Rawnet SEO Strategist Raytchle Reiss looks at Negative SEO, how to avoid it and what makes it a dirty and avoidable business.

1. NEGATIVE SEO -A DIRTY BUSINESS!

2. DEFINITION
“Negative SEO is the practice of implementing black hat SEO
techniques on another site. Usually, an SEO attack is unleashed
by a disgruntled competitor and his or her minions with the goal
of reducing that site's rankings.”

3. HOW?
MOST Negative SEO attempts use a multi-prong strategy to impact rankings.
Each method attempts to get a site penalised by Panda or Penguin
algorithmic filters.
Penguin And Panda - What’s the difference?
Panda rates a website based upon “quality signals”. It incorporates signals
such as page load speed, reputation online and it is rumoured that social
signals such as reviews are weighted within the site. Panda is now fed into
the “core algorithm” and is now more important than the older Penguin.
Penguin looks at the websites backlink profile. Penalties can be given site-
wide or even on a individual page. To put it into perspective a site may
never recover from a Penguin penalty. Potentially devastating for any
business online.
WEBSITE
REPUTATIONASSOCIATION
TECHNICAL ATTACKS

4. TECHNICALATTACKS
HACKING
There are four types of“hacking for negative SEO”
1. The more common“UGG boot” or“Viagra” hack. This is easier to find than its counterpart.
2. The“This Domain Is Parked” hack.
3. The“301/302 redirect hack”.This isn’t necessarily a deliberate attempt at negative SEO. I
call this the opportunist hack where they use your sites authority to rank for keywords and
then redirect to their website to gain sales.
4. TheVanity Hack -This isn't usually done to damage a websites rankings.Hackers do this
for vanity/kudos amongst their peers.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FORYOUR BUSINESS?
1. Loss OfTraffic - More Importantly Sales/Enquires!
2. Damaging to reputation - Potential Customers May Not Return.
3. Maybe Penalised By Panda For Page Or Site-Wide - ClassedAs Non-Secure Site.
Google Released a Hacked Page Update On the 05/10/2016.The aim of this update was to remove
“hacked pages” from the SERP’s.
WhereTo Look Out For Signs
WebmasterTools
CMS
FTP Files
Google Analytics
SEMRUSH
MOZ
EMAIL
GOOGLE SEARCH
SITE:EXAMPLE.COM

5. THE UGG/VIAGRA HACK
• Most common out of the four types of hack.
• Not necessarily a negative SEO attempt but has negative implications on
rankings.
• Drives irrelevant traffic to the website - high bounce rate,low engagement =
Panda Factor
• Google will have built a idea of content that is relevant to you.If you start ranking
for terms that are irrelevant you will receive a warning throughWebmasterTools.
WHATTOWATCH FOR:
1. Keep an eye on search query impressions within webmaster tools.
2. Use third party tools such as SEMRush and MOZ to check for low lying irrelevant
keyword terms on your website.
3. If you are caught out make sure you address the vulnerabilities before submitting the
site for reconsideration.
4. Google will let you know if yourWordpress is out of date throughWebmasterTools.
THIS ISA BANKING SITE? REALLY?

6. DOMAIN IS PARKED HACK
• Google wants to show relevant content.The“Domain Is Parked” Hack signals to
Google that the site is no longer updating content or trading online.Google will
reduce rankings and reindex sites.
• This method is difficult to spot. Hackers often hide text using the old hat method
of“white text on white background. Hackers prefer to use this method over using
meta no index tags and robots.txt disallows as its more difficult to problem solve.
WHATTOWATCH FOR:
1. Watch out for site-wide drops in rankings.
2. Check the view-source and use find to search for“Domain is Parked”
3. If you are caught out make sure you address vulnerabilities before submitting the site for
reconsideration.
4. Google will let you know if yourWordpress is out of date throughWebmasterTools.
SNEAKY!!
LOOKS LIVETO ME!

7. 301/302 REDIRECT HACK
• AKAThe Opportunist Hack
• Hackers use the authority of your site to rank for desired keyword terms.They
then update the .htaccess file to redirect to a page on their own website.
• Eventually 301 redirected pages will be replaced by the landing page within the
SERP’s.
• 302 Redirects are more difficult to spot as the original page will remain in the
SERP’s unless Google deems them as a non-temporary redirect.
WHATTOWATCH FOR:
1. Watch for new landing pages withinWebmasterTools/Analytics
2. Loss of organic traffic
3. Check the .htaccess file
4. If you are caught out make sure you address vulnerabilities before submitting the site for
reconsideration.
5. Google will let you know if yourWordpress is out of date throughWebmasterTools.
LOOKS LIVETO ME!
CHECKSTHE REFERRERTHEN REDIRECTSTO MALICIOUSSITE.CO.UK/BAD.PHP
LessTraffic = Less Sales/Enquiries
OUCH!

