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This might be a really obvious question but... If building bad links (spam links) negatively impacts and even sometimes draws penalties, what is there to prevent others from building links like to my site to try and strip me of my rankings (like from my competitors)? I ran a quick link analysis and noticed a bunch of spam links pointing to my site the other day. I haven't been affected yet but it was only like two days ago that I saw those. Just curious. Is hostile seo going to be an emerging trend? If so it will be a really easy job. Just go to fiverr and buy 20 bucks worth of links...