{"id":2212,"date":"2019-01-16T09:16:16","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T09:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/?p=2212"},"modified":"2025-05-09T08:29:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T08:29:58","slug":"how-can-you-tell-if-youve-got-negative-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/how-can-you-tell-if-youve-got-negative-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can You Tell If You\u2019ve Got Negative SEO?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In any field, there will be unscrupulous people who use underhanded tactics to get ahead. The web is no different, especially where search engine optimization is concerned. There exists a ton of black hat SEO tactics that people try to use to get ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Most of them don\u2019t work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>See, even if Google isn\u2019t keen on sharing exactly how their algorithms work, they\u2019ve made no secret of the fact that they\u2019re committed to stamping out spam wherever it surfaces. Updates such as the one made to the Penguin algorithm in 2012 were specifically aimed at penalizing sites that engaged in strategies like manipulative link building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moreover, Google itself has said in the past that<a href=\"https:\/\/moz.com\/blog\/preparing-for-negative-seo\"> there\u2019s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm someone\u2019s SEO<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So&#8230;that\u2019s it, right? Google said you\u2019re safe, so there\u2019s nothing to worry about? Not exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even though negative SEO is incredibly rare, it is still something you should pay attention to. Left unchecked, it can do some serious damage to your pagerank. The good news is that it\u2019s quite easy to defend against the most common tactics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"618\" height=\"648\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Protect-Negative-Seo.webp\" alt=\"Protect website from Negative Seo\" class=\"wp-image-3716\" style=\"width:577px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Protect-Negative-Seo.webp 618w, https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Protect-Negative-Seo-286x300.webp 286w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 618px) 100vw, 618px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Protect Website from Negative Seo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Check for following points!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Pay attention to where your traffic is coming from. <\/strong>Use a tool like SEO Spyglass to check for links that come from spammy sites such as link farms. When you find bad links use the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/webmasters\/tools\/disavow-links-main?pli=1\">Google Disavow Tool<\/a> to ensure they don\u2019t harm your ranking.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Check for content scrapers. <\/strong>Copyscape is your friend here. Whenever you post content online, periodically use the tool to check for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/webmasters\/tools\/dmca-notice?pli=1&amp;\">scraped content that you can report to Google<\/a>.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Use spam protection on comments. <\/strong>Although the relationship between comments and SEO is still somewhat up in the air, it\u2019s better to be safe than sorry. A tool like Akismet can, if you\u2019ve enabled comments, ensure you avoid the lion\u2019s share of spambots and malicious individuals.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Ensure you\u2019ve got a strong username and password combination. <\/strong>Use a password strength checker to determine how easily-hackable your password might be, and make sure your username for your site is neither the default nor your display name. This will protect you against the vast majority of on-page negative SEO, all of which require someone to obtain unauthorized access to your site\u2019s backend. &nbsp;<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Monitor your site.<\/strong> Are you experiencing performance issues? Unusual network traffic? Sign-in difficulties? These could all be signs your site\u2019s been compromised. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Negative SEO might not be the boogeyman some make it out to be, but it <strong>does <\/strong>exist. There are plenty of people out there who\u2019ll try anything to get ahead &#8211; including using such underhanded tactics. Fortunately, so long as you\u2019re aware of the most common negative SEO strategies, you can rather easily defend yourself against them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Either way, you probably shouldn\u2019t lose much sleep over the matter &#8211; just focus on building a great website, and you\u2019ll be just fine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In any field, there will be unscrupulous people who use underhanded tactics to get ahead. The web is no different, especially where search engine optimization is concerned. There exists a ton of black hat SEO tactics that people try to use to get ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2212"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4615,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions\/4615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aseohosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}