8. VANITY HACK
• Hacked for kudos amongst their peers.
• Not a negative SEO attempt however,this will impact rankings.
• If you are lucky to fix the site before GoogleBot crawls you may miss a penalty.
• Hackers will usually publish a list of the sites that they have hacked.This leads
into“guilty by association”
WHATTOWATCH FOR:
1. If you are caught out make sure you address vulnerabilities before submitting the site for
reconsideration.
2. Google will let you know if yourWordpress is out of date throughWebmasterTools.
YOUWILL KNOW IFYOUR SITE HAS BEENVANITY HACKED
THEYWILL EVENTELLYOUWHOTHEYARE.HUMILIATING RIGHT?

9. SLOW SPEEDS
• This is the most difficult method to prove. Offenders send thousands of requests
to the server similar to a DDOSAttack but with the tactic of slowing down
response times instead of taking the site down.
• Page Load Speed has a huge impact on rankings.I’ve seen sites that didn’t
complete a server transition correctly drop from position 4 to page 2 overnight.
This is a known factor of Panda.
WHATTOWATCH FOR:
1. Check server logs
2. Check page load speeds withinAnalytics
3. Set up custom alerts withinAnalytics
RESPONSE OVERLOAD

10. HOT LINKING
• Offenders use hot linking to increase the amount of requests to the server.
Instead of uploading the image to their own site the image is requested from the
site under attack.
• Using large images puts you at risk of“hot linking negative SEO”
WHATTOWATCH FOR:
1. Make sure that images are web optimised.
2. Check page load speeds withinAnalytics
3. Set up custom alerts withinAnalytics
4. Check for an increase in backlinks to the image URL.
5. Perform a image search within Google Images.
RESPONSE OVERLOAD

11. GUILTY BY REPUTATION
• Panda looks at your sites reputation off page. It will take into consideration reviews on
independent sites,social signals and forum sites.
• Offenders will post bad reviews on a variety of these sites.This will put off users who
would potentially be interested in buying/enquiring about your service.
• Google Panda will see the site as untrustworthy and potentially penalise the site.
WHATTO DO
1. Encourage customers to review your product service.
2. Have a active presence on the main review sites.
3. Search for“company name reviews”
I DONT THINK SO

12. GUILTY BYASSOCIATION
WHY? PRETTY SELF EXPLANATORY!
NOTE:
1. Keep an eye on backlinks.
2. This method aims to get you penalised by Penguin for link spamming.
3. Utilise the disavow file to keep on top of bad backlinks.
I’d be annoyed too

13. GUILTY BY DUPLICATION
NOTE:
1. Use canonical tags as a defensive measure
2. UseAbsolute URL’s instead of relative URL’s. This will help to defend rankings against
content distribution.
3. Keep an eye on referrals within GoogleAnalytics.Most offenders are lazy tbey will copy
the site without amending the analytics tags. The most common domain name choice
will be a misspelling of your domain name. Albeit,if you are suspicious of any referral
make sure you investigate.
4. Check the exclude all known bots to reduce referral spam,not only will this inflate
referral traffic but will impact metrics like bounce rate and pages per session.
• There are two ways duplication can impact your site.
1. Site Clone - Offenders will copy your site,use other negative SEO methods to penalise the
site and then redirect the penalised site to your site.
2. Content Distribution -This is a old grey/black hat way of ranking a site through article
submissions. This will be seen as an attempt to try and manipulate rankings.
It won’t cost much to get the duplicate site penalised

14. MOREWORKTO DO!
ANY QUESTIONS?
1. Thanks to these“black hats”Webmaster’s/SEO’s now have more and more work to do.
We have to employ defensive measures and utilise tools like the disavow file more
regularly than before.
2. Penguin will be made real time which means that it is essential to highlight any
attempts of off-page SEO needs to be highlight and dealt with immediately.
3. Off-page reputation is now a key factor.Ensuring that citations including your company
name,review sites,forums are maintained and positive is essential. Customer service
now has a direct impact on your SEO.
4. Panda is now inserted into the“core algorithm” be on top of your reputation off page.
5. SEO’s now need to monitor a range of metrics closely.
Updated recently to“vast majority” the previous excerpt said that webmaster’s shouldn’t worry about negative SEO

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