Guarding Against Negative SEO & Extortion

Have you heard of negative SEO? It's the process of using SEO tactics to negatively affect a website's health and visibility on the web.

Negative SEO tactics may range from buying links or intentionally building lots of low-quality links to causing malicious damage to a website by hacking it. This isn't a new thing. Black-hat SEOs have been doing this sort of thing since the early days of SEO.

Over the years, Google has changed their position on the topic. Back in 2006, Google reported,

"There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your rankings or have your site removed from our index."

They've since changed their tune, suggesting that negative SEO is a real issue and should be taken seriously.

Unfortunately, there's a new, disturbing trend cropping up - extortion.

Extortion emails are sweeping the industry. The emails sent to SEOs, website owners and webmasters are threatening to unleash negative SEO tactics that will significantly affect the site's health and visibility unless they are paid $1500 with 48 hours. Historically, Black-hat SEOs would use negative SEO tactics to damage competing sites. Now, they're turning up the heat and targeting anyone with a website and a solid reputation to lose.

What should you do if you receive this sort of email?

1. First of all, don't fall for this. Report the email to Google. https://support.google.com/mail/contact/abuse.
2. Use Google Webmaster Tools or another link building tool like Majestic SEO tools to regularly monitor new links. If you suddenly notice 10,000 new forum links, you may be a victim of negative SEO.
3. If you suspect that you may have been targeted, use the Google Disavow tool to indicate to Google not to take specific links into account when assessing your site. Using the disavow tool, however, should be used cautiously because disavowing good links can remove link equity and also negatively impact your site.