How I recovered from a negative SEO attack...

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I recently had the pleasure of having my site link blasted by an unknown competitor... It was a fairly new site (about 2 months) and I had managed to get to the first page, somebody didn't like that and blasted my site with 1000's of low quality links... when my site first disappeared I thought it was a late google-dance or some lingering effects of the penguin update, but then I checked my stats and saw this


(this is my backlink count now, it actually was something around 6000 on the day I found out)

I'm pretty careful about building my backlinks and like most of us, i have a system of my own that I know works... anyway, the "normal" backlink count at that time was somewhere around 600...

Next thing I did was jump on the WF and searched for possible solutions on how to counter a negative SEO attack... and apart from trying to manually delete every backlink, some people suggested to just keep doing what you're doing and keep building links, don't stop and don't accelerate your link building, just work as if nothing had happened.

And because manually deleting those backlinks seemed impossible I just continued to build backlinks the way I always did... and sure enough the backlink count went down slowly and I regained my first page position!



So for others going through the same problem, I've made this thread to confirm that the BEST course of action is to keep building links as you always have! I guess google then notices an irregularity in the backlink pattern and adjusts accordingly.

And yes, new sites are more susceptible to negative SEO but my case clearly proves that you can eliminate the effects, so DON'T throw those sites away just because someone decided to give you a link blast...

The fun part of the whole thing is knowing that someone just wasted money on trying to eliminate my site
#attack #negative #recovered #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Certitude
    That's great news that you were able to overcome the negative linkbuilding campaign.

    I'd really like to know just how much you vary the anchor text in the links you build!

    Also how many different keywords did the attackers use?
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    • Profile picture of the author DeMango25
      Originally Posted by Certitude View Post

      That's great news that you were able to overcome the negative linkbuilding campaign.

      I'd really like to know just how much you vary the anchor text in the links you build!

      Also how many different keywords did the attackers use?
      I used about 5 or 6 anchor texts for my link building (1 main kw, 1 secondary and 4 low traffic related keywords... apparently that's enough ).

      The attackers just used one I think... and that my domain name minus ".com"
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  • Profile picture of the author Certitude
    What kind of links are you building?

    I figure that the attackers links would suffer heavily from deletion and with you continuing to build quality links with diversity in anchor text your main keyword would become more diluted and allow your site to slip through the Penguin filter.
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    • Profile picture of the author DeMango25
      Originally Posted by Certitude View Post

      What kind of links are you building?

      I figure that the attackers links would suffer heavily from deletion and with you continuing to build quality links with diversity in anchor text your main keyword would become more diluted and allow your site to slip through the Penguin filter.
      Well, I'm a big fan of tiered pyramids pushing link juice to a few web 2.0 properties at the top, then social bookmark the whole thing. Also do some direct linking and manual high quality blog commenting on the side...
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by DeMango25 View Post

        Well, I'm a big fan of tiered pyramids pushing link juice to a few web 2.0 properties at the top, then social bookmark the whole thing. Also do some direct linking and manual high quality blog commenting on the side...
        I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you were probably not "attacked" as you put it. Did you look closely at your links? Probably not.

        What more likely caused the jump in the number of links was your blog commenting. If you post a comment on a site that has one of the those "recent comment" type plugins running in the sidebar, and a search engine spider comes by while your comment is one of those recent ones, to the bot it looks like you have a sitewide link. If it is a large site, say a few thousand pages, your link total just took a massive jump upwards. As the site gets recrawled after your comment has been pushed out of those recent ones, your backlinks return to a lower number.

        This is a much more likely explanation. If someone was really attacking you, the links would not have disappeared so quickly.
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you were probably not "attacked" as you put it. Did you look closely at your links? Probably not.

          What more likely caused the jump in the number of links was your blog commenting. If you post a comment on a site that has one of the those "recent comment" type plugins running in the sidebar, and a search engine spider comes by while your comment is one of those recent ones, to the bot it looks like you have a sitewide link. If it is a large site, say a few thousand pages, your link total just took a massive jump upwards. As the site gets recrawled after your comment has been pushed out of those recent ones, your backlinks return to a lower number.

          This is a much more likely explanation. If someone was really attacking you, the links would not have disappeared so quickly.
          Been there, done that.

          I remember that exact thing happening a few years back. I posted a single link on a related blog & didn't pay attention to the right sidebar. A week later I noticed I had 200-300 new backlinks on that same blog, that's when I realized the blog was running a latest comment plugin on the sidebar. Eventually over 200 links faded away as new comments pushed my own single comment out of the last 10 comments on the blogs sidebar.

