This session in Salon H discussed Negative SEO that Google sharply disapproves of and what webmasters can do to protect their sites from such tactics of the competitors. The session was addressed by three speakers.
Moderator:
- Aaron Kronis
Speakers:
- Jonathan Goodman – President, Halyard Consulting
- Joe Laratro – President, Tandem Interactive
- Dwight Zahringer – CEO, Trademark Productions / TruReview.com
Jonathan Goodman gave an interesting introduction to the session saying that any SEO campaign begins with keywords and it is for the professionals to find the opportunity. He was followed by Joe who talked about negative SEO in detail. Topics he touched included negative SEO tactics, profile games, cloning competitors’ Whois information, biz hacks, reinclusion, hacking, viruses, plug ins, etc.
Negative SEO Tactics
Digging deep into negative SEO tactics of some webmasters, Joe mentioned:
Spam links
- Link building using banned websites, using gambling, pharmacy, adult, SEO terms and link farms.
Domain redirects
- 301 redirect banned/unrelated domains to competitors’ domain
- 301 redirect pharm/gambling/adult/SEO to competitors’ domain
Malware
- Infect the site with virus and report it as infected
DMCA complaints
- Reporting to Google and hosting company
Negative SEO Tactics: Fake Reviews
Fake reviews hurt reputation directly, resulting in low stars. People may use variety of sites like
- Google Local Plus, Yahoo Local, Yelp, City Search
- Consumer Affairs, Complaints Board, Ripoff Report
- Industry Affairs
Negative SEO Tactics: Playing Profile Games
There are black hatters engaged in profile games to show off competitors in bad light. Joe informed about the tricks they use:
- Faking profile on social sites to promote competitors in spammy manner
- Running blog spammers with competitors’ link
- Spam people with competitor’s domain name mentioned
Negative SEO Tactics: Cloning Whois Information
Joe threw light how Whois information is cloned to hurt competitors’ business. Their steps will usually be
- Signing up an account in same IP block as competitors
- Registering competitors’ domain with dashes or tlds
- Cloning competitors’ Whois information, scraping their site and posting it on theirs
- Filing DMCA notice with Google
Negative SEO Tactics: Domains
As Joe discussed, there are some who are willing to shell out bucks to damage competitors. They would
- buy links from traceable programs for competitors and then make a spam report to Google.
- send ‘We buy/sell links’ to known Google employee accounts. They will then wait for Google connecting the dots and penalizing competitors.
Joe Laratro addressing a Pubcon session
Negative SEO Tactics: Biz Hacks
Joe talked how some enterprises may try to hire/buy away the staff from competitors. They may
- post fake jobs to replace staff
- send project directors bad press about the personnel or contractors.
Negative SEO Tactics: Creating Technical Issues
Joe had come ready to expose all possible means of negative SEO. One of their tactics is to create technical problems on the competitors’ website by
- exposing canonical issues
- crawling problems
- 404 handling
Negative SEO Tactics: Maximizing Problems
Joe discussed how negative SEOs maximize the problems for competitors by
- linking to pages that do not exist
- cooking up duplicate content issues
This makes the site come across as reliable hurting its rankings.
Negative SEO Tactics: Reinclusion
Another strategy of negative SEO, as Joe told, was to send Reinclusion requests for the sites that haven’t been banned. Over 1k people are involved in QC with Google and handchecks are a huge part of the QC process. Frivolous complaints only create problems for the site owner and stretch challenges for Google staff. As a Google employee revealed, Google UI is just the tip of the iceberg and there is plenty of information that lies beneath the layer.
Black Hat SEO – Hacking
Hacking is a weapon of black hat SEOs. Joe took the pains to explain what black hatters prey upon:
- Weak passwords
- Open WiFi – Firesheep
- Unpatched software
- Credit card receipts
- Desperate employees
- Stealing domains
- Blatant link spam
- Discrete link building
Black Hat SEO – Viruses
Viruses, as Joe explained, are used by black hat SEOs to wreak havoc on websites. These include
- WordPress hacks
- SQL injection
Infecting a site with display messages like ‘This site may harm your computer’ is another of their tactics.
Black Hat SEO – Plug Ins
Plug Ins Joe mentioned were
URL Shorteners
- Site redirections
- 301 redirects
Free WP Plug In
- Can vary anchor text outbound links
- Ziv Dascalu as example
Black Hat SEO – Link Buying
Joe spoke on secretive link building networks like
- Text Link Ads
- Link Worth
- Intellinks
- Link Vehicle
Link Buying – What Can A Webmaster Do
Joe advised webmasters to do monthly audits for links rather than waiting for Penguin updates. They need to manually check website for quality factor in the percentage of link portfolio.
Black Hat SEO – Waterfall
Joe talked about researching various search terms on a given topic. He goes on discussing Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Fiverr. MTurk allows businesses to post tasks to use available human intelligence to complete them, while Fiverr is an online marketplace used by freelancers.
Dealing with Negative SEO
At the end of his address, Joe advised enterprises how they can protect their websites from negative SEO tactics.
Essentials on the to-do list include
- Keeping up-to-date with latest webmaster guidelines
- Monitoring backlinks with negative SEO
- Watching own staff for using black hat tactics
- Protecting passwords
- Patching software
- Beware of open WiFi
- Protection of credit card receipts
Dwight closed the session by providing some interesting input into negative SEO.
The session was immensely valuable for the attendees who were wary of impact of negative SEO on their sites.
