Negative SEO: Online Nightmares Come True
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Negative SEO: Online Nightmares Come True

12th October 2010

It always ensures people are on the edge of seats when the beginning of a session comes with disclaimer

– THIS IS ILLEGAL

So read on but remeber you have been warned….

Dave Naylor

For negative SEO to succeed you need the following:

1.    Target
2.    Conduit
3.    The Community

Negative SEO against your site can be very hard to stop, most of the time you can’t. Legally you can’t stop it so if you do act to stop it will have to be illegally.

If you experience negative press in SERPs – create new content and add positive reviews and optimise to make sure it ranks above

Common Problems:

  • People approaching members of Yahoo! answers who have biggest authority to negative review brands
  • Google Places is being hit the most – with people writing negative reviews. The bad thing is there is hardly anything you can do in a white hat sense.
  • Post ad on Gum Tree on “have you had any bad experiences with X” Then use these negative reviews in blogposts

Best Way to Counter:

  • Use legal channels

We have so much power. We have the ability influence Google suggest andGoogle instant. Once you can control this you can use scare words to put prospective customers off your competition.

Paul Madden

Target sites need you have weak points or be weak to make it succeed.

Some methodsyou can use for negative SEO:

  • 301 dodgy sites in
  • Reputation management – big issue with Google Places currently
  • Fake Twitter Profiles – direct the flow and nature of conversations

Doesn’t work as often

  • Duplication
  • Burst of dodgy links

Doesn’t work

  • Reporting (why would they listen?)

Only do this if you have a nice suit for court

  • Duplication that’s obviously you
  • XSS (cross site scripting)
  • DDOS Via a botnet etc
  • SQL injection or compromising the box

If you are into negative SEO but didnt fancy going to court then you can always mess with in house team of your competitor (stops their time working on site – “don’t always want to kill enemy, just wound them” as Fantomaster joyfully states)

Marcus Tander

Your own company can do negative SEO for you. Not just competitors.

If you pay peanuts you are going to get monkeys.

Audit your own SEO company

People in suits will tell you anything, don’t always listen

Don’t just build shitty links – mix n match

Ralph Tegtmeiser (Fantomaster)

Technical engineering
•    Link Hell
–    Forum spam
–    Blog comment spam
–    Links from banned/hacked/malware sites
–    Spammy links (hidden text)
–    Fake contact profiles linking to pages
•    XSS Infusion + report job
•    Mail Spam
•    Skype Spam
•    Click bots and bot net activity
•    DDOS Attacks
•    Widgets/Malware tied to target sites

Social Engineering
•    Link target change requests for existing links
•    Social hacking to get access
•    Fake google notices
•    Link buy requests to SE reps
•    Fake re-inclusion requests
•    Forum smears and reputation trashing
•    Raise red flags with paid surfing services (raise CTR in SERPs)
•    Fake link buying offers
•    Bad fake feedback on brand discussion threads
•    Post click fraud requests on eLance

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Written By
Sam Murray graduated from University with a BA (Hons) in Marketing in 2007 and wrote his 10,000 word dissertation on Search Marketing. Sam is a freelance search manager.
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