Could this be negative SEO?
-
Hi,
I've attached a copy of our Google ranking for one of our keywords for our site and a competitor. Also shown is the number of external links over time for the same 2 sites.
There seems to be a striking resemblance between the 2 sites so could this be the result of negative SEO?
What's the best way to determine whether you've been targeted for negative SEO?
Thanks,
-
It could definitely be a response from Panda/Penguin, as Irving pointed out the best thing for you to do is use a backlinks tool such as Open Site Explorer and take a look at who is linking to your website.
Are these websites spammy or could they be blacklisted by Google? -
use back link tools to see who is linking to you and from where. it's super fast to determine if someone is spamming links to your website.
-
Was this not around the time of pengiun and panda updates?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Disavow or not? Negative SEO
Since last November we have been receiving a lot of low quality backlinks from over 700 websites. It looks like one of our pages from our website has been copied with the links being kept as they are. I have left a link to an example of this here: https://goo.gl/eWQODJ Please note, all examples seem to be copied in the same way. We have also started seeing a decrease in the amount of organic traffic (Analytics Picture), As you can see the decrease is not yet so drastically high, but it is still a decrease and this is the third consecutive month we have seen this decrease. Do you think it is worth it to use Disavow tool for all of these bad link or not? uuuLt
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm1 -
Surely this cannot be a good SEO technique?
I have a client whose competitor has great positions in Google, and a quick look at the meta data revealed this (I removed the company name): I'd love some opinions on this. My gut feel tells me this is spammy. But all my client sees is that this site is on page 1! ~Caro
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Caro-O0 -
Bay Area SEO Agency
Hi, Can anyone help with recommendations on good SEO agencies based in the Bay Area who have some history of working with gaming or adult brands which have been badly hit by rankings falls in the past 12 months, we suspect due to Penguin. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BetAmerica0 -
Purchasing Expired Domains for SEO Value?
While doing competitive research for a client I have stumbled on a "site developed by" footer link for a fairly established business that points to an expired domain. I'm inclined to notify the business in question that the link is expired BUT I was curious to get some thoughts on if purchasing this domain and redirecting it to my site or another would be a good purely "SEO tactic" as it would seemingly pass "juice"??? Thanks, Dave
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidGadarian0 -
Failed microsites that negatively affect main site: should I just redirect them all?
While they are great domain names, I suspect my 7 microsites are considered spammy and resulted in a filter on my main e-commerce site for the important keywords we now have a filter blocking from showing up in search. Should I consider it a sunk cost and redirect them all to my main e-commerce site, or is there any reason why that would make things worse? I've fixed just about everything I can thinking of in response to Panda and Penguin, before which we were on the first page for everything. That includes adding hundreds of pages of unique and relevant content, in the form of buyers guides and on e-commerce category pages -- resolving issues of thin content. Then I hid URL parameters in Ajax, sped up the site significantly, started generating new links... nothing... I have tons of new keywords for other categories, but I still clearly have that filter on those few important head keywords. The anchor text on the microsites leading to the main site are typically not exact match, so I don't think that's the issue. It has to be that the sites themselves are considered spammy. My bosses are not going to like the idea because they paid for those awesome domains, but would the best idea be to redirect them to the e-commerce site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ElBo9130 -
Explain To Me How Negative SEO ISNT Real?
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.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brianmcc1 -
Is this a white hat SEO tactic?
Hi, I just noticed this website http://www.knobsandhardware.com hosts pages like http://www.knobsandhardware.com/local/hardware/California-Cabinet-Hardware.html that are filled with permutations of products + cities. These pages rank for these long tail phrases. Is this considered white hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anthematic0 -
On page SEO? (This is good! I promise)
I have been doing some research on onsite optimization and I hit a dead end, need some help with OnSite.... These three I get for the most part... (If you would like to add anything please do) Title optimization - needs to be unique with keywords included under 90 words Meta description - needs to be unique with keywords included under 150 words Meta keywords – all keywords Questions begin here... H1 headings – Should this be the first thing the spider crawls? Should they be unique? Is there a penalty for having this content the same on every page? (H1s are under the logo at the top of every one of my sites pages) H2-H6 headings – Should they be unique? Is there a penalty for having this content the same on every page? Bold text – does this matter for SEO? Italic text - does this matter for SEO? Link anchor text – These are the same on most pages. However, most of these links are part of the navigation, does this matter for SEO? is this duplicate? how does the search engine analyze this data? Image alt attributes – I have the share image buttons on my site (Facebook, Twitter, etc...) and they have the same alt attributes on each page. Does this matter for SEO? Body text – I found a competitor site that’s ranking #1 for a key term. This competitor has 11,106 words in their body with the keyword mentioned 29 times (0.8%). They placed all this text in a small scroll down on the bottom of their page. Its strange how they included it. Please review attached image. the competitor URL is http://www(dot)1804design(dot)com/ w6AiM.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEODinosaur0