How to Prevent Negative SEO Attacks
1. Setting up Google Webmaster Tools Email Alerts
Google can send you email alerts when:
• Your website is under attack by malware
• Your website pages are not indexed
• You constantly have server connectivity problems
• You get a manual penalty from Google
In case you haven’t already connected your website to Google Webmaster Tools, I’ll suggest it’s been done to avoid a negative SEO attack
2. Keep Track of Your Backlinks Profile
This is the most vital step to take to prevent spammers from succeeding on your website. A lot of times, they perform negative SEO against your website by building low-quality links or redirects. It is very important to know when someone is creating links and redirects to your website. There are many tools like Ahrefs or Open Site Explorer, which can be used to manually check if someone is building links to your website, but the one I recommend you using Instead of having to check your backlinks every morning, “Monitor Backlinks” sends everything you need to know to your inbox. Here’s an idea on how you can use it:
Once your account has been created, it will need you to add your domain and link it with your Google Analytics It usually reveals your backlinks immediately, but sometimes it could take a few minutes. Ordinarily, your setup should already be set to send you email notifications, should your website receives new backlinks. This is what an email alert looks like.
3. Protect Your Best Backlinks
Frequently, spammers will try to delete your best backlinks, by basically contacting the website owner of the link, using your name, and they request the webmaster to remove your backlink and to prevent that from happening, you can do the needful below:
• During communication with webmasters, always use the same email address from your domain, instead of using Gmail or Yahoo. This way, you will prove that you work for the website and not someone else claiming to be you
• Keep a record of your best backlinks. With this, you can use Monitor Backlinks again. All you need to do is go to your list of backlinks and sort them by pages or social activity. Adding tags to the backlinks you value the most can also be used so you can verify if any of them get removed.
Israel Olatunji