What is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO refers to malicious practices aimed at lowering a competitor's rankings in search engine results. This unethical tactic can involve a variety of methods, such as building a large number of spammy backlinks to the competitor's site, duplicating content across the web to create duplicate content penalties, hacking the site to alter its content or structure, or even launching fake reviews and social media attacks.

Negative SEO is a serious concern because it can lead to significant drops in search rankings, loss of traffic, and damage to a website's reputation. Protecting your site from negative SEO involves regularly monitoring backlinks, using tools like Google Search Console to detect unusual activity, and setting up alerts for sudden drops in rankings or traffic. If negative SEO is detected, disavowing harmful backlinks through Google's Disavow Tool and taking steps to secure your site from hacking attempts are essential actions. Building a strong, positive online presence and maintaining good SEO practices can also help mitigate the effects of any negative SEO attacks.