Semalt Expert: Here's How To Protect Websites From Black Hat SEO

23.05.2018

Semalt Expert: Here's How To Protect Websites From Black Hat SEO

The negative SEO refers to the practice of executing black hat SEO tactics on another website. Often, an SEO attack is instituted by disgruntled market competitors with the aim of reducing rankings of a website. Negative SEO can destroy a website through aggressive and malicious backlink spamming. It is a legitimate threat which can lead to loss of organic search revenue and visibility.

In this regard, the seven tips highlighted in the article by Alexander Peresunko, a leading specialist from Semalt, are useful to victims of black hat SEO attack, potential victims, and anyone who wants to protect their sites against dangers of such attempts.

Foremost, regular audits of sites should be performed. The regular links checks are not only a good business practice, but can also save bacon to the victims of negative SEO. Moreover, monitoring link pro le of a website is the best method to spot malicious activities before spreading beyond control. Link graphs are used in this monitoring. A huge drop in traf c as indicated by link graphs should, therefore, raise the alarm.

Furthermore, a manual audit or the use of link auditing software is performed to check backlink health.

Checking the speed of a site is the second way of protecting a site against negative SEO. As a key ranking factor, it is recommended that site owners use crawling software to monitor suspicious activities anytime the site speed becomes sluggish. However, if nothing is detected, and still the problem exists, one might be a victim of forced crawling.

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23.05.2018

Thirdly, look up for scraped content. Scraping denotes lifting content from other websites for publishing in the marketing industry. Often, scammers combine such contents with attack links to spam a website. Tools like Copyscape can be used to establish if contents of the website are already plagiarized.

Next, Google My Business must be monitored. Most businesses owners work hard to create the brand reputation and attract clients. However, some business sites experience a tidal of negative and fake reviews from customers. In this regard, internet marketers are advised to continually monitor the reputation of other business by the use of Google My Business to avoid falling prey of negative SEO. Another way to protect a site against negative SEO is to watch keywords' CTR. Some internet marketers might have experienced a situation where thousands of hits bounce immediately after landing on a site. Programmed bots are targeting particular keywords that execute this behavior. The attacks can be dif cult to notice if keyword's CTR is not monitored.

Checking SERP ranking is another important tip for preventing negative SEO on a site. A drop in ranking calls for checking of SERP ranking from time to time. Moreover, failure to perform SERP ranking checks can lead to competing for de-indexing immediately after a hack. When performing a full overview, it is important to utilize rank tracking software for monitoring a site's visibility.

Finally, upgrading of site's security is critical. Speci cally, this protects a website against cyber-attacks. Site owners must ensure the use of up-todate software and application of necessary security. Technically, cyberattacks are not negative SEO but have an impact on a site's SEO. In conclusion, victims of negative SEO must take action to isolate the problem. However, it is safer to monitor the performance of a site to prevent negative SEO.

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