Dealing with negative SEO

[seoman10]

Interested to know people strategies for detecting and mitigating negative SEO.

Previously I've used link monitoring tool and kept an eye on all new back links coming in to any page on the site.  I have then manually assessed each one again using some tools and actually visiting the website.

However, this always leaves me with one dilemma.  Regardless of my assessment how do search engines see that link?

I run three lists a white list, grey list and blacklist.

• White list - very relevant and have a lot of authority.  I.e. leading industry blogs and forums.
• Grey list - out of topic/industry, directories
• Blacklist - sites de-indexed by Google, illegal content or absolute spam (i.e. one page filled with hundreds of links to different domains)

1. Do you have any thoughts?
2. How do you assess if link is bad?

[vtmoz]

Have you tries ahrefs tool? It will give the new back links with dates. May be this helps

[Linda-Vassily]

First, although it's great to keep on top of your link profile, you do not need to go overboard. What Google says about link disavowal is: "In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool."

As far as link assessment, Moz has this built into Open Site Explorer. Enter a URL and it will give you the spam score for the page.