What can you do about negative SEO?
-
We have a list of 240 domains (look exactly the same) linking to our site for a certain keyword. over 3000 links in total. It means that 50% of our keywords are this keyword and it's not a branded keyword which can affect us in the long term.
I have done a WHOIS search and found a name, email and number. Vikas Kumar. I linkedin searched him and found his "legit" SEO site which has EXACTLY the same registration details as the spam sites.
I emailed him and he said it would cost 5$ a link removal. I phoned him and he DENIED these emails. He then denied owning these sites etc.
We have disavowed them but the anchor text % is still affecting us. Is there anything we can do? I know negative SEO isn't illegal but it's really frustrating.
Anyone else had any problems with this type of thing?
-
If you pay them, then they put you on their second network of sites.
-
Ah, I understand. Unfortunately there's really nothing you can do to fix that problem other than paying for link removal...which I really would not recommend.
-
Hi Marie,
Thanks for the reply. Sorry, let me re-phrase. Its affecting our reports in terms of anchor text %.
At the moment we have not been hit due to it but it would be far easier for us to have accurate reports on our anchor text %. These spammy links have distorted the analytics a lot if that makes sense.
We have disavowed them and hoping we can carry on as if they are not there.
-
Personally I wouldn't waste your time. Disavow and move on. I have had no issues with this approach.
-
I see these directory links all the time when doing link audits. While I always disavow them, my gut instinct is that Google is able to recognize that these are not self made links and as such, ignore them.
I would never recommend paying the money to remove them but I know several people who have.
**We have disavowed them but the anchor text % is still affecting us. **
How do you know that these links are affecting you? If you're seeing a drop in rankings I'd be looking for other possible reasons for the drop.
-
I obviously can't say for sure regarding the anchor text - however:
My understanding is that the anchor text ratio is more a signal rather than a trigger - as in it must be one of (X) amount of signals to then fire a penalty trigger (algorithmic/manual review).
So even if it was still sending a bad 'signal' as it were, it wouldn't be the final nail in the coffin.
Of course, this is my opinion, but it's based on my experience and a bit of testing with some spam sites.
-
Thanks for the detailed response, appreciate it!
We have disavowed them so hoping they won't do us any harm in the future. It's reassuring to know you've done a study like that. Very interesting.
I will still proceed to send him a legal document out of principle, he needs to be shaken up a bit.
thanks again
-
If your site has enough authority and trust (site age is also a factor here), those 3k links won't hurt a bit, no matter how many links you have. I have done experiments and a domain with 50DA/50PA and less than 100 links did not move at all after getting hit with 250k spammy links (from spammy websites - using a spammy link profile). In fact the site increased in the serps for a few keywords after about 1 month and stayed there (currently in the top 3). We did the same experiment on a high DA domain with only 8 links - nothing bad happened, rankings increased in 2-3 months.
Just think about it this way, if negative seo would be that easy to pull off, all the shady Kumars out there would start doing this. Fortunately, it's not about the links, their number or quality. Unfortunately, neg seo exists and google can't do much about it (but average Kumars don't have access to neg seo that truly works).
So if you didn't see any drop in rankings, or message in GWT saying that you have a partial penalty, there's nothing to worry about.
-
It was the same in our case. Could do nothing more, then just disavow him.
Unfortunately there are people who fall in his trap, and pay for the removal.
His websites are not indexed in Google. Therefore I hope Google doesn't count any links/anchor from his sites.
-
He's an absolute idiot.
Demanded 5$ a link removal, I phoned him then he said he never sent such an email. I sent him a screenshot of the email then he starts denying the links are his etc.
I hate people who build a business on such negativity. He claims it's not him after I make it clear I won't be spending a penny on link removals from him.
-
It totally depends on how many links you have to start with though? His 3000 links is treble what our official links are. Makes our anchor text 50% of the keyword he has targeted and just messes up our reports.
-
Ye I think I will draft up a legal document to send to him. He has really rattled my cage with his responses.
The issue I have isn't so much the links because I know Google (should) will know it's negative SEO. It's just that our anchor text is now 50% "table tennis tables" which comes from all his sites. Correct me if I'm wrong but disavowing will simply tell Google not to count those links but will my anchor text still be negative in Googles eyes because technically the links are still there?
I will be drafting a legal letter today and sending it to him. He is an absolute joke, people like him really annoy me.
His "official" site and all the spammy ones have the same IP, email, number, location how can he possibly deny it... rant over. Thanks for the reply!
-
Yes, at the top of my disavow file, I also mentioned about the negative SEO attack. In my case it was obvious from the anchor text used on all the backlinks. I don't think they even look at the disavow file unless it is with a manual penalty, but I did add the comments anyway.
-
Did your rankings drop? How old is your domain and what DA/PA do you have? How many links do you have (checked with all available tools)?
3000 links won't do much, that's not really negative seo, 300k links would be something to worry about. So unless your rankings dropped or your site is brand new, all should be ok.
Also, disavowing is not instant, not even fast, might take up to 2 (or more) months to see some effect.
