Episode #253
What Is Negative SEO?
April 10, 2017

In Episode #253, Eric and Neil discuss what negative SEO is. Tune in to know how you can protect your site from negative SEO and the way Google works in regards to dishing out penalties and pushing one’s website ranking down.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

  • 00:27 – Today’s topic: What Is Negative SEO?
  • 00:32 – Negative SEO is when someone pushes your SEO down
    • 00:43 – A good example of this is when someone builds porn or casino links to your site
  • 00:56 – It becomes negative SEO when you begin to rank lower
  • 01:03 – Negative SEO is when Google starts to filter you
  • 01:13 – Eric thinks of SEO as an over-optimization cup
    • 01:21 – Each size has a different cup size
    • 01:23 – Big sites like Amazon have bigger cups and more room for errors
    • 01:57 – Once you hit your cup limit, that’s when Google starts to hit you with penalties
  • 02:37 – Neil sees this happening in the aggressive industries
  • 02:46 – Some people are taking websites that have spammy links and they link them to their website
  • 03:00 – Google is improving their algorithm to fight negative SEO
  • 03:11 – Make sure you continue to update your disavow file with Google Webmaster Tool
  • 03:50 – Eric doesn’t worry about negative SEO as much as he did before
  • 04:03 – The Marketing School is giving away 5 annual copies of Ahrefs this week
  • 05:14 – That’s it for today’s episode!

3 Key Points:

  1. Negative SEO pushes your ranking down—beware of people who links with negative content to your site.
  2. Consistently track and update your disavow file— this will help a lot.
  3. In the end, don’t worry too much about negative SEO as there is only so much you can do.

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