There is a rising trend in the industry which is catching brands completely off-guard.
Negative SEO tactics are becoming a driving factor behind aggressive marketing campaigns, designed to directly take a competitor out of the online game.
Buying links in bulk is an increasingly cheap practice since the Google Penguin update began to manually penalise this form of SEO building. The benefit this used to bring has been slashed – reversed, in fact – to see that companies bulk buying links actually suffer the consequences, rather than enjoy any advantage at all.
This, however, has led to switched on agents realising how easily and efficiently they can do damage to sites. Before April 2012, the prevailing theory was that links either counted towards SEO or didn’t. Since Google Penguin was introduced, along with manual penalties, it has been possible to use these links as a direct weapon. It costs very little to point a load of bad links at a competitor, usually getting tens of thousands for just $50 or $60, and it’s easy to remain anonymous, dropping an SEO bomb and disappearing without a trace.
The difficult thing when trying to defend against this form of underhand competition, or recover afterwards, is that it is impossible to track who is doing it; another reason why it is gaining so much traction, undoubtedly.
Usually, those inciting this kind of activity have specific motives. Ex-employees with a grudge to bear are a common one, as is former SEO agencies who are bitter and happy to behave in an unprofessional and vindictive manner if they lose a contract. On and off-line competitors are the obvious ones, but are not always the correct culprits.
Unfortunately, at the moment the best defence is simply to manage the situation as closely as possible. Keeping an eye of the company link profile regularly, removing bad links via sensitive and timely outreach and keeping an up-to-date disavow submitted via Search console are the most important aspects to ensure these tactics don’t ruin your rankings.
Having said that, what Google is planning next is anyone’s guess. It could well turn the tables altogether, yet again. For the time being, keeping an eye on this sort of activity could prevent drastic falls from grace and save substantial time, cost and effort.
By Paul Madden, Director of Kerboo.
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