Can a Competitor Mess Up Your SEO?

It's best if you can be consistent with the backlinking... but let's just say that if any of my competitors want to toss a few thousand links my way they can do it anytime they want with no objections from me.

A link blast may cause your site to dance for a while, but eventually it will settle in a solid position (normally better than where it started)... in my experience anyway.

So, my competitors are welcome to blast 10k links to my site. Those crappy links along with the high-quality links I personally build will make a sexy link-profile for my site.

Maybe I shouldn't have given the link blasting as an example lol. I mean after months of work I'm about to put into my sites, can a competitor submit the site somewhere (I don't know, adult links? lol I'm new, you all are the experts), SOMEHOW mess up your site to counteract all the hard work you're putting into it? I'm willing to put in the hard work, I just don't want a competitor to do one or two things that will bring my site down in ranking in like 2 seconds... Hope this brings some clarification lol (because yes, I would like 10,000 free links blasted to my site too lol, that was an example for say a brand-new site and a competitor using sandboxing techniques)

@davechan. THANKS, that's exactly what I meant... Unfortunately the place I'm promoting does have a lot of younger members, some jerks (I won't name which forums they hang around lol), and I was just worried that if I started to move up and they noticed they might try and do something to stop me that I couldn't control (I used to be a mod on this site for 2 years too...so easy target lol :\ )

The only way that they can mess with you is turning you in for using black hat tactics. If you are doing something wrong and they find out they can turn you into Google for that. As long as you are doing things the right way then you have nothing to worry about.

Competitors blasting of links wont get you sandboxed,This was a myth.Better focus on your linkbuilding effects carefully and steadily.

No.... Google is not stupid. A competitor can't mess up with your SEO because offpage SEO literally has no negative effect on your site not even if your site is a day old not even if your competitor links to your site from porntube or hackerslounge.

Forget that sandbox, sites that are sandboxed are only sites that used black hat SEO in their onpage SEO

The only thing your new site will do when you send tons of links there is to attend the Google dance which literally every new site attends and the only cure is just to keep backlinking.

If you think I'm lying... see this my new site, literally less than 2 months old, it already has more than 7,000 backlinks and it didn't get sandboxed, instead I'm ranking really well on Google for a bunch of terms and it's bringing in good sales.

Just so you know, I blasted more about 50k links to that site.

So, from my experience.... your competitor won't send you to jail even if he blasts 500k links once to your new site, the only thing your site will do will be to attend the Google dance and when it comes back, it will be stronger and it will embarrass, disgrace and murder any site at the #1 position. (just keep thinking long term)

Yes, hacking is a different ball-game that can definitely happen. Luckily it hasn't happened to me, but I backup my websites once a month anyway just in case.

The backlink blasts would probably only be a temporary thing as you say.
Glad things have got better for you though.

Yes... hacking is the only thing that could really mess up your site but how many of those regular affiliates are ready to get into that art, it's a very rare situation

well that is not only thing... for instance you can hire someone to DDoS "service" etc.

lol... I love that one: get blasting

I had the same questions once.

I don't think people would take the time to do so!

In the end, doing things RIGHT always wins!

Yap your competitors sure can mess up your site, well I've seen several messed up techniques like a competitor hiring a SEO to create false testimonials on your product or service or building very bad links for your site, all you have to do is be consistent with your link building methods and strategies in order to prevent or fight this kind of problem.

Yes aside from some black hat tactics the only thing that might happen is you get outranked or like OP said your rankings will "dance" a bit

I believe that if it's so blatant that you are buying links for your sites (JC Penney situation, case in point) can get your site banned. But it has to be way over the top.

You're worrying too much dude. I mean, if you have been building HIGH QUALITY links to your site, a few blasts of bad links wouldn't really matter now because Google weights your QUALITY links more, the bad links get ignored.

If the competitor really wants to ruin your ranking then they have to keep blasting for several days in order for the Quantity of bad links to supercede the Quality of your good links. The ONLY method for this is, keep building Quality Links...

That's the way it is. It's a dog eat dog world out here, just like offline businesses. Keep up or lose out.

Anyway, as Black Hat Cat mentioned, you would rather want to be no. 1 at ranking and have others trying to take you down, than get crappy ranking and not earning a single cent at all.

Cheers

Joe

I'm just going to say what everyone else has said: your competitors cannot hurt you with backlinks. They may be of low quality, but they can't hurt you!

If you don't think you can get a site banned, you're absolutely fooling yourself.

I can absolutely get a competitor's site banned from G. I see it weekly in the adult niche.

Your Competition sendng a 10,000 strong link blast is actually pretty common in competitive niches, it even has its own nickname its known as "Google Bowling" (go Google it lol)

The trick people use is to blast tons of links to your site to cause it to dance in the SERPS, but then of course it usually comes back stronger!

So why would they do that then??

Well, think about a particular time frame you would like to see your competition disappear for ......... Can't think of one??

How about Cyber Monday, Black Friday, Halloween, the day of a product launch, or even Christmas in general as the Google dance can last a few days to a few months!

The trick is timing the blast to achieve the dance at the right time, and no, there is no confirmed way of timing it (well, so I've heard, I don't partake in this kind of thing)

This obviously doesn't hurt you in the long run but it sure does in the short term.

For long term problems hacking is a threat and anyway your competitors can try to associate your sites with porn, gambling, pharma etc, (bad neighborhoods)

Andy

Good to know these things. This has been a question at the back of my mind.. Thanks!