What is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO is a term used for Blackhat SEO activities, where instead of attempting to improve a website’s search rankings, the aim of negative SEO is to demote a competing website, or in some cases have it completely removed from search.

What does Negative SEO Activities Include?

Common negative SEO tactics include; building thousands of spam links, sending fake link removal requests, creating fake reviews, content scraping, and even hacking sites.

Is Negative SEO Effective?

It’s clear that you can harm your own site by utilizing shady SEO tactics.

So it stands to reason that — by employing the same techniques — you could do similar damage to a competing site.

After all, how can Google tell who built all those spammy links, or duplicated content across hundreds of domains?

The answer is that — if the attack is sophisticated enough — they can’t.

Yes, negative SEO can work.

How to Spot a Negative SEO Attack?

I used the word ‘successful’ in the title of this section for a reason.

What we’re looking for here are signs that someone has already succeeded in negatively affecting your search rankings.

There are 3 indicators listed, but if you spot the 2nd, or 3rd, you’ll almost certainly spot this one first.

1) Sudden Drop in Search Traffic.

2) Manual Penalty Notification.

3) Drop in Individual Keyword Rankings.

Read more here.