Search engine optimization (SEO) is a basic aspect of today’s digital marketing strategies. Without this one factor, a business’ online presence will barely be felt, thus rendering a majority of their online content useless and unreachable by their target market.
What many small business owners don’t realize, however, is that SEO isn’t a purely good thing. Improper practices can easily lower your Google rankings as much as it can pull them up, which is why a little knowledge can come in handy to maintain your rankings.
White Hat and Black Hat SEO
In a gist, there are two major approaches to SEO: White Hat and Black Hat. White Hat SEO are approved practices that increase rankings through the promulgation of good content. Black Hat SEO, on the other hand, are practices that utilize a strategy circumventing the guidelines set by search engines—raising rankings while not providing particularly good content for consumers.
For a business in Australia, marketing is the key to victory, which is why hiring an SEO services agency in Melbourne can boost your online presence greatly. By allowing them to avoid Black Hat services, you can increase your rankings through well-tested strategies that won’t end with your website getting penalties. Another reason to hire a digital marketing agency, however, is to help avoid a bigger problem: Negative SEO.
What is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO, much like Black Hat SEO, utilizes practices that search engines would penalize a website for if caught. Unlike black hat SEO, however, this is done against competitors to sabotage their Google rankings, thus allowing their own website to prosper from their competitors’ downfall.
To give you a grasp of what you’re fighting against, here are three of the more common negative SEO tactics to watch out for.
1. Link Spam Farming
Probably the most common negative SEO tactic, Link Spam Farming involves the basic act of link building to your website. What makes it harmful, however, is that these come from dodgy links that hurt the reputation of your website. Through this, your competitors can get your website penalized.
2. Scraping
Scraping, on the other hand, utilizes your own content against you. By simply copying your web content and spreading them across multiple websites, it causes Google to think your website is using plagiarized content—thus ruling it out of results.
3. Hacking
Hacking is more extreme and is actually closer to a crime than anything else. They can alter or even delete your content, thereby rendering your online efforts useless.
How to Avoid Negative SEO
Resolving the effects of negative SEO is incredibly difficult and time-consuming, which is why the best approach is to protect yourself before the negative effects happen. Certain basic preparations can help protect your website, such as hiring a web hosting service with good security measures or utilizing anti-malware applications for your website.
It also pays off to look into your website’s statistics often and watching out for sudden dips in your traffic, increases in link building, and manual actions from search engine operators. In doing so, you don’t just get to stay ahead of your competitors, but it also allows you to prevent a catastrophe from happening to your website.
Conclusion
Negative SEO is one of the biggest threats to your business’ SEO efforts. By applying certain basic protective methods and contingencies, you can avoid grief from the malicious will of other people. For professional help hire an SEO service agency in Melbourne to prevent this!
Are you looking for a digital marketing agency in Berwick? As a Melbourne-based SEO providers, we provide various solutions for your SEO, web design and development, and social media management needs – contact us now!
