Post by ariya108 on Oct 31, 2024 6:29:05 GMT
Since the arrival of Google Penguin into our lives, Google made a major change to its algorithm with the main objective of eliminating poor quality or spam links, but what it certainly didn't imagine was that this could be used as a throwing weapon and with what is known as negative SEO .
But the truth is that “where the law is made, so is the trap”, and what seemed to be going to try to eliminate the artificiality of SEO when it came to climbing in the SERP, was going to unconsciously bring, or at least that is what I would like to believe, a weapon of mass destruction capable of reducing the traffic and/or positions of any web page.
Table of Contents [ Hide ]
1 What is negative SEO?
2 How to detect negative or toxic links?
3 First Step to Prevent Negative SEO
4 Free Tools to Detect Toxic or Negative Links
5 Paid Tools to Detect Toxic or Negative Links
6 How to remove negative links?
How to detect negative or toxic links?
There are different tools on the market to analyze the health of our backlinks to detect and eliminate these links, the only problem is that these applications cost you a fortune, so in this post, in addition to mentioning them in passing, I am going to focus more on how we can detect and eliminate these negative links without having to break the bank.
First step to prevent Negative SEO
The most basic step that allows us to receive notifications from Google itself about the existence of negative links that point to our page is to activate notifications in Google Webmaster Tools.
google webmaster
To do this, click on “ properties ” and then on “ Google Webmaster Tools preferences ”, as shown in the image.
google webmaster tools
It is important that we have email notifications activated, this way Google can notify us in a very convenient way.
This is the most basic way but it is not always the most efficient way to detect a negative SEO attack , that is why I will tell you 2 methods that I use and with which you will be able to discover or intuit some of these attacks:
Method 1 – Analyze inbound links:
With the Ahrefs tool you can easily detect an social media marketing service unusual increase in the number of links. In my case, this August I suffered a very harsh negative SEO attack with the construction of more than 4,000 links in one week . The first week of September when I returned from vacation I realized the problem and began to analyze all the negative links and prepare the document to send to Google to disavow, since if I "rested on my laurels" I could run the risk of being penalized by our friend Penguin. So in a few days I sent the disavow of these 4,000 links and in a few weeks everything returned to normal.
You don't need to be an SEO to see this abnormal rise in the graph and realize that you need to start taking action to eliminate all this negative construction.
We could also detect this same thing with Majestic SEO , which is a very similar tool to this one.
Method 2: Analyze anchor text
With the Removeem tool we can analyze the anchor text of our incoming links in search of keywords used with the sole purpose of penalizing us.
keyword anchor text
This way of doing negative SEO consists of using non-permitted anchor text like the one we can see in the image, with a construction of 443 links with the same anchor. Logically, I wanted to hide the rest of the links so that it is not possible to identify which page they belong to, but I assure you that it is an analysis that I just carried out a few minutes ago.
Free tools to detect toxic or negative links
Google Webmaster Tools
From Google Webmaster Tools we can export the links that point to our page in .csv format and thus be able to analyze them in search of suspicious or toxic links.
This task can be a complex one if we do not have previous experience.
Ahrefs
Although it is a paid tool, we can also use it for free, and we will use it to visually analyze abnormal link growth.
With a simple glance at the graph you can detect abnormal growth.
Majestic SEO
Tool that we can use both in its paid form and in its free form and with which we can analyze the evolution of the growth of our links, as well as we can export all our links in Excel .
In order to export all the links of a domain, we will be asked to verify ownership of the domain, either by adding a meta or uploading a file to the root.
Paid tools to detect toxic or negative links
Cognitive SEO
cognitive seo visual
It is one of the tools for detecting toxic links that I like the most, since we can use it for 15 days for free and it will help us detect negative links and will even generate the document to send to Google to disavow links.
The first step will be to define which are the brand anchors and which are the commercial ones, and from there our links will appear categorized into 3: unnatural, suspicious and good.
One thing we need to be clear about is that there are false negatives and a link that is completely positive can be considered bad, so the ideal thing is to review the links one by one, and when we detect a strange domain we can disavow and mark all the links from this domain.
Link Research Tools
toxic links link research tools
You can try this tool for 7 days on a limited basis and perform an analysis of the toxic links on your website. It will show you the total number of negative links and a sample of 10 of them.
