Negative SEO
Negative SEO refers to the practice of using black hat tactics to sabotage a competitor’s rankings in search engines. This typically involves building thousands of toxic, spammy backlinks to a competitor’s domain to trigger an algorithmic penalty, or hacking their site to inject hidden text. While Google claims its algorithms are smart enough to ignore most negative SEO attacks, successful attacks can still devastate a business’s organic traffic. Active backlink profile monitoring and prompt use of the Google Disavow tool are the primary defenses against coordinated negative SEO campaigns.
Negative SEO Simplified
Negative SEO is when a competitor uses shady tactics to intentionally sabotage your website’s rankings. Instead of trying to improve their own site, they build thousands of spammy links pointing to your site, hoping Google will penalize you.