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Improper Optimisation: A Guide on Negative SEO in 2018

Posted on by Mario

SEO tips

I know what you’re thinking, how can an optimization be negative? Questionable terms aside, the practice of negative SEO itself indeed do exist although it’s not as prevalent enough to be considered an epidemic and that recovery is usually relatively quick and easy. Google has never considered this to be an issue major enough for them to take seriously and usually, their algorithms are smart enough to pick up on this but that doesn’t mean the risk is not there.

How negative SEO works

If negative SEO rubs you the wrong way, a more familiar and not dissimilar term would be Google bomb. An example is this campaign launched against U.S. politician Rick Santorum by writer Dan Savage. While this Google bomb works by raising a site’s popularity to usurp traffic from a certain keyword, in this case Santorum’s name itself, a negative SEO works by negatively manipulating the rank of a certain page by using underhanded tactics. It is the digital equivalent of ‘Mediscare’ campaigns.

Because of the associated resource required to run a negative SEO campaign like that, it has never been a widespread practice and that negative SEO attacks aren’t a focus with SEO services. Recent times however have shown that the internet’s collective mind is akin to a sleeping giant. A slight poke could cause a disturbance disproportionate to what caused it in the first place. These examples of 4chan’s past ‘accomplishments’ should give you an idea just what are they capable of.

Tactics associated with negative SEO

Ironically, a lot of the methods associated with negative SEO is actually the same ones employed in SEO, just with a negative twist. If you’re familiar with the terms whitehat and blackhat SEO, negative SEO uses the same tricks considered blackhat but directed on competitors’ websites in the hope that search engine providers will penalize them for the infractions. Some of the methods associated with negative SEO are:

  • Content scraping

Scraping is the practice of copying contents regarding a particular subject across the internet and present them inside a new skin as new contents. This is a lazy, creatively deprived practice and is a stone throw’s away from outright plagiarism. The sad thing is, with the rise of tools like Contentbomb and Spinnerchief, this technique is also very easy to employ. When it comes to negative SEO, this technique is used to publish your contents across different sites in the hopes of Google mistaking a copy for the original.

Thankfully, you can fight fire with fire as tools like Copyscape can be used as an online plagiarism detection device. Google has also made it easier for webmasters to fight plagiarism using their copyright infringement form. Generally though, unless you’re sure that your contents were copied with nefarious intent, it might be a good idea to contact the offending webmasters first as it might be the work of a rogue agent.

  • Spam links

Normally, link bulilding, defined as the ongoing process of amassing backlinks to your site, is one of the most basic rules in SEO, given that backlinks are one of the factors search engine uses to determine page ranks. Negative SEO twists this concept by using spam links. Instead of having backlinks from reputable sites and/or sources, negative SEO uses less trusted sites and misleading anchor texts to give the impression that some funny business is going on, opening you to a penalty from Google.

You can however monitor the number of backlinks to your site using a number of tools available online, such as the free SEO SpyGlass. Anyway, using any monitoring tools of your choice, see if there’s a visible uptick during a short amount of time in your link profile. Most monitoring tools allow webmasters to check out the particular details of a backlink and an analysis of the quality of such links. If it seems like a spam to you, disavow them using the tools provided by Google.

  • Site hacking

When this happens to you, your ranking considerations shouldn’t be a priority and if someone actually went to the extremes of hacking your site, negative SEO is usually not the goal they have in mind. Still, any sign of that could potentially alert Google that your site was hacked could lead to a message of “this site may be hacked” on the results page being displayed next to your website. Worse comes to worse, there is a chance that Google will derank your website to protect users.

Cybersecurity is still a somewhat niche topic as the world is so focused on building walls in the real world that they haven’t been paying attention to the security of their virtual space. It is a fact for example that anyone’s life can easily be traced on what information they have in their e-mails and calendars. Anyone with access to mine would be able to tell exactly where I’m going to be spend Saturday evening for example. If you haven’t properly beefed up your security, negative SEO issues aside, you should make it a priority.

Closing thoughts

Think of negative SEO attacks as flesh-eating bacteria. They’re so rare that at times, they’re more like bedtime stories you tell to scare children but everyone who has been a witness to one would never doubt their severity. What I’m trying to say here is this, there’s little chance that what I’ve described above can happen to you but if, God forbid, that it does, you’ll be very happy to know that you are prepared for the occasion.

