Believe it or not, there are people who purposefully attack websites to threaten their rank, traffic, and credibility with Google. They do this to give their own site an advantage against competitors. We advise you to be on the lookout for negative SEO strategies.
What is negative SEO?
Negative SEO is a strategy for pushing down a competitor’s rank or traffic. It’s the exact opposite of organic SEO. It involves both on-page and off-page SEO. The on-page component may include hacking into a website to change its content. The off-page component typically consists of pointing toxic, unnatural links to a site in an attempt to cause it to be penalized by search engines.
Negative SEO: On-page
Content Duplication
The scary thing about negative SEO is that someone can literally copy your content and paste it somewhere else. This is definitely not a good thing, especially if you want to be highly visible on Google. Sometimes, the perpetrators copy the content from sites that sell popular items or services. There are even cases where they repost entire YouTube videos from other channels for views!
How to Check For Duplicates ✔
Google recommends you simply search the first ten words of your content. You want to look out for pages that display the exact same words. A tool you can use is Copyscape which has duplicate content detection software to check the originality of online works.
Changes In Content
Other than content duplication, perpetrators sabotage your website’s content beyond recognition. Sometimes they make subtle changes that an on-page expert would probably have a hard time catching. For example, one common black-hat method is hiding text, also know as cloaking.
Hidden Text/Cloaking
The idea here is to manipulate the algorithm to rank organically. The hidden text or links are typically unseen by users, but picked up by search engines. To Google, this is a huge problem. Google takes user experience and user interaction(UX and UI) very seriously.
How to Keep Others From Changing Your Content ✔
You need to keep your site secure. First and foremost, enforce a strong password. Hackers can’t access your site as easily.
Another safety precaution is to install an SSL certificate (Secure Sockets Layer). An SSL is a standard security protocol that creates an encrypted link between a website and a visitor. When the user’s connection to a website is not secure, it’s easier for hackers to intercept messages in the server.
Protecting Your Site Against Negative SEO
Keep your site closed off to hackers with:
- strong passwords enforced
- multistep authentication
- HTTPS connections
- protection against potential plugin vulnerabilities
- a strongly enforced user privilege/authorization policy
Warning For WordPress Users:
WordPress plugins have been reported to cause the most vulnerabilities. This is not the fault of WordPress, per se, since anyone can create and publish a WordPress plugin. Be sure to update your plugins regularly. If they are among the most popular, check for updates daily, since these are more vulnerable to hacking when outdated. Developers of these plugins work tirelessly to make sure they’re secure and effective. However, this does not stop hackers from bypassing security protocols.
