Negative SEO attacks can cost online web owners substantial economic damage in the form of lost visitors and ad revenues. The fact that negative SEO practitioners use misinformation to cause damage to other legitimate businesses is for all intents and purposes criminal behavior. The same might be said for doing the same in order to protect a business of deserved criticism or complaints.

Here are a few of the tricks that are utilized by the negative SEO practitioner to cause undeserved harm to innocent online businesses:

1. Google bowling is a tactic used to create the appearance of link spamming, something that is frowned upon by the search engines, and something that can lead to a significant drop in a site’s rankings. A large number of “spammy” links containing questionable anchor text–e.g., references to porn, etc.– are posted to the target site. With this tactic, the sudden and suspiciously excessive increase in the number of links gets the attention of the search engines, and not in a good way.

2. Tattling capitalizes on the search engines’ disdain for paid links.  Any paid links a website owner may have bought from more established sites are reported to the search engine.  If there are no paid links then the negative SEO practitioner may purchase and report them unbeknownst to the victim.

3. Insulation is accomplished by creating a volume of competing content so great that it eclipses that of the target site.  This may be used, for example, to effectively hide negative crticism or complaints by generating a rediculously large volume of positive comments on competing sites such as forums, blogs, etc.

4. Copyright Takedown Notices are used to effectively shutdown a competing site and have it removed from the search engines’ indexes, at least for 10 days, while the copyright holder decides whether or not to pursue legal action against the alleged infringer.  Since the “infringer”,  in this case, is completely innocent of accusations made by the negative search engine optimizer, valuable time is lost waiting for the 10-day period to elapse.  This is grounds for a lawsuit.

5. Copied content can be used by sites that are older and more established to make the competing site’s corresponding pages disappear.  The search engines don’t like to return duplicate results to users as this tends to dilute the value of the search results.  Efforts are therefore made to determine the original content creator based on the age of the subject sites.

6. Denial of service attacks effectively shut down a competitor’s website by overwhelming the server with more requests for information that it can handle.  These requests are usually coodinated in simultaneous fashion and launched from a network of computers that contain malware.

7. Click fraud is a tactic whereby an automated script is used to artificially accelerate the process of reaching the upper limit of the competing website’s pay-per-click budget by simulating user ad clicks.  This is not only unethical but illegal.

The fact is, anyone can get “on the first page” of Google by simply opening an Adwords account and paying the market rate for a given keyword. Sure enough, your ad will appear somewhere on the first page of results among the SPONSORED listings–probably not what you had in mind when you forked over your hard-earned $600!  The promise of getting listed “on the first page of Google” is presumed to mean getting listed on the first page of natural search results.  The way these shady firms hide behind semantics calls to mind the character Benny Gibbs, who in the movie “Trial and Error” was a con man accused of fraudulently advertising copper engravings of Abraham Lincoln for $17.99.  Customers did in fact receive a copper “engraving” of Abraham Lincoln which, by the way, also happened to be a copper penny!  Sometimes semantics makes all the difference in the world.

The harsh reality is that achieving a true top ranking in the organic search results is most often neither cheap nor easy.  This is not to say that it’s impossible or takes forever; just that it isn’t likely to happen in a few days.  Part of this has to do with how the search engines work.  Google, for example, looks for one-way links, or “backlinks”, from relevant¹ authority sites.  But link-building campaigns, even when aggressively pursued, often start out slow. Webmasters must see the value in your content, which presumes you have content and plenty of it.  They must see how a link to your site adds value to their own.  It’s a process that starts by contacting one webmaster at a time.

So when considering paying an “expert” to accelerate your ranking in the search engines don’t be afraid to press the sales rep for clarification on exactly what is being promised.  Ask clarifying questions and get things in writing.  A little due diligence goes a long way when your hard-earned dollars are at stake.

^{1. Not all externally linking sites must be relevant in subject matter so long as they are quality sites; but all things equal, a link from a relevant site is preferred.}

SEO Tips for Optimizing Your Website:

• Try to select a domain name that contains your most important keyword(s). The search engines take clues from your URL to determine what your site is about. The most weight is placed on the first word, followed by the second, third and so on. From an SEO perspective, shorter URL’s are better than longer ones.

• Choose a page title that contains your most important keyword for that particular page. This is probably the most important SEO tip of them all when it comes to helping the search engines figure out what your page is about. Also, it functions as your headline in the search results.

• Be sure to use your keywords throughout  the web page. Increasingly, search engines penalize sites for ‘keyword stuffing’ (i.e., overloading a page with particular keywords), so try to limit your keyword density to something in the neighborhood of 3 to 7 percent.

• Place relevant keywords and synonyms between your <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags. This is a way of indicating to the search engines which keywords are especially important. Your main keyword or a synonym should used with the <h1> tag.

• Write a good meta description, including your keywords. This helps web users to decide whether the destination page is worth visiting. Offer just enough information to peak their curiosity.

Website optimization through link-building:
This SEO tip concerns the single biggest factor next to site design in determining your site’s rank: link-building. Simply put, you must have unreciprocal, inbound links from relevant authority sites pointing to your site. Search engines such as Google confer more trust upon older, more established sites. A link from one of these sites is like a credible endorsement for your site and it’s relevancy to certain keywords. Optimally, the keyword will be contained in the anchor text of the link. Contact webmasters and ask for links. Assuming you have useful and interesting content, you should be able to find at least a few sites that are willing to give you some ‘link love’. Also, realize that over time links to your site will grow organically as more and more people discover your site. Hence the importance of good content.

One final SEO tip: be patient and realize that you’re not going to reach page #1 of Google overnight. That’s what pay-per-click advertising if for!

But online advertising is a broad term that encompasses everything from banner ads to organic placement in the natural search results.  In the ultra-competitive world of online advertising it is the latter that matters the most.

No doubt about it, having a high ranking in the organic search engine results is the single most powerful means of driving traffic to your website. Its power derives from its efficiency. It delivers the most exposure per dollar spent compared to any other form of advertising. Unlike other less discriminating forms of internet advertising such as banner ads, pop-ups and interstitial ads, having a high ranking in the natural search results means highly targeted and unsolicited traffic. What better kind of traffic!

But the task of reaching the top of Google’s search results is somewhat like reaching the top of a mountain—hard but not impossible. And while huge companies spend millions to place high and stay high in the search results, what they are really paying for is the knowledge it takes to achieve this result. The body of knowledge to which we are referring is known as Search Engine Optimization, or ‘SEO’ for short. SEO knowledge can be acquired and implemented at little-to-no cost. All that is required is time and dedication—something most small companies and individual entrepreneurs don’t posses in abundance. There are many good books and online courses available that explain SEO in an easy-to-understand manner.

You don’t have to be an SEO expert to implement some very effective SEO principles. Above all, your site must be rich with content that is both unique (i.e., not plagiarized) and relevant. Page title is also very important as the search engines use this to determine the subject matter of your web page and how relevant it is to any particular keyword. Also as a rule of thumb, the dominant keyword or key phrase should appear in the content more than any other repeating keyword word or key phrase.

Even websites not listed on the first page of results can get a good amount of traffic. The process of achieving a high ranking through optimization is somewhat like baking a cake: It takes the right ingredients—i.e., content—and it takes time, but the end result is worth it.