-
Negative SEO may not be technically illegal - but extortion is.
What you have described there looks like extortion to me. 240 sites built to link to you, verifiable whois information, contacted the culprit, he has requested money from you to remove the links he built. That's extortion - and you have it in writing.
It might not be the most solid legal case, but it can be enough to scare off any disgruntled webmaster who is doing this. If you have anyone who can draft a legal letter to serve, I'd get on this. It should put a stop to it.
However, as Jonathan says, it is unlikely that this kind of negative SEO will have any sort of impact, particularly if you have disavowed the links. When uploading a disavow file, I'd also put a "# comment" in there saying that this is because of a negative SEO attack. 240 identical sites and links from the same whois (and probably IP) - Google is going to know this is a negative SEO attack on you and will discount those links.
But I'd scare that bastard into submission if I were you.
-
That Kumar guy is funny. We also had to deal with him in the past. He asks for a certain amount of money /links removed.
We have tried talking to him first, in order to remove the urls. But in the end his websites ended up in our disavow file. (and his response was: I do not care)
Keszi
-
I wouldn't worry. I got hit by negative seo. It had no effect on my rankings, and I just disavowed all the links anyway to avoid it hurting during a penguin refresh. That has since come and gone, and again no problems.
Those spammy links may just dissappear over time, but not something I would worry about as long as they are disavowed.
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
-
I need help in doing Local SEO
Hey guys I hope everyone is doing well. I am new to SEO world and I want to do local SEO for one of my clients. The issue is I do not know how to do Local SEO at all or where to even start. I would appreciate it if anyone could help me or give me an article or a course to learn how to do it. Main question The thing that I want to do is that, I want my website to show up in top 3 google map results for different locations(which there is one actual location). For example I want to show up for
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seopack.org.ofici3
online clothing store in new york
online clothing store in los angeles or... Let's assume that we can ship our product to every other cities. So I hope I could deliver what I mean. I'd appreciate it if you could answer me with practical solutions.0 -
Magento missing SEO fields?
Hi Guys, Have a client who's blog is combined with there e-commerce site which is on Magento 2 but there are no SEO fields to add meta title, description. It only has the ability to add h1 tag see: https://cl.ly/3c6897aa5132 We want to add this ability to add meta data like this: https://d.pr/i/8GdbDc Does anyone know how to do this? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brandonegroup0 -
What is the best SEO way for a shop
Hi there ! A client want to sell some products on its future website but just a small range (the most part of this website will not be an online shop). The idea is to add a "shop" button in the menu to redirect clients in this shop. I would like your opinion about how should I construct this shop, what do you think is the best for SEO : "www.website.com/shop" or "shop.website.com" thank you in advance for your answers !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EnjinFrance0 -
SEO - is it site or page
Hi When we're talking about SEO does the search engine only look at the whole site in general or do they look at the individual page when we're talking about SERP? So if you have a keyword "my search term" Does the search engine look at the site first or the page with the term on then rank you or is it the page then the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Local SEO tips
Hi! I'm working on http://www.hgsplumbingandheating.co.uk/ at the moment, and it's going pretty well for local terms such as 'Norwich plumber' etc. Has anyone got any tips though on how it can be improved, especially with regard to getting the homepage ranking above the Places listings? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Where to begin (SEO-wise) with my Website?
Hello, We hired a company to design an e-commerce website for us. Along the way they did some initial SEO design, but we are clearly a long way from where we need to be. I'm not a web-designer or a knowledgeable SEO person. I have the website linked to webtools, google analytics and obviously this site as well. I've been toying with the idea of just trying to accomplish some SEO myself, but the more I read about SEO, the more daunting it seems. I'm a full-time military pilot, so this seems like it involves more time than I have to give. Where do I begin? My Website www.phoenixprintingsolutions.com Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JRodBeMe0 -
SEO through Social Media, what have you been doing? :)
Hi, Just a general discussion really, what sort of thing have you been up to regarding social media and it helping SEO. One thing that does interest me is generating tweets/likes and also using Google plus profile to help SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Corporate pages and SEO help
We own and operate more than two dozen educational related sites. The business team is attempting to standardize some parts of our site hierarchy so that our sitemap.php, about.php, privacy.php and contact.php are all at the root directory. Our sitemap.php is generated by our sitemap.xml files, which are generated from our URLlist.txt files. I need to provide some feedback on this initiative. I'm worried about adding more stand-alone pages to our root directory and as part of a separate optimization in the future I was planning to suggest we group the "privacy", "about" and "contact" pages in a separate folder. We generally try to put our most important pages/directories for SEO in the root as our homepages pass a lot of link juice and have high authority. We do not invest SEO time into optimizing these pages as they're not pages we're trying to rank for, and I've already been looking into even no-following all links to them from our footer, sitemap, etc. I know that adding these "corporate" pages to a site are usually a standard part of the design process but is there any SEO benefit to having them at the root? And along the same lines, is there any SEO harm to having unimportant pages at the root? What do you guys think out there in Moz land?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_edvisors0