Because of all the recent woes with links causing penalties and filter trips these days, I thought we might as well bring up a very heated topic…. Negative SEO. There are a lot of people who will strongly debate whether or not you can take down a competitor with some ill gotten links. I, for one, am a believer in the fact you can take down a competitor, although it depends on a few key factors …well, from what I’ve seen anyway. There have been very few public case studies on this topic so I sought out someone who would let me test out a few things and see if we could shed some light on the topic at hand.
If you have a very well built brand that has been around for years and it has a very diverse and natural link profile, chances are that you’ll never be taken down by links. But what about a site that’s been around for a while but doesn’t have much of a link profile? Well after reading through a lot of forum posts, talking with clients and listening into Google Webmaster Central I thought the debate must go on.
With Google sending out over 700,000 WMT messages in the past few months, my bet is that the majority of those were for the dreaded unnatural links message. The fact is two large groups of people are going to be on the receiving end of this “penalty”. Affiliate marketers and unsuspecting businesses buying shit SEO services. Everyone knows, whether they admit it publicly or not, that spamming links will get you to the top in no time, some just do it better than others and stay in the game longer. It’s too hard to resist making the fast cash and that’s why so many niches top 10 results flip flop (almost) more than Mitt Romney.
So are we going to see a rise in negative SEO services? Despite what’s already being tested by black hats in the background, I think we’ll see more public companies coming out of the woodwork. I’ve already started seeing posts from businesses complaining that a competitor spammed their site with links and now they’re stuck with a -50 and a message in WMT. Their bionic posters are mostly saying this is impossible and doesn’t happen, but how is Google supposed to know who did it? They’re penalizing thousands of websites already feeling the hurt after receiving their notice of unnatural links. I got a huge kick out of seeing this website pop up today and I’m highly amused and intrigued… I damn near want to try it out, even though I can just go to Fiverr and order all the spam I need.
My hat’s off to “Damian” as he’ll most likely have a ton of newbies from Warrior Forum, Traffic Planet, Digital Point, etc. come flocking in. I know some of you might be ready to comment flame for for linking to this service but they bring up a bloody good point on their about us page:
Now, I’ve always known that you could get a site in trouble by simply pointing links at it. But Google has made this easier than ever. To top it off, they have validated what I always knew. Now a days; they send out emails notifications letting people know they have done by building ‘bad links’ and will suffer the consequences.
The catch is, there is no trial, no jury, and no one to appeal to. Just a Kafka-ish faceless corporation. If you didn’t build the bad links, good luck fixing the problem.
Can A Competitor Knock You Out?
If you’re a well established brand with a solid link profile then there’s almost zero chance you’re going to budge. I imagine you’re only going to give them a boost to their already dominating SERP positions and you’ve just wasted time and money. For a smaller business in a not so competitive niche, well then I have to say that it is more than possible to get them slapped. Again, I might provoke an onslaught of comments not in my favour, so let’s hear what you have to say below.
A lot of you SEO nerds may remember this 2007 Forbes article on negative SEO where Matt Cutts says a couple of interesting things on the subject. First he says “piling links onto a competitor’s site to reduce its search rank isn’t impossible, but it’s extremely difficult.” and then “We try to be mindful of when a technique can be abused and make our algorithm robust against it,” he says. “I won’t go out on a limb and say it’s impossible. But Google bowling is much more inviting as an idea than it is in practice.”
So that’s where I agree and say it’ll be damn near impossible to take down a “big brand”. The smaller folks out there trying to compete without cheating, well you might be out of luck in some cases. It’s so bloody hard to know if a client knowingly bought into a link scheme, or their SEO did it without them knowing or if it was really a competitor up to nefarious tactics.
Other Great Reads On The Topic
– http://www.affhelper.com/negative-seo-on-the-rise-white-hat-seos-soon-out-of-jobs/
– http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4325206.htm
– http://www.seomoz.org/q/negative-seo-2
–http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014057.html
– http://www.distilled.net/blog/reputation-monitor/negative-seo-nightmares-come-true/
– http://trafficplanet.com/topic/1966-case-study-negative-seo/
– http://www.seowizz.net/2009/06/i-can-sabotage-your-google-ranking-using-negative-seo.html
– http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3964441.htm
Negative SEO Case Study Time
Put up or shut up right?
I have a real good friend and Realtor based out of Whistler BC and we frequently get in heated battles over SEO and links. He was so sure that I couldn’t blow him out that he offered to let me try and bowl his site out of the SERPs and into no traffic land. His current site ranks in the top 10 for a few choice Whistler real estate keywords without much of a link profile. The website isn’t that heavily marketed and he doesn’t generate a lot of leads from the site so it seemed to be a good fit. The site currently had less than 100 links and all of them come from him getting awards, commenting on local blogs and being linked from various local resources.
I will start buying tons of targeted anchor text to 3 pages only and I’m aiming to generate about 10,000 links within a week, for 4-6 weeks non stop. I’m going to be buying xrumer blasts, scrapebox, forum spam, blog comment spam, “private” blog network links, article marketing and Wiki link spam. This should be more than enough to either rank him better or eventually get him knocked down a peg or 10.
This will be full disclosure if I can knock his site out of the SERPs, you have my word on that. If it’s possible I’ll get him to reveal his domain name and the stats from his Google WMT. I have no idea what to expect so it should be fun and interesting and quite possibly a really scary outcome. While his niche isn’t nearly as competitive as something like “car insurance”, he still makes a fine living selling some of the best ski real estate the world has to offer. So subscribe to this post and keep your eyes peeled for the update post that’ll be coming in a few weeks.
Negative SEO Results
I’ll link you folks up here once we’re done in a couple months so stay tuned. In the mean time, feel free to express your thoughts below or let me hear about your experiences. Would you take out a competitor or 5 if you could?
