Negative SEO
Negative SEO refers to malicious or unethical practices intended to harm a competitor’s search engine rankings. Instead of improving their own site’s SEO, some individuals or businesses try to damage others by using black-hat tactics that violate search engine guidelines.
While negative SEO is relatively rare and search engines like Google are good at detecting it, it’s still a concern for site owners — especially in competitive industries.
Common types of negative SEO
Here are some examples of negative SEO tactics:
| Tactic | Description |
|---|---|
| Spammy backlinks | Creating thousands of low-quality or irrelevant backlinks to a site |
| Content scraping | Copying your content and republishing it across other websites |
| Fake reviews | Posting negative or false reviews on platforms like Google or Yelp |
| Hacking your site | Injecting malicious code or adding hidden links |
| Forceful crawling (DoS) | Overloading your server to slow down or crash your website |
| De-indexing attempts | Reporting fake copyright claims to remove pages from search results |
Why negative SEO is harmful
If successful, negative SEO can:
- Damage your search rankings
- Hurt your brand reputation
- Lower customer trust
- Result in manual actions or penalties from search engines
- Require time and resources to fix the damage
HTML example: Hidden link injection
<a href="https://spammy-site.com" style="display:none;">Hidden spam link</a>
In this example, a hidden link could be injected into your site’s code by a hacker, which may go unnoticed but hurt your SEO if not removed.
How to protect your site from negative SEO
- Monitor backlinks regularly with tools like Ahrefs or Google Search Console
- Disavow suspicious links using Google’s Disavow Tool
- Keep your CMS and plugins up to date to prevent hacking
- Set up Google Alerts for your brand and content mentions
- Use HTTPS and strong passwords to secure your site
- Monitor your site’s performance for unusual traffic patterns
What to do if you're targeted
- Identify the type of attack (e.g., bad links, copied content)
- Report fake reviews to the platform (e.g., Google, Yelp)
- File a DMCA takedown if your content was stolen
- Submit a disavow file to Google to ignore toxic backlinks
- Document everything and, if needed, appeal a manual action in Google Search Console
In summary, negative SEO includes any unethical tactic aimed at sabotaging a website’s rankings. While rare, it can happen — so it’s important to monitor your site’s health, protect your content, and take quick action if anything suspicious appears.