The SEO game has changed dramatically over the past few years. What was once a sure-fire way to success, it’s now intolerable by Google. Sadly, many online marketers are still using the “old style? ways and some still get quick results, but they are putting their business at constant risk of Google’s penalties and banning.
The old days of building low-quality link building campaigns to boost rankings over night are long gone. Now, the only links that are viable in Google’s eyes are the ones coming from high-ranking sites with reputable SEO practices. It’s more effective to link to just a few sites than it is to link to several lower or mid-level sites.
In order to avoid being penalised for negative SEO, here are a couple things you need to do:
1) Stay Away From Low Quality Links
Low quality or spammy links will ruin your website’s ranking and will eventually attract Google’s penalties.
Google analyzes thoroughly all the links going in and out of your website, so if you have a bunch of low quality links from different websites to your site and they all come from the same IP address, Google will see that and you’ll be penalized for spam.
2) Analyze Backlink Profiles
Make it a habit to regularly monitor your website’s backlink profile. Since high-jacking the competition is on of the hottest and most effective ways to take down a competing website, you need to make sure you are not a target by checking your backlinks regularly.
Google cannot determine if a competitor or a website owner directed hundreds of spammy links to a site and given the really low cost of these packages, virtually anybody can be at risk of becoming a target for spammers.
Here are the backlinks to be most cautions about:
- Links from gambling, adult or other illegitimate niche
- Links from sites in foreign languages
- Links from pages that are obviously trying to spam Google
- Links from pages with more than 50 links inserted in the body text
- Links from sites that set off virus or malware alerts in your browser
3) Report Suspicious Negative SEO Methods
Google’s Disavow Links is a very effective tool for reporting negative SEO attacks. This tool allows you as a web owner to quickly and easily report any malicious activity on your site. This enables Google to eliminate these links when assessing your site and prevent you fro being penalized.
Final Thoughts
A good powerful SEO strategy involves building high quality links, ongoing monitoring and valuable and relevant content that helps answer people’s question and concerns.
The site owners who were doing SEO the right way from the beginning have nothing to worry about and change in their marketing tactics, but those who know they’ve been taking the shortcuts, they have a lot of repairs to do.
But regardless of the type of SEO strategy you are using right now, sabotage from your competition is a serious threat, so always keep an eye on your links and beware of malicious attacks.