          No big deal, just kinda of freaks you out the first time you see it happen.
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        • Profile picture of the author Morphius
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you were probably not "attacked" as you put it. Did you look closely at your links? Probably not.

          What more likely caused the jump in the number of links was your blog commenting. If you post a comment on a site that has one of the those "recent comment" type plugins running in the sidebar, and a search engine spider comes by while your comment is one of those recent ones, to the bot it looks like you have a sitewide link. If it is a large site, say a few thousand pages, your link total just took a massive jump upwards. As the site gets recrawled after your comment has been pushed out of those recent ones, your backlinks return to a lower number.

          This is a much more likely explanation. If someone was really attacking you, the links would not have disappeared so quickly.

          I totally agree with you.
          He wasn't attack, because Negative SEO doesn't work. Google is WAY smarter than that.
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by Morphius View Post

            I totally agree with you.
            He wasn't attack, because Negative SEO doesn't work. Google is WAY smarter than that.
            Well, that I completely disagree with. Google has changed their stance on that.
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            • Profile picture of the author rafiseo
              Banned
              Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

              Well, that I completely disagree with. Google has changed their stance on that.
              After penguin update some old Authority sites were penalized too. So google should come out with another good solution for unnatural backlinks.
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            • Profile picture of the author aaron86
              Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

              Well, that I completely disagree with. Google has changed their stance on that.
              your right buddy I do agree with you Google was changed
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          • Profile picture of the author rafiseo
            Banned
            Originally Posted by Morphius View Post

            I totally agree with you.
            He wasn't attack, because Negative SEO doesn't work. Google is WAY smarter than that.
            hemmm. I am a bit confused nowadays. Its may be right for old domains. But not for new domains. :rolleyes:
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          • Profile picture of the author cooler1
            Originally Posted by Morphius View Post

            I totally agree with you.
            He wasn't attack, because Negative SEO doesn't work. Google is WAY smarter than that.
            ..and the moon is made of cheese.
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          • Profile picture of the author Tantalizing Web
            Originally Posted by Morphius View Post

            I totally agree with you.
            He wasn't attack, because Negative SEO doesn't work. Google is WAY smarter than that.
            I can assure you that negative SEO does work. Google can say all day it doesn't but that's ridiculous to say after penguin. .
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        • Profile picture of the author DeMango25
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you were probably not "attacked" as you put it. Did you look closely at your links? Probably not.

          What more likely caused the jump in the number of links was your blog commenting. If you post a comment on a site that has one of the those "recent comment" type plugins running in the sidebar, and a search engine spider comes by while your comment is one of those recent ones, to the bot it looks like you have a sitewide link. If it is a large site, say a few thousand pages, your link total just took a massive jump upwards. As the site gets recrawled after your comment has been pushed out of those recent ones, your backlinks return to a lower number.

          This is a much more likely explanation. If someone was really attacking you, the links would not have disappeared so quickly.
          Didn't think of that, I actually went back and checked the links again, the links that were added all had the anchor text 'domain name' minus .com, I never use that as my anchor text, of course it could be that that plug-in converted the anchor text somehow before putting it in the sidebar... but the site the links came from is an italian or spanish site, definitely don't remember putting a comment on there . Hmm, I'm intrigued now...
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  • Profile picture of the author Certitude
    Have you read the Microsite Masters Penguin Analysis?

    Interestingly two of their tips for beating Penguin are diversify anchor text and build microsites.
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    • Profile picture of the author DeMango25
      Originally Posted by Certitude View Post

      Have you read the Microsite Masters Penguin Analysis?

      Interestingly two of their tips for beating Penguin are diversify anchor text and build microsites.
      Well, I definitely agree with diversifying anchor text... but I don't do micro sites anymore, I love creating high quality authority sites and it has worked out so far! Lots of keyword targeted high quality content that educates and entertains
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  • Profile picture of the author ThatAblaze
    That's great, but frankly it sounds like it wouldn't have worked if your competitor hadn't given up so easily and had kept blasting once a week or so. We can't all rely on having such lazy competitors.
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    • Profile picture of the author ok180
      Banned
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      • Profile picture of the author DeMango25
        Originally Posted by ok180 View Post

        Yep, trying "building" your way out of 1,000,000 porn links over 30 days. Good Luck!
        That's true... I'm quite lucky in that aspect (knock on wood), I'm back on the first page so we'll see soon enough if he's going to try it again... seriously hope not... tho it would make an even more interesting case study if he did

        Originally Posted by retsek View Post

        You're not out of the woods... those bad links may come back to bite you ...1 month or 1 year from now.
        I'll be keeping an eye on it... keep building quality links and hope for the best I guess!
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  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    You're not out of the woods... those bad links may come back to bite you ...1 month or 1 year from now.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joe23
    Thanks. I am not even half way through 1 of the PDFs you provided and I found something useful that I was not doing already
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  • Profile picture of the author sovereignn
    Great info I'm going to refer this post to quite a few people.

