In December 2012, Matt Cutts – who then served as the spokesperson for Google – stated that, while lots of people talk about negative SEO, fewer people try it, and even fewer succeed in their attempts.

He added that, whenever Google is designing algorithms, they test them to make them as resistant to negative SEO as possible. Here’s the video:
And, while that statement is comforting, it doesn’t help if you believe your site has been the victim of a negative SEO attack! So, here is information about three of the techniques used and how you can protect your site.

1) Malicious Backlinking

This technique is the one that many people think of in connection with negative SEO and is one of the most common ones used. In this technique, someone links to the targeted site from sites that can be harmful – often porn-related – and often using malicious anchor text.

Early in 2016, I noticed that a small tourism-related site that I wrote optimized content for was struggling in rankings – and it didn’t make sense. So, I used SEMrush.com^[1] to check the site’s backlinks, and I discovered there were more than 700 new backlinks.

That by itself was a warning flag, given the size of the site and the typical number of new backlinks – and then the anchor text used added to the picture. It included these phrases, among others:

• Dating simulator spanking games
• Phone sex chat cheap
• Free Russian dating site

The takeaway: perform link audits of your site regularly. If you see a spike in links or links that just don’t make sense, delve more deeply. If you find some that are malicious, Google created a tool in October 2012 – the disavow tool^[2] – to address this situation.

The good news is that you can follow the disavow procedure to let Google know what backlinks you want them to ignore, and benefits can be significant. The challenge is as follows. “This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution.

If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results.” So, if you know, you need to disavow links but aren’t sure how work with someone who does know how.

2) Scraping Content

When someone scrapes your content, he or she uses the content that you worked hard to create on another site without your knowledge or permission. Often, the content isn’t scraped with the intention to harm the original site, only to unethically benefit the site using the scraped content.

But, ultimately, your site can be harmed. That’s because, when Google sees multiple usages of the same content, it tends to rank one of the pages at the expense of others. In theory, Google will rank the original piece (and they’re fairly good at doing that), but that system is far from foolproof.

To check if anyone is scraping your content, you can use Copyscape.com^[3]. In the free version, you enter URLs from your site, one by one, and Copyscape will return examples of where this content is being used on the web.

If no other results are returned, that’s a good sign. You may see other results where small bits of content are used on other sites; often that’s because you’re both quoting the same person or they are phrases commonly used in our language.

You can also use the paid tool (Copyscape Premium) that allows you to either enter a URL or paste in up to the recommended maximum of 2,000 words of text. The paid version usually returns more results than the free one.

Each search costs only five cents, and you can purchase searches in packages as small as 200 of them for $10. Note that your purchase expires after one year, so don’t buy more than you’ll reasonably use in that time frame.

If someone has scraped your content, you can report it to Google^[4]. In the past, I have first contacted sites to let them know of the improper use of content I’d written, and I’ve sometimes gotten good results that way.

As a side note, by using Copyscape, you may also find instances where people have quoted you, and you could ask them to also link to your site regarding the quote.

3) On-Site Hacking

With simple code changes to your site’s robots.txt, a hacker could inform Google that you don’t want certain pages of your site – or your entire site, for that matter – crawled by Google. And, if Google doesn’t crawl the pages, then they aren’t indexed by Google.

And, pages that aren’t indexed by Google can’t show up in search results. So, these simple code changes can prevent your site from having the ability to show up in any Google searches whatsoever.

This can also happen if, say, you hired someone to do SEO on your site, and you parted on less-than-amicable terms. That SEO person, if unethical enough, could make these harmful changes while still having access to your site.

If you notice that your rankings are plunging, this is a major red flag, one probably indicating either a Google penalty or a disallow in your site’s robots.txt.
You can also go to Google.com and type site:www.yoursite.com to see what pages of your site are indexed in Google. If pages that were formerly indexed are no longer there, check your robots.txt.

Read More: 10 Basic Steps To Conquer Social Media Marketing Strategy

Is That All?

Unfortunately, these aren’t all the ways that a determined black hat SEO expert can use to harm your site. As soon as people skilled in the dark arts of negative SEO are stymied in one of their methods, they will find another route to take.

