We've been running a lot of pieces on SEO this week, so, hey, what's one more? This one comes piggybacking off a Thursday post on SEOmoz, the search-engine optimization world's mack daddy of SEO reference sites.
So, what is negative SEO? You can either watch the 18-minute video below explaining it or just hip yourself to this: It's when someone does something maliciously to hurt your site's rankings. They're trying to make your link profile look bad, weak and otherwise inferior. As SEOmoz says, "this usually means that they've hit you with a ton of low-quality or clearly black-hat links across a large number of domains."
Really, the best thing you can do to beat it down is to do nothing at all. I mean, you shouldn't just sit back and take it, but you should continue to work on your own links and building the best link profile possible. If there's being a patterned attack on you, chances are, in time, you'll be able to decipher and figure out the pattern – which will then help you figure out how to stave it off. Google Webmaster Tools, Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO and Bing Webmaster Tools are all great places to start to get a better understanding of your link profile.
And if nothing else, take comfort in the fact that you're being attacked. It means you're important!
David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as an interviewer-writer for Adult Swim, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City. He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. When not playing video games for work he's thinking of dashing out to Chicago Diner, Pizano's, or Yummy Yummy. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.
