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about negative seo

by mkgg
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I honestly believed that Google was right about negative seo that it could not be done. Here are my observations..

It is somewhat true, at least in the sense that you can not deindex a site with negative seo (i am talking about established websites, no idea about new ones) but there is a negative effect.

Back in november, somebody hit my site with really bad links with anchors for (p0rn, viagra pills and some chinese text etc), it didn't have much of an effect except some of my rankings went down 1 or 2 positions. Now this is where it is interesting, after my continued link-building, i still ranked on page 1 but that #1 spot seems impossible. It took 2 or 3 good links in past to hit the top 3 (i am an authority in my niche), now i am pointing 20+ links for a keyword that is #3 when it was #1 before the attack.

So there definitely is a toxic effect in that it takes a lot more 'juice' to hit the top spots and way more expensive. Google probably just stopped de-indexing sites to stop people from complaining about their sites being hit with neg seo.

Is it impossible to overcome the effects ? Not really but you have to have the same number or greater than the number of toxic links pointing to you. I believe that is how big brands work that you can't hit them with neg seo because the # of good links are greater/stronger than # of bad links.
#negative #seo
  • Profile picture of the author AndresNWD
    I bet there's some algorithmic weight in your issue I think Negative SEO works and it's profitable because sometimes there is a lot of money involved in those falls. It's not the same to be #1 or #3 , your CTR varies significantly.. unless your brand is better known, in which case you probably will lose much less. I guess that's what you have to work from now on, sorry!
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Negative SEO never caused websites to get deindexed.

    To say that you do not believe in negative SEO means you do not think that Penguin exists. If Penguin exists and can destroy the rankings of a website using spammy links, then negative SEO exists.

    It is not going to work in every single case. You are not going to get Best Buy dropped out of the top 500 by blasting it with blog comments. You could destroy someone's little affiliate site promoting electronics though.
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    • Profile picture of the author mkgg
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      Negative SEO never caused websites to get deindexed.

      To say that you do not believe in negative SEO means you do not think that Penguin exists. If Penguin exists and can destroy the rankings of a website using spammy links, then negative SEO exists.

      It is not going to work in every single case. You are not going to get Best Buy dropped out of the top 500 by blasting it with blog comments. You could destroy someone's little affiliate site promoting electronics though.
      The thing is you have to take every advice given in SEO with a grain of salt because everybody is an expert and there are differing advices and most advice is also exaggerated. I have heard differing things about negative seo (most claiming of a google sandbox and some saying it doesn't even exist) and well, i see now.

      I would be interested to know what are your thoughts on anchor text ratio Mike ?. Every blog out there about seo mentions a lot of exact match anchors are a no-no and it baffles me to see other competing sites in my niche ranking with 53% anchor text being exact match!. It is like Penguin doesn't even exist. Some day, i am going to do an experiment and point 90% links with exact anchors (good quality links obviously) and end this confusion. Out of funds right now though
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by mkgg View Post

        The thing is you have to take every advice given in SEO with a grain of salt because everybody is an expert and there are differing advices and most advice is also exaggerated. I have heard differing things about negative seo (most claiming of a google sandbox and some saying it doesn't even exist) and well, i see now.

        I would be interested to know what are your thoughts on anchor text ratio Mike ?. Every blog out there about seo mentions a lot of exact match anchors are a no-no and it baffles me to see other competing sites in my niche ranking with 53% anchor text being exact match!. It is like Penguin doesn't even exist. Some day, i am going to do an experiment and point 90% links with exact anchors (good quality links obviously) and end this confusion. Out of funds right now though
        The whole anchor text ratio thing is nonsense.

        I wrote this on my own site about anchor text ratios. This is my take on it.

        There is a lot more to this one than just having a certain percentage of your links use the same anchor text. If it was just a certain percentage, that would be too easy to game. Google is smarter than that.

        If you had a webpage with 30 links, is it possible, maybe a bit unlikely but possible, that 20-25 of those links could have the same anchor text? Yes. The probability against it is fairly high, but it could certainly happen. There would be nothing inherently unnatural about that.

        What if that webpage had 10,000 links? Is it likely that 6,500-8,500 webmasters would have used the same anchor text to link to that webpage? No. Extremely unlikely.

        The percentages are roughly the same, but one looks way more unnatural than the other.

        Here is another example. What if I created the most helpful, user-friendly mortgage calculator ever made? If I embedded that on a webpage and did 100% natural, whiter than white hat search engine marketing, is it not likely that most of the links I attract are going to contain the anchor text 'mortgage calculator'? Would it be unnatural to even have something as high as 75-80% of the links coming in to have 'mortgage calculator' as the anchor text? Not only would that be natural, it would be highly likely to happen.

        You can play with anchor percentages all you want. Bad links are bad links, and just because you keep the anchors under certain percentages does not keep you safe from penalties. Nor does going over certain percentages guarantee a penalty.