But, the protective measures described in this article will help to protect you against some of the more common and harmful actions that can occur.

The post 3 Must Know Ways To Fight Negative SEO & Protect Your Site appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.

The reality is that, even if someone could create these links and point them to your site, the links would be spammy and worse than worthless. They could easily lead to Google banning your site.

To quote Google directly, “Any links intended to manipulate PageRank^[1] or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines^[2]. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.”

So, what do you do? Here is a look at two link building strategies to consider.

Strategy #1: Consistently Create Quality Content

The core of this strategy is to create content that is well-targeted, engaging and worthwhile so people will want to link to you. To create this level of content:

• Consider your audience. What questions might they have that you can answer?
• How are people searching for this type of content? What keywords are they using?
• Read what articles have already been written on this overall topic. How could you make your article different from those already published? Better than them?
• What images can you create or get permission to use that will make the post more visually appealing?
• Does this topic lend itself well to an infographic? If so, can you create one?
• What about the video? Can you create a video to supplement your blog post? If not, which publicly available videos can you embed into your post that will keep people on your site and enrich their experience?
• Write the post. Some people prefer to write the post first and then add a layer of optimization, while others like to optimize as they write. Either strategy can work.
• Optimize your title tag and writing a compelling meta description tag, ones that will cause people to want to click on your site from the listings found on search engine results pages, rather than on a competitor’s site.
• Put the post away for a period of time and then edit it before publishing.
• Promote your post effectively and consistently.

The last item, of course, is crucial – and we could easily write an entire series of posts on how to promote your content. Options include building up your email marketing list or your social media networks and to regularly share your posts through these digital marketing channels.

Here’s a bonus tip. Longform posts, when well written, can be especially appealing to readers. Longform content typically garners more inbound links, too, which is great for SEO purposes – and here is an in-depth look into how to attract Google’s attention with longer content^[3].

Strategy #2: Create Guest Blog Posts for Publication on Quality Sites

Like virtually any other search engine optimization technique, this one has been abused and misused. But, there is still value in guest posting if you do it appropriately.

First, make sure that the place where you’d like for your post to appear:

• Accepts guest blog posts (a significant number of quality sites have discontinued the acceptance of them, often because of the poor quality received)
• Is relevant to your target audience
• Has a quality Domain Authority (DA) score with a low spam score

Domain Authority^[4] is a “search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.  

“Domain Authority is calculated by evaluating linking root domains, number of total links, MozRank^[5], MozTrust^[6], etc. — into a single DA score.”
 
You can go to Moz.com^[7] and enter a domain name to get the following information:

The Washington Post has a killer DA; few sites will have a score of 98, of course. This is just to illustrate what DA information you can easily obtain. The spam score is 1/17, which is excellent. Any score between 0 and 4 is good.

When you guest post, you can typically include a link to your site in the author bio and perhaps in the body of the post. Any links going back to your site will be one of two types:

• Do-follow
• No-follow

Do-Follow Links

A do-follow link passes the PageRank of the website where the post appears along to your site. If it’s a quality site (and, you aren’t going to be guest posting for any that aren’t!), then this PageRank pass-along is good for your site and its SEO efforts.

Note: if you find a site that offers do-follow links for guest posts, don’t be surprised if, when you submit the post, they ask you for payment.

They usually don’t include that in their writer’s guidelines because it would qualify as a paid link in Google’s eyes, which isn’t considered a white hat.

No-Follow Links

A no-follow link won’t direct pass along this “juice,” as the SEO benefit is sometimes called. But, this link will still expose a new audience to your site.

If your guest post is compelling, some readers will click on the link to visit your site – and, if you’re created the quality content described in strategy number one, they will want to explore your site.

As people read your content, they are engaging with your site. And, engagement metrics – such as the time spent on your site, the number of pages viewed and so forth – can have a powerful effect on your rankings^[8] in Google.

Read More: Why SEO Audit Is Mandatory For Your Website?

Win/Win

When you obtain links through white hat methods, you will fit within Google’s guidelines, and you will also be creating quality content that you’ll be proud to feature on your site and under your byline. Win/Win!

The post The Powerful Link Building Strategies for 2018 appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.