine penalties
Sustainable white hat growth over time	Relies on blackhat tactics that fall out of use eventually

Essential Strategies to Protect Your Website from Negative SEO

Here are some tips to help keep your website safe from negative SEO attacks:

Monitor Your Backlinks Religiously

Use tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush to regularly analyze your backlink profile for any spammy or low-quality links being built. Discard them quickly before Google sees them.

Also read: When And Why Should You Disavow Backlinks?

Keep Software Up-To-Date

Make sure your CMS, plugins, themes, etc., are always running the latest patched versions to avoid security vulnerabilities that can be exploited.

Some recommendations for reputable security plugins, tools, or services that can help automate the identification and prevention of negative SEO attacks:

• Wordfence: provides website security with features like malware scanning, firewall protection, and real-time threat defense to prevent malicious attacks.

• Sucuri: Offers website security services including, malware removal, vulnerability patching, and regular monitoring to safeguard against negative SEO practices.

• Google Authenticator: Enhances login security through two-factor authentication

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• Astra Pentest: Conducts thorough penetration testing to identify and fix vulnerabilities, protecting websites from being exploited for negative SEO tactics.

Implement Security Measures

From SSL certificates to Web Application Firewalls, robust security protocols can block many common attack vectors.

Watch Your Analytics

Suspicious spikes or drops in traffic, conversions, etc., could be signs of negative SEO, such as bot spam or DDOS attacks.

Also read: How To Use Data Analytics To Boost Your SEO Strategy

Create Backups

Having a recent site backup on hand lets you quickly restore things if your site ever gets hacked or defaced.

Use Secure Hosting

A reputable, secure web host with tight security practices helps mitigate risk.

Utilize Monitoring Services

Services that scan for malware, bot activity, blacklists, etc., can provide an extra set of eyes.

Consider Disavow Files

As a precaution, you can disavow whole networks of spammy sites in advance to avoid getting hit.

Do Competitor Research

Keep tabs on your top competitors and any shady tactics they might employ that could be turned against you.

Use Strong Password Policies

Implement strict password requirements and two-factor authentication to prevent brute force attacks.

Monitor Penalties/Notices 

Stay on top of any unconfirmed manual penalties or legal notices that could be artificially created by attackers.

Document Everything

Keep detailed logs of your SEO activities, analytics, and any attacks/issues to make recovery and reporting easier.

Work With Experts

Consider hiring ethical white hat SEOs or security firms to audit your site and widen your defenses.

Restrict Access

Limit CMS/FTP access only to those who absolutely need it using IP whitelisting and other restrictions.

Set Up Staging Sites

Test changes on a secure staging environment before pushing live to avoid opening vulnerabilities.

Implement .htaccess Rules

Custom .htaccess rules can block bad bots, restrict access, prevent hotlinking, and more.

Clear Cache Often 

Frequently clearing caching can prevent outdated, defaced versions of your pages from being served.

Also read: Best Big Data Analytics Tools For Businesses

Check Archive Logs

Look for unexpected archived versions of your pages that could have been created during an attack.

How can you Manage the Negative SEO Crisis?

With some quick thinking and the right game plan, you can likely minimize the damage and get your site’s reputation back on track.

Here are some points for managing the negative SEO crisis when it strikes:

Response Plan

Have a predetermined negative SEO crisis plan and checklist ready to follow. Assign clear roles to your team to efficiently check security, analytics, etc. 

Play Internet Detective

Use tools and monitoring to quickly identify what exactly is happening – hacking, spam injections, fake traffic, or anything else. The faster you locate the issues, the faster you can address them.

Clean Up 

Once you locate the attacks, it’s time to discard them. Disavow those unwanted backlinks, remove any hacked or spam content or bot traffic, and seal up security holes.  

Keep Records & Document

Make sure to archive all evidence of the offending negative SEO work, blocked IPs, examples of hacked pages, etc. You will need this paper trail when filing a complaint.

Transparently Communicate

Keep clients, leadership, and your audience in the loop through professional communication. But don’t broadcast anything that could spiral into a PR crisis, either.

Request a Reinclusion Review

Once you have cleaned up and secured everything, file a re-inclusion request with Google to have any unjustified penalties lifted.

Strengthen the Defenses

After surviving an attack, conduct a complete audit to identify vulnerabilities and develop a more robust prevention plan.

Also read: 15 Reasons Why You Should Outsource SEO

Lessons from Real-Life Case Studies

Expedia

Situation: Expedia, a prominent online travel agency, faced a negative SEO attack as a competitor initiated a scheme to generate multiple spammy backlinks to Expedia’s site.

Response: Expedia’s SEO team quickly spotted the sudden increase in unnatural backlinks and used Google’s Disavow Tool to disavow them. They filed a complaint with Google to notify them of the breach and enforced stricter monitoring of their backlink profile to avoid accidents in the future.

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Forbes Magazine

Situation: Forbes, a well-known business magazine, was targeted by a negative SEO attack. Hackers injected their websites with spammy links and content.

Response: Forbes’s IT security team promptly recognized the security breach and took steps to eliminate the harmful content from its website. They have also implemented extra security measures, like firewall protection and routine security audits, to avoid potential future attacks.

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Conclusion

Negative SEO relies on exploiting vulnerabilities through deception and ugly tactics. 

However, following best practices, monitoring vigilantly, and responding quickly can neutralize these attacks before any major harm occurs.

But the truth is, while black hats expend energy on sabotage, ethical SEOs can stay focused on creating amazing user experiences and optimizing based on legitimate best practices.

Google and other search giants are constantly updating their spam-fighting capabilities to ensure shady negative SEO tactics get identified and rendered obsolete over time. 

So, in the long run, sticking to the principles of white hat SEO is simply the smartest path for sustainable, future-proof success.