        That being said, I have always varied my anchor text when building links, even long before Penguin ever came out. I tested it and saw better rankings with more varied anchors. The reason behind that, in my opinion, has a lot to do with LSI and giving search engines more information to describe what your page is about.

        If someone shows me a site that acquires a few thousand white hat links with a high percentage of one anchor text that got penalized because of it, I'll change my view on this. Really though, it is the quality of the links, not the percentages of anchor text used by those links.
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  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    Originally Posted by mkgg View Post

    Back in november, somebody hit my site with really bad links with anchors for (p0rn, viagra pills and some chinese text etc),
    It may not be immediate or devastating, but there is an effect.

    Silly people will say that's racist when talking about chinese text....
    but it's not.

    Google has no idea if the webmaster is doing such things or not.
    It would make little sense for google to send a webmaster a message
    saying they are guilty of webspam, but not caring if it's done by a
    3rd party. They have no idea who is doing it.

    Over time, it could have a devastating effect, especially if you are not
    an established, authoritative site. No amount of spam junk will take a site
    down...

    But google took a whole bunch of turkish news sites off the map a while ago...

    Google has always said to do good things to outweigh anything bad.

    For some sites and for people who will not listen to reality, they will be in
    for quite a shock.

    And that, my friends, is NOT racist. I have no idea why racism comes up when
    talking about webspam and the harm it can do to unsuspecting webmasters.

    Paul
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    If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

      And that, my friends, is NOT racist. I have no idea why racism comes up when
      talking about webspam and the harm it can do to unsuspecting webmasters.
      You seem to be straw manning my comment from another thread, and omitting a fair bit of background. That's not what that thread was about, and that's not what your trolling was about either. Dismiss an entire nation with baseless and ignorant claims, and you may get that sort of comments back at you. Also, it has nothing to do with this thread or web spam in general.

      Come on, Paul. I thought you were above this kind of crap. Now you're basically running around, going "waa", and telling random people how someone was mean to you. You should be the thick-skinned resident troll.
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      Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
      Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

      What's your excuse?
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    • Profile picture of the author KylieSweet
      Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

      It may not be immediate or devastating, but there is an effect.
      Google has no idea if the webmaster is doing such things or not.
      They have no idea who is doing it.
      Over time, it could have a devastating effect, especially if you are not
      an established, authoritative site. No amount of spam junk will take a site
      down...
      Google has always said to do good things to outweigh anything bad.
      Paul
      Google is smarter enough to think that those negative SEOs are coming from your site and as a webmaster we need to disavow those bad links but it will take time maybe weeks, months, years and who knows. Most importantly it is better to establish your site from your targeted users by overcoming those spam links rather than consuming your time in removing those negative links.
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      • Profile picture of the author mkgg
        Originally Posted by KylieSweet View Post

        Google is smarter enough to think that those negative SEOs are coming from your site and as a webmaster we need to disavow those bad links but it will take time maybe weeks, months, years and who knows. Most importantly it is better to establish your site from your targeted users by overcoming those spam links rather than consuming your time in removing those negative links.
        I don't want to sound insulting but i really wish people who know what they are talking about would post instead of idiots who post just for the sake of posting. How in the heck do you overcome these spam links, check it out
        Only had 50 good genuine links, now look


        This isn't even half of the anchor texts that are pointed, majestic produced 500+ different ones!!

        I have been doing that for half a year now overcoming those bad links. I don't think disavowing those links is going to help or maybe it will but i simply don't have the time to wait months or years for that.

        @nettiapina: I didn't know paul's post was directed at you, i mentioned some chinese and other languages (dunno what the f those are) anchors were pointed at my site and i thought he was talking about them. You can see in the image i posted. If its something between you two, eh just sort it out guys.
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        • Profile picture of the author KylieSweet
          "Google is smarter enough to think that those negative SEOs are coming from your site and as a webmaster we need to disavow those bad links but it will take time maybe weeks, months, years and who knows. Most importantly it is better to establish your site from your targeted users by overcoming those spam links rather than consuming your time in removing those negative links."

          Originally Posted by mkgg View Post

          I don't want to sound insulting but i really wish people who know what they are talking about would post instead of idiots who post just for the sake of posting.
          I know what I've posted here and not for the sake of post count. Implying that you are the expert here? A wannabe i guess

          Originally Posted by mkgg View Post

          How in the heck do you overcome these spam links,
          Decent term to ask though

          Disavowing links is one of the possible ways to establish the site from bad links and the time to reconsider your request is unpredictable so while waiting for the results its recommended to back up some creation of quality links from related sites and targeted audience through providing interesting and engaging content.
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  • Profile picture of the author creztor
    Agree 100% that unless you are a VERY well known site with a brand that is manually reviewed, then negative SEO does exist. Obviously new sites that get a bunch of spammy links will rank extremely poorly, I know from personal experience, but even established ones can still be tarnished.
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  • Profile picture of the author AadhyaMehra
    Banned
    I have no experience with negative SEO. So that I can't explain enough about it, but I can say that the name belongs to negative, than there is definitely something wrong with it.
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