You can also export all your links in Excel format so that you can manually detect bad links.
If you decide to upgrade to the paid option, you will be able to see all the links that are marked as negative and export the document to send to Google for disavowal.
How to detect and remove negative links infographic
Thanks to Shutterstock for licensing the images to HieroGraphic and IdeaGU .
How to remove negative links?
There are 2 ways to remove links that may harm our web positioning:
1.- Contact the webmaster
This method is completely ineffective, as well as being a cumbersome and unbearable task. You can try it if you want, but in my experience less than 10% of the emails you send will be answered, so most webmasters will ignore your request.
2.- Disavow links
Let's do a little history about disavowing links , I remember that when Google incorporated this functionality many professionals had certain doubts about the use of this tool, since they saw it as a way of communicating to Google that they had negative links and running the risk of the Penguin "throwing a party" at the expense of your domain, but after 2 years of its arrival, there are very few who do not use it, and the reason is very simple;
[clickToTweet tweet=”Disavowing links is the most effective way to counter a negative #SEO attack” quote=”Disavowing links is the most effective way to counter a negative #SEO attack”]
Once we have identified the toxic or negative links, we have to create a txt document to send to Google to disavow them.
Step 1: Create a list of URLs to disavow
You can manually select each link, but this can be a time-consuming process, or the easiest way to do it is to identify the domains you want to disavow and include them in the list, as shown in the following image.
disavow negative links
Step 2: Send to Deauthorize the document
The next step is to make a request to disavow links to Google , first specifying the domain where we want to make the request, and then we have to attach and send the document made.
No domain is exempt from receiving a negative SEO attack, and the worst thing you can do is think that it won't happen to you or that your decision is to do nothing. If you decide to do nothing, you may run the risk of being penalized by Google Penguin the next time it analyzes your domain, losing a large number of positions in the Google search engine.
If you wait until you are penalized before taking action and removing toxic links, you will have to wait for Google Penguin to re-analyze your domain to recover all lost positions, the only problem is that this process could take months to occur.
[clickToTweet tweet=”If you detect a negative #SEO attack, act quickly and disavow these links.” quote=”If you detect a negative #SEO attack, act quickly and disavow these links.”]
I hope this post helps you prevent a Google Penguin penalty due to the existence of negative links pointing to your domain, and above all to raise awareness of their existence.
But the truth is that “where the law is made, so is the trap”, and what seemed to be going to try to eliminate the artificiality of SEO when it came to climbing in the SERP, was going to unconsciously bring, or at least that is what I would like to believe, a weapon of mass destruction capable of reducing the traffic and/or positions of any web page.
Table of Contents [ Hide ]
1 What is negative SEO?
2 How to detect negative or toxic links?
3 First Step to Prevent Negative SEO
4 Free Tools to Detect Toxic or Negative Links
5 Paid Tools to Detect Toxic or Negative Links
6 How to remove negative links?
How to detect negative or toxic links?
There are different tools on the market to analyze the health of our backlinks to detect and eliminate these links, the only problem is that these applications cost you a fortune, so in this post, in addition to mentioning them in passing, I am going to focus more on how we can detect and eliminate these negative links without having to break the bank.
First step to prevent Negative SEO
The most basic step that allows us to receive notifications from Google itself about the existence of negative links that point to our page is to activate notifications in Google Webmaster Tools.
google webmaster
To do this, click on “ properties ” and then on “ Google Webmaster Tools preferences ”, as shown in the image.
google webmaster tools
It is important that we have email notifications activated, this way Google can notify us in a very convenient way.
This is the most basic way but it is not always the most efficient way to detect a negative SEO attack , that is why I will tell you 2 methods that I use and with which you will be able to discover or intuit some of these attacks:
Method 1 – Analyze inbound links:
With the Ahrefs tool you can easily detect an social media marketing service unusual increase in the number of links. In my case, this August I suffered a very harsh negative SEO attack with the construction of more than 4,000 links in one week . The first week of September when I returned from vacation I realized the problem and began to analyze all the negative links and prepare the document to send to Google to disavow, since if I "rested on my laurels" I could run the risk of being penalized by our friend Penguin. So in a few days I sent the disavow of these 4,000 links and in a few weeks everything returned to normal.
You don't need to be an SEO to see this abnormal rise in the graph and realize that you need to start taking action to eliminate all this negative construction.
