Explain To Me How Negative SEO ISNT Real?

[brianmcc]

I'm seeing lots of "offers" springing up to do negative SEO on your competitors. I know people keep insisting this sort of thing is just a bogeyman, but follow my logic here:

• We know the Penguin update PENALIZED, and not just devalued "over optimization." Read: exact match keyword links.
• We know that if your link profile is too "unnaturally" keyword heavy, (it should be majority your brand or your domain or your company name, etc) you get penalized. Again, not devalued, PENALIZED.

Ok. So what is to stop a blackhatter from using one of those software bots to just kill a competitor? Knowing the above two points, lets say a website is ranking for "cool widgets". Why not just create a bunch of exact match keyword spam links for "cool widgets" targeting that website. In a while, the Penguin penalty kicks in and bammo.

The thing that scares me about the post Penguin landscape is that google has specifically named an activity ("over optimization") that will get you PENALIZED. So, don't do that, right? Except, that means they've explicitly outlined an activity that will be penalized, and is easy for others to do to you, and that you would be powerless to prevent.

I await the usual "this is an age old worry that has never come true" replies. But if you reply that way, ask yourself, can you refute the logic of the points above? And also... oh no... It's happening. I'm seeing it.

[Stutan]

This has happened to my site - 80 000 (that's about 97% of our total links) + forum account and blog comment spam with exact match text links.  Over 4000 domains.  It's simply not possible to get these links removed.  Most are abandoned blogs or forums that only spammers use.  Alot of them are also non english language sites.

I did attempt to make contact with the webmasters of about 100 of these sites, and only got one response.

Also as it's not a manual penalty, but an algorithmic penalty google say nothing can be done.

The good news is many of the blogs have realized they have a security flaw allowing spam bots to create accounts and post comments and have subsequently deleted all spam comments or even shut the blogs down entirely.

The negative SEO campaign continues though - new links are still being added.  I have seen some of my competitors targeted on the same forums / blogs too, a pretty clear sign it's a negative SEO attack.

How would one go about discovering the source of the attacks?

[brianmcc]

Lol. That's funny.

[bronxpad]

Yes negative SEO is real but there are many tools that you can use to check out the links that are directed to you. The best free tools are Bing Webmaster and Google Webmaster. You can see if you have links that are spam related and create a report detailing that you are a victim of negative seo and that you would like those links to not count against you.

You should also contact the web masters of those sites and inform them nicely at first that you would like to have those links removed and if that doesn't work inform them that you will contact google that they are in fact complicit in the negative seo campaign against you.

I hope this helps.

[brianmcc]

Hey. Good luck with that. PPC no longer converts, and it's filled with scammers who got 10/10 quality scores to sit all day long at the top of keywords.

[Nightwing]

Hi Brian this is exactly what i was discussing with my boss the other day. We could ( but we wont ) target a competitor and point a tonne of naff links to a site and theoretically sink them.

My understanding is the penguin update is a joke in that they've not protected against using it as a counter strike tactic.

I just dont get it Or maybe they just want organic SEO to sink so we all give up and throw cash at PPC...

[KaneJamison]

It's real, has been for longer than many people realize IMO.

If it's done sloppily then it can be easy for the victim to demonstrate to Google that they weren't responsible. Sadly, it's easy for the perpetrator to make it look like it was done by the site owner.

I sleep knowing that if my domain doesn't have a history of sloppy spam and hard-core anchor text optimization, it's easy for me to point to the start date of any negative SEO campaign as post-Penguin. That's pretty good evidence that you didn't just suddenly start building shady links to your domain.

If you already were building shady links and someone else just sent more in your direction, there's not much to say other than that sucks, and you're going to have to spend a hell of a lot of time contacting webmasters to remove links and documenting your process.

[brianmcc]

Oh, believe me, I don't want to do it! No way! What I'm saying is, I fear it. And I'm tired of hearing "experts" say it's some sort of thing that is possible but not likely because google would never let it happen. They let it happen with Penguin. I'm seeing it.

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

Brian-

Negative SEO does work. It is real.....you can do it. I can give you a number of examples where we have had clients come to us because they have had competitors do negative seo and they have been hurt by it....temporarily.

So where does that leave you? There are always going to be ways to beat the system.  Even today you could back over your neighbors mailbox and drive away and not get caught. You still have to ask yourself is that what you want to be doing with your time and energy. Just like everything else, the search engines will eventually figure out how to identify when it has happened and the strategy will go away.

Without giving too much detail, I will also tell you that on several of our new clients that had a negative seo issue related to their competitors hammering them, we were able to identify who was doing the negative seo and we ended up passing their information along to google and others. It was not pretty for them.....

Good luck. Please show me the thumbs up.

Mark