How To Protect Your Site From Negative SEO After Penguin Update

The SEO industry went into an uncontrolled frenzy when the recent penguin was rolled out. For those who are not aware of the Penguin update here is a fast forward recap. A few days back, Matt Cutts dropped a nuke on SEOs and small business owners saying that Google will soon roll out an update that will level the playing fields in online marketing by penalizing the sites “unnaturally optimizing’ their websites.  So people engaging in keyword stuffing and link schemes without a proper social media presence a visible brand presence were blasted out of the SERPs.

As a reason millions of small businesses were affected. If the numbers are to be believed Google sent unnatural link notifications to 2 million or more webmaster via the Google Webmaster Tool. Those who asked for reconsideration were the first ones to see a fall in rankings.

So what possibilities does it hold for negative SEO? Well till now we strongly believed in Google’s  - do no evil policy. Which means let a hundred criminals escape but not a single innocent should be punished. Now, unfortunately, the game has changed. The innocent can be at the receiving end of it pretty easily.

Most of the SEOed websites without a brand recognition those who had lots of cheap links built using some fixed anchor texts where the ones who tanked.  Any smart SEO who understands this loophole in Penguin Update can use this to his advantages. Which means, building ‘exact anchor text match’ links in bulk to your competitors, instead of yourself will take you higher on the SERPs. This in essence is Negative SEO or Hostile SEO.

Here is a thread on Google Groups about this -
https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/Azfly-iRtLs/AdHqB65SlHAJ

There have been multiple instances for successful Negative SEO campaigns being reported on popular SEO forums. My effort here is NOT to tell you how to bring down your competitor. Instead I will focus on an approach that will give you some degree of protection against Negative SEO. This is one of the most important things business owners and professionals ask me at our SEO training Program in Delhi.

Build Your Brand

• Build a Lot of backlinks with your Brandname as the anchor text. This applies to both your internal links and inbound links.
• Promote your Brand on Social Media. How much people interact around the content generated by your brand is a strong Search Ranking signal today.

Diversify Your Anchor Text

• Link naturally. That is use natural looking anchor texts, exactly the same way normal people link to something awesome on your site.  Let’s say you are promoting a keyword “Green Apple Juice” and you’re your have a brandname of “gGoblin” then here is what your link matrix should look like.
• Green Apple Juice , Apple Juice Green, Juice of Green apple (30%) direct match.
  gGoblin Apple Juice, Tasty Green Apple Juice by gGoblin, Pure and Natural Juice brand, my favorite green apple juice etc etc (40%)
• Click here for more information, Direct page URL, Read more about green apple juice (30%)

Diversifying your Link Profile.
Do not build any particular kind of links. Get all sorts of links as possible. Having a diversified link profile will help you stand the onslaught of bulk link attacks like scrapbox commenting.  Build good backlinks and make sure that your links come from

• Social Media
• Social Bookmarks
• Authority sites as resources or reviews.
• Popular local or niche directories
• Relevant blogs
• Business Classifieds
• Or just any other source possible. The more varied the better.

I hope this helps you in your SEO efforts. The times are tough and the higher quality control we maintain the better results we receive.

About Author : Rooturaj Pattanaik, founder of  NewDelhi SEO,  brings this expert article to you in the hope that you would employ these tips to get the best out of your SEO and internet marketing efforts.