We could also detect this same thing with Majestic SEO , which is a very similar tool to this one.
Method 2: Analyze anchor text
With the Removeem tool we can analyze the anchor text of our incoming links in search of keywords used with the sole purpose of penalizing us.
keyword anchor text
This way of doing negative SEO consists of using non-permitted anchor text like the one we can see in the image, with a construction of 443 links with the same anchor. Logically, I wanted to hide the rest of the links so that it is not possible to identify which page they belong to, but I assure you that it is an analysis that I just carried out a few minutes ago.
Free tools to detect toxic or negative links
Google Webmaster Tools
From Google Webmaster Tools we can export the links that point to our page in .csv format and thus be able to analyze them in search of suspicious or toxic links.
This task can be a complex one if we do not have previous experience.
Ahrefs
Although it is a paid tool, we can also use it for free, and we will use it to visually analyze abnormal link growth.
With a simple glance at the graph you can detect abnormal growth.
Majestic SEO
Tool that we can use both in its paid form and in its free form and with which we can analyze the evolution of the growth of our links, as well as we can export all our links in Excel .
In order to export all the links of a domain, we will be asked to verify ownership of the domain, either by adding a meta or uploading a file to the root.
Paid tools to detect toxic or negative links
Cognitive SEO
cognitive seo visual
It is one of the tools for detecting toxic links that I like the most, since we can use it for 15 days for free and it will help us detect negative links and will even generate the document to send to Google to disavow links.
The first step will be to define which are the brand anchors and which are the commercial ones, and from there our links will appear categorized into 3: unnatural, suspicious and good.
One thing we need to be clear about is that there are false negatives and a link that is completely positive can be considered bad, so the ideal thing is to review the links one by one, and when we detect a strange domain we can disavow and mark all the links from this domain.
Link Research Tools
toxic links link research tools
You can try this tool for 7 days on a limited basis and perform an analysis of the toxic links on your website. It will show you the total number of negative links and a sample of 10 of them.
You can also export all your links in Excel format so that you can manually detect bad links.
If you decide to upgrade to the paid option, you will be able to see all the links that are marked as negative and export the document to send to Google for disavowal.
How to detect and remove negative links infographic
Thanks to Shutterstock for licensing the images to HieroGraphic and IdeaGU .
How to remove negative links?
There are 2 ways to remove links that may harm our web positioning:
1.- Contact the webmaster
This method is completely ineffective, as well as being a cumbersome and unbearable task. You can try it if you want, but in my experience less than 10% of the emails you send will be answered, so most webmasters will ignore your request.
2.- Disavow links
Let's do a little history about disavowing links , I remember that when Google incorporated this functionality many professionals had certain doubts about the use of this tool, since they saw it as a way of communicating to Google that they had negative links and running the risk of the Penguin "throwing a party" at the expense of your domain, but after 2 years of its arrival, there are very few who do not use it, and the reason is very simple;
[clickToTweet tweet=”Disavowing links is the most effective way to counter a negative #SEO attack” quote=”Disavowing links is the most effective way to counter a negative #SEO attack”]
Once we have identified the toxic or negative links, we have to create a txt document to send to Google to disavow them.
Step 1: Create a list of URLs to disavow
You can manually select each link, but this can be a time-consuming process, or the easiest way to do it is to identify the domains you want to disavow and include them in the list, as shown in the following image.
disavow negative links
Step 2: Send to Deauthorize the document
The next step is to make a request to disavow links to Google , first specifying the domain where we want to make the request, and then we have to attach and send the document made.
No domain is exempt from receiving a negative SEO attack, and the worst thing you can do is think that it won't happen to you or that your decision is to do nothing. If you decide to do nothing, you may run the risk of being penalized by Google Penguin the next time it analyzes your domain, losing a large number of positions in the Google search engine.
If you wait until you are penalized before taking action and removing toxic links, you will have to wait for Google Penguin to re-analyze your domain to recover all lost positions, the only problem is that this process could take months to occur.
[clickToTweet tweet=”If you detect a negative #SEO attack, act quickly and disavow these links.” quote=”If you detect a negative #SEO attack, act quickly and disavow these links.”]
I hope this post helps you prevent a Google Penguin penalty due to the existence of negative links pointing to your domain, and above all to raise awareness of their existence.