One unfortunate thing with SEO is that, people can easily attack your website with negative SEO methods. They may perform obvious black-hat SEO techniques that are easily recognized by Google’s sophisticated algorithm. You are more likely to be targeted, if your website is at the top of search ranking. Everyone is vying for your position and some can be evil enough to create bad reputation associated against your website and brand. If you are leading the search position, it is important to regularly audit your website to know whether hit. Here are common types of negative SEO attacks:
- Inbound links from bad sources: It’s easy for people to create links from bad location to your website. When Google finds out that your website gets inbound backlinks from questionable locations, penalization may be inevitable. Use link analysis tools to find out whether you are getting many links from low-quality blogs or even bad websites filled with topics like pornography, gambling and drugs. There’s little you can do to this. You need to create high quality and reputable content, as well as establishing connections with other authority websites in the industry. Eventually, quality will beat quantity and you can maintain top position in search result.
- Injected content: Some attackers are skilled enough to make silent intrusion into your website and modify some of webpages without your knowledge. In order to thwart such an attack, you need to evaluate your server logs regularly. Hackers usually hide their trace and use a series of proxies. However, they may slip up occasionally and discovering them is relatively easy. Some website management platforms provide a list of your webpages and show last changes made. If you discover that some pages are changed without your knowledge, it’s important to restore them and find doors that hackers use to intrude into your website.
- Spammy comments: Attackers may use spamming software to distribute fake comments in blogs, social media and other websites that allow users to write comments. They will use your website or company name and add the link to your website. When Google detects that you get many low-quality links from comment sections, your website can be penalized. Again, you need to perform link profile analysis regularly to see whether you suddenly receives a huge influx of low-quality links. You may contact the website owner to ask them that these spam comments to be removed.
- Hotlinking: Hotlinking is aimed to hurt the performance of your website. Your images will be embedded in various websites, so they will be opened many times. This will use up your bandwidth and cause your server to work harder. There are methods to prevent hotlinking of your website and these images can only be displayed on your webpage.
When identifying your attackers, you need to find out about trails that they leave behind. Some of the trails can be quite easy to follow and you may need to hire security consultants. Once identified you may contact your lawyer to find out whether these people can be persecuted.