How Google Considers Webpages as ‘Low Quality’

Posted on by Mario

How Google Classifies Webpages as 'Low Quality'-ywf

When talking about producing best websites with best value, one cannot deny that they have to pass Google quality assessment. To classify sites, Google usually issues their quality update monthly and as a web developer, you surely wish your site will be qualified as a high quality, right? Therefore, you have to know how Google classifies Webpages as ‘Low Quality’. Knowing what makes webpage  considered as low quality is as important as knowing what makes it considered as high quality, so to prevent your sites from getting low rank, you can read the following information.

Excessive & Unnatural Internal Structural Links

Since early of 2012, Google has been talking about its low-quality criteria list when they filed a patent that directly targets websites repeating internal links across sidebars and footers. This was actually a part of SEO technique, but now it has become an unnatural form of SERP manipulation.

You can see some obvious signs when a website is untrustworthy, like it’s been hacked or it’s full of spam comments and spam pages. There are some less obvious factors that Google considers it as low quality signals.

Phantom 2

As Google keeps updating its algorithm, we began to see a change in Google’s algorithm in the end of April 2015 where in May 2015 was dubbed the Phantom 2 update. Many webmasters speculate that Phantom 2 is made to examine the newly patented low-quality criteria list, a lot of websites with poor quality content saw upwards of a 10 percent decrease in organic search traffic.

Over-Monetization of Content

Google considers most websites to be designed to trick users, search engines, or both. If Google determine your web as a part of this kind of websites, then they will record your web as the lowest quality. In fact, Google has taken greater steps to cater for high volume search queries that don’t have a single dominant interpretation.

Ads & Affiliate Links

Regarding to ads and affiliate links, you should make sure that the main focus of the page is its main content, so users shouldn’t have to scroll past affiliate links and ads or interact with intrusive overlays. For example, Taboola and Outbrand which blend in with the page, this design makes them look like they belong to the page and increase’s users trust. However, the bad side is, it will affect your quality ranking.

E-commerce Trust Factors

Another issue that you have put to underline is the lack of attention to detail e-commerce hygiene pages and hygiene content. Below are some pages that you should consider the most.

Financial Transaction Pages

Good transaction pages do not only have to contain cart/checkout and subsequent stages on the website, but these pages should also contain prominent links to standard e-commerce hygiene pages or any page that allows a user to “purchase’ or add a product to their cart/basket. Furthermore, as this page can be considered as the most important user pages, you should develop it with the best effort possible.

Financial Information Pages

Don’t forget to create a high quality content for your finance content, financing product purchases on your own site, or content and information that can insure products or services. High quality content should contain keywords and understand the relationship between keywords and content.

The bottom line of this article is, in order to get your SEO basics right, make sure that your pages and internal linking structures serve users very well, so that it doesn’t pass link equity to the money pages, especially for e-commerce and brochure service websites.

 

Google Increasing Mobile Friendly Ranking Boost in May

Posted on by Mario

Have your web developer made your site mobile friendly yet? Well, you better prepare as this May Google is increasing the mobile friendly ranking boost associated with pages that are mobile friendly. If you haven’t convinced yet about this phenomenon, you can read the article below to get more persuaded and discover what it will bring to the search result.

Is Just the Strength of the Ranking Signal Being Increased?

Last year, Google has launched the mobile friendly algo where it filters every page whether it mobile friendly or not. If it was, it got the tag in the search results and the associated ranking boost. In fact, there were no other signals applied to it that would make a difference on how strong that boost was.

Will Any Other Factors Increase the Ranking Signal?

Even though, there is a rumor that page speed can be one of the things that will be added to the mobile friendly signal, but it doesn’t appear to be yet.

Any Other Changes Being Made That Affect Mobile-Friendliness of a Site?

Google spokesperson has stated that nothing in the changing can cause any lose in mobile-friendliness. So if your site is mobile friendly today, as long as nothing changes in the meantime, it will still be mobile friendly when the boost is increased in May.

The only changes that is occurred since mobile-friendly launched is that app interstitials now cause a page to lose its mobile tag and boost.

Intent is still important

Even if the site isn’t mobile friendly, there is always concern about whether a popular brand will still rank for their brand name. And it seems that Google is still taking this into account.

“And remember, the intent of the search query is still a very strong signal-so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly. It could still rank well if it has great, relevant content.

Moreover, people surely expect that brand name to come up first in the search results or at the very least when they search for a specific brand name, they expect that brand name to come up first in the search results or at the very least, a one of the top results.

In fact, Mobile friendliness is one of many ranking factors in search. If Google doesn’t serve that brand’s pages just because it isn’t mobile friendly, the users will think that Google is not good because they cannot find what they are looking for. And if a user does end up on a brand’s site that offers a horrible mobile user experience, then it will affect badly on the brand itself.