Long Term Effects of Blackhat SEO

In a previous article we covered if businesses should prepare for the effects of targeted negative
SEO, but never got into the potential long term effects of negative practices.

This article is going to go through the long term effects of using black hat SEO techniques, how
it can affect your business site and prevent you from recovering the SEO of your site.

What is Black hat SEO?

The Reliable SEO Metro defines Negative SEO as “a black hat technique that uses bad text
links with negative connotations linking back to a competitor’s site, linking competitors to link
farms and free-for-all sites, etc.” It can also include hackers or malware that has infiltrated the
site to change or shut it down. When these techniques are used they act as a barrier, harming
the visibility of the site and causing it to be demoted by Google and the SERP (Search Engine
Ranking Positions) to be lowered.

Although in the past this form of SEO would have helped increase the ranking of your site, it
now only serves as a hindrance and prevents the site from gaining positions on a results page.
This was as a direct effect of numerous algorithm changes brought into play by Google, the most
notable of which was the Penguin update of May 2012.

Would using Black Hat SEO provide fast results in half that time?

To put it bluntly the answer is NO! Although it used to create fast results and costs less, it
doesn’t work that way now. Google have put into place a number of tactics to prevent the
unethical practice of Black Hat SEO. The key one of these is the development of a number
of complex algorithms that prevent any kind of black hat SEO from working. This has left a
number of unreliable SEO companies unable to offer their previously exceedingly cheap deals
for places on Google.

What are the long term effects of Black Hat SEO?

What some people don’t know is the continued damaging effects black hat SEO has on a website
even though the program may have been stopped. Each individual link is logged in the back of
the website and gives the site a form of portfolio. This portfolio is vital in influencing where the
site is placed in a search engine. Black hat SEO produces an influx of poor and irreverent links
at once to this portfolio which act as a black marker each time the site is reviewed and can push
it down the rankings. This will continue to act against a website until the offending links are
removed.

What can be done to resolve it?

The long term effects of this are that a large number of the links become irremovable and have
a persistent harmful affect on your SEO. To combat and these issues and recover the site takes
a long time and a considerable amount of effort. Such quick fixes like Google’s disavow tool
shouldn’t be the first port of call. The emphasis should be placed on trying to remove theses links
manually, to learn more about the approach for resolving negative links click here.

Many people go for cheap SEO thinking they are buying a quick and easy way to help their
website, this is not the case and many businesses that go for this option are in fact purchasing
the long term damaging effects of black hat SEO. We here at Red Cow Media provide a cost
effective and long term service that will help get the most out of your website.

For more information or if you’re interested in joining us, visit our website by clicking here

Other Ways to Gain Links

Many of our clients ask about how relevant having content is to getting good quality links. Well there are ways of getting links without it, but having great content is one of the best long term ways to gain quality links which add value. Strategies not involving content tend to be less effective but some of them can still can help increase your link building. In effect, content is incredibly important, but should ideally be one component of an overall strategy.


Advertising

Big brands focus on advertising because it can make a massive impact on where they are on Google rankings. You will notice businesses advertising anywhere and everywhere online. Effectively, this advertising is content elsewhere online which tells users of their business and links back to their website. Content around the web can consist of videos, images, text and banners which relates back to the site. The primary reason to do this is because advertising both off and on site allows a larger audience to be exposed to your business. As you will see when you go on any kind of site that has video integrated advertising, you will notice that during the video, there will be advertising of services and products. A great example of this is Compare the Market having there videos, banners, text and images all over YouTube and Sky News, linking back to their website. The costs of advertising on site such as YouTube would be extensive, so this is pretty much ruled out for small to medium businesses, however, there are some good alternatives to provide this service on a smaller scale.

Ingrained Product or Service

This is a service or product that you share with others which you are able to keep coming back to. A great example of this is Pinterest, a service which allows users to share pictures with other people and then send them a link to the relevant corresponding website. The use of Pinterest for small businesses has allowed more visitors to be introduced to the website through the links given out and shared. Pinterest has an extremely high PR (Page Rank) score, which means that links coming from this are strong. This is due to people constantly coming back to the site and introducing others to it, as well as the content being refreshed constantly by its users. This makes it a prime site for small to medium business use.

Recommendations

What we mean by this, is that people talking about and recommending your business can provide excellent quality links to your site. If you have another business which you have worked with, they might be happy to advertise your site via a link on their site. You may also want to return the favour by linking back to their website in return, providing a great link opportunity for both sites. Although this is a good idea, recommendation links take a relationship with another business which can take time to build up. An example of high quality linking between sites is Microsoft and 343 Industries, both have reciprocal links that promote each other on their websites.

Community

Having a community relating to your business can cause people to generate content on your behalf. For example Stumble Upon allows people to post and interact with others, with most of its content coming from the community creating their own content for the site. Community is a powerful way to create content without the need to invest time in generating it yourself.

Blogs/Authority

Having a blog on your website is a great way to generate content and keep content fresh and updated. Blogs allow your target audience to read about things going on in your business in realtime and are also a good way of engaging with them in a less formal way than the text on the actual website. It also allows you to become an authority in your area of expertise so people will come back to your page at a later date for anything relating to your business area, eventually generating sales. You can invite guest bloggers to write for your blog, who may also promote their articles elsewhere, again providing linking opportunities as well as good content.