    Glad to see the WarriorForum has finally helped somebody
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  • Profile picture of the author ormy
    Google is not smart enough yet to detect a negative SEO attack. The reason is that there is still some newcomers who think that they will climb their SE position by buying 10000 crappy links in one day. And still profiteers who sell these to the most naives (Watch all the scammy banners in every SEO related website).
    The question is, is there really a solution ? This is a very complicated issue that even a giant like google failed to solve yet.
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    • Profile picture of the author gearmonkey
      Originally Posted by ormy View Post

      Google is not smart enough yet to detect a negative SEO attack. The reason is that there is still some newcomers who think that they will climb their SE position by buying 10000 crappy links in one day. And still profiteers who sell these to the most naives (Watch all the scammy banners in every SEO related website).
      The question is, is there really a solution ? This is a very complicated issue that even a giant like google failed to solve yet.
      I agree with this. Google isn't that smart yet.

      To the OP, sounds like your site wasn't attacked. But keep up the good work. You are heading in the right direction. See you at the top of google
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  • Profile picture of the author Peter C
    It is just a simple dance after a sudden influx of links. You will not be able to get out of a penalty in just such a short time. And yes negative seo do work. If your site have no authority, you can be susceptible to penalty due to a negative seo attack.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by Peter C View Post

      It is just a simple dance after a sudden influx of links. You will not be able to get out of a penalty in just such a short time. And yes negative seo do work. If your site have no authority, you can be susceptible to penalty due to a negative seo attack.
      Exactly, at least someone who understands how things work!
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  • Profile picture of the author Rache
    One of my sites has suffered from a negative SEO attack and we had written Google about it. They were able to assist us but it took 2 to 3 months before our rankings went back to normal.

    Congrats on your silent counter attack
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  • Profile picture of the author meczaa
    Hi
    How software is best for building good links?
    Thanx
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    • Profile picture of the author victorsh
      Same thing happened to me but way more links;

      --------------------------------------------
      annuairedeforums.com 255,128
      forumactif.org 618
      1fr1.net 31
      goldheartofficiel.com 26
      forumgratuit.ca 22
      -----------------------------------------

      255 thousand


      Not sure what do do now. It happened 5 days ago, any advice?
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
    Banned
    It has nothing to do with continue to build links, often when you blast your site with a one time boost it will come back 1-2 weeks later. Now if you blast again the next week, then there is not much chance that your site will return.

    I tested this with my own site:

    - week1: 100.000 crappy links, site tanked, 10 days later site got back where it was
    - week3 or 4: again 100.000 crappy links, site tanked again, and never returned

    If they did it in the right way you would have never came back.

    Btw, when I blasted the 200k links I used 1000 different anchor txt's and the links were pointed at 1000 different url's. Many people think that you get away with sitewide spamming and heavy anchor variety but that's just not true. This test is performed almost a year ago, long before the Penguin update. Even then spam did not work.
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    • Profile picture of the author tightline
      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

      It has nothing to do with continue to build links, often when you blast your site with a one time boost it will come back 1-2 weeks later. Now if you blast again the next week, then there is not much chance that your site will return.

      I tested this with my own site:

      - week1: 100.000 crappy links, site tanked, 10 days later site got back where it was
      - week3 or 4: again 100.000 crappy links, site tanked again, and never returned

      If they did it in the right way you would have never came back.

      Btw, when I blasted the 200k links I used 1000 different anchor txt's and the links were pointed at 1000 different url's. Many people think that you get away with sitewide spamming and heavy anchor variety but that's just not true. This test is performed almost a year ago, long before the Penguin update. Even then spam did not work.
      Oh yeah -- Google is way smarter than that. Good stuff mate. I don't have the resources or time to conduct an experiment like yours, but it's good to debunk these myths.
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  • Profile picture of the author risingrank
    i once read a tip in the forum that the best way to beat negative seo is to add new content and build quality backlinks to it.
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