For more information on anything online marketing related, visit our website by clicking here.

Update on Negative SEO Attacks and Google's Disavow Tool.

In the last article when we talked about the effects of Negative SEO, we made a point that there was no real way to prevent or stop link attacks if you were being targeted by negative SEO. We gave a few tricks of the trade to introduce ways to prevent or stem an attack by combating the links directly and releasing great and regularly updated content which would link back to your site. However, having done some further research on negative SEO and with Google taking active steps to combat it, we have been experimenting with the new Disavow Links tool.

On the 16/10/2012 Google announced the arrival of this new tool to assist with the problem of negative SEO. In a nutshell, the disavow tool helps by erasing the connection between the offending website and your own site, allowing poor quality links to be discounted when Google indexes. 

However, Google is not simply offering a quick fix to those wanting to reverse the effects of poor link building practices in the past, as they have made it clear that all possible action needs to be taken before the disavow tool is used. In essence, it is a last resort. The website owner should try and remove the links manually in the first instance, as it has been mentioned that notes are needed when using the disavow tool and evidence of removal attempts must be seen. It is only when Google can see that the account holder is trying to act upon the link removals that it will allow the request for the Disavow tool to be implemented.

At this point in time nobody fully knows the effectiveness of the disavow tool but we recommend that everyone wanting to jump on the band wagon doesn’t at this stage. The potential effects it could have on the removal of links mean that it may well cause damage to your SEO if not used properly, or if you become particularly 'trigger happy' with the tool. For the time being, we would only recommend that you use the tool if:

- You’re a victim of negative SEO and have evidence enough to support this
- You have received a Google Warning for breaching their guidelines
- You have used poor link building practices previously and you have been hit by the Penguin Update

If your website has been affected by one of these scenarios then you may find that using the tool will improve the state of the SEO. But be warned! With it being a new tool, it should be used with caution!

For more information on the Google Disavow Links tool, or alternative ways to remove bad links feel free to get in touch with a member of our team at www.redcowmedia.co.uk

You can also check out our other articles at:

http://redcowmediaseo.blogspot.co.uk/

Should business prepare for the effects of targeted negative SEO?

Should business prepare for the effects of targeted negative SEO?

After reading the different effects of Google updates to combat negative SEO, we found that
businesses were getting worried by negative SEO attacks.

Firstly what is Negative SEO, the definition of Negative SEO from SEO Metro is “a black hat technique that uses bad text links with negative connotations linking back to a competitor’s site, linking competitors to link farms and free-for-all sites, etc.”  It can also include hackers or malware that has infiltrated the site to change or shutdown the site. When these techniques are used it won’t help the sight been seen, causing it to be demoted by Google and SERP (Search Engines Results Page) been lowered.

People have now thought of using these techniques to purposely attempt at hitting competitors site with them and therefore effectively bringing the SERP of the site down. I have heard of cases where business have been targeted by these sorts of companies and have supposedly it has affected their SERP.  

How do you know that you are being attacked?

Well if your website is at page 1 one day for a certain keyword and it not there the next, there may be a chance it could be an attack of Negative SEO. But the best way is investigate what may be the cause of the issue. A way to do this would be looking at backlinks to check that the site isn’t being spammed out to every higga dickary directory site.

A way to check is to monitor your backlinks that can be done by using such SEO tools as :

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Open Site Explorer
• Majestic SEO
• Bing Webmaster Tools

Monitoring back links allows you to see where your site is being applied; you will mostly see sites that aren’t SEO friendly with low PR or no relevant to the business itself.  These type of link Google picks up and evaluates then judging if it relevant or not, if not it may affect the SERP of the site.

If you find your site down or incorrect data, it could be because of hacking or viruses that have infiltrated the site and therefore need to be taken care of quickly as possible as they could be damaging different areas of the site which will not help the SEO of the site.

Still if your competitors are trying to attack your website, that doesn’t mean that what they’ve doing will cause and problem or any judge able effect. It takes a lot of knowhow and therefore experience to create real negative SEO and therefore they would need to hire someone with that experience to attack.

By just entering the word Negative SEO sites can be found with the aim to strategically attack a customer’s competitor site.

At the end of the day should business be worried about a competitive company, hiring someone to attack competitor SEO?

If you find that someone is taking time and money into attacking your site it can be very damaging and may cause problem.  But looking at some cases people attacking each other though these companies isn’t very cost effective.

The best possible way to prevent and secure your site is to have a clean profile with a good history and having high quality links making it a lot harder to attack your SERP in the short term. The only issue that might be found with it is hard to gain good qualitly of links when you have started up a new website, plus having a site that has already entered itself in poor quailty links.

If you know that the site has been attacked by the negative SEO the best chance of you stopping the effects of it is to report it to Google, then they can check the site and see if the site has been getting attacked and will act accordingly.

For more information about Negative SEO, I would recommend that you look at:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/were-you-hit-by-negative-seo

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-precautions-whiteboard-friday

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172844/Understanding-Negative-SEO-How-to-Defend-Your-Website

About Us:-
We are Red Cow Media an Online Marketing Agency based in Manchester, we specialise in Web Design, SEO, Social Media Marketing and more. Check out our website for more information by clicking here.