One of the things I love about working in is that for every event, significant or insignificant, there is almost always a complete dichotomy between how the brightest minds in our industry interpret these events. I’ve been reading about search engine optimisation pretty much every day of my life for a about a year now, and although this still makes me a complete novice in terms of experience, I am confident enough to form my own opinion on the topics were this dichotomy appears.
The latest topic up for debate in the search engine optimisation sphere is that of Negative , something I’ve largely avoided writing about. Not because I’m unfamiliar with it, but because giving such a tactic the air of publicity seemed wrong to me. However, because of Google’s Penguin update and other recent changes in our industry, avoiding the issue is no longer an option.
What is Negative ?
In essence, Negative is the act of targeting your competitors with a range of techniques designed to affect their performance in the SERPs, or to damage their brand reputation in the organic search listings. This is not a new concept either (see this Forbes article from 2019), remember when George W. Bush had his biographical page on the White House website rank first in Google for ‘miserable failure’? That was Negative . Redirect hijacking was a popular tactic of black hat ‘s back in the early 2000’s, and this seems to be something coming back into fashion, Negative . Conditional PHP hacks and parasite hosting have been used by the black hatters targeting the Pharmaceutical SERPs for years, Negative . Even building low quality links to a competitor’s site, the tactic I’ll be discussing more in this blog, has been used by spammers for years.
I suppose you’re wondering, if this is the case, then why has there been so much discussion on the subject recently, and what it boils down to is one thing, the Google Penguin update. Google are now actively penalising websites that have, what they deem to be, an unnatural link profile. In principle this sounds like a good idea because it reduces web spam. However, on the other hand, Google have effectively opened the floodgates for people to manipulate their competitor’s link profiles in order to get them penalised.
The reason this is such a big issues is because it is so easy to do. In the past, Negative would need at least a basic understanding of Google, how they rank sites, their link graph, HTML and PHP coding, and the perpetrator would need a keen sense of quantitative and qualitative balance. Now all you need is $100 to buy a subscription to one of the many automated link blast tools available on the internet. What Google have said is that if there are spammy links on your website, you are a spammer, you are guilty, regardless of who places the links there.
Two sides of the Negative argument
The dichotomy in opinion for this subject is not on whether Negative works (it does), but how affective it is, who can be impacted by it, and how you can protect yourself against it.
Argument A
One side of the argument tends to be fielded by figures whose role within the industry is purely to offer comment, or to provide people with tools rather than actually acting as an consultancy themselves. These people tend to think that Negative is not as big a problem as people are making out. It can be cured by ‘building a brilliant brand’ and writing ‘unbelievable/remarkable content’ and getting ‘super high quality links’.
Argument B
The other side of the argument tends to be populated by people who actively practice every day, and more often than not they rely on their skills to provide them with a source of income. These people are highly concerned about the impact of Negative and they tend to be much more realistic about the resources and opportunities available to the small and medium sized businesses who are more at risk of being hit by Negative .
Before I carry on writing, I’ll just make it perfectly clear that I’m biased in favour of argument B, but not because of blind loyalty to the supporters of this theory, because those who support argument A make an unrealistic assumption that is the same for everybody, no matter the size, resources or niche of the business.
Unfortunately, not every business can afford to invest hours and hours each day writing ‘remarkable content’. Not every niche has a dynamic and savvy enough online community that is required to build links organically, regardless of the cheesy video or infographic that you use as ‘linkbait’. Sometimes, businesses with smaller budgets, if they want to compete, have to operate at the edge of what is allowed and what they are capable of. Not every business has a huge search marketing budget and the resources necessary to build brand in a tech-savvy niche. This means many new websites belonging to small and medium sized businesses rarely are able to build a link profile strong enough to protect them from a negative attack. These sites are at particular risk if they are ranking well.
There were two quotes from Matt Cutts in a recent Search Engine Land article, which really summed things up for me:
1. Google has said it’s difficult for others to harm a site, and that’s indeed seemed to be the case. In particular, pointing bad links at a good site with many other good signals seems to be like trying to infect it with a disease that it has antibodies to. The good stuff outweighs the bad.
Cutts stressed again that negative is rare and hard. “We have done a huge amount of work to try to make sure one person can’t hurt another person,” he said.
2. If some of your site is deemed Penguin-like, all of it may suffer. Again, recovery means cleaning up the spam. If you’ve cleaned and still don’t recover, ultimately, you might need to start all over with a fresh site, Cutts said.
These statements seem completely incompatible. If spam links are harmful, they can be pointed at someone’s site, meaning negative is possible and it is easy. It also means for a huge quantity of websites, it’s very hard, if not impossible, to defend against it. The fact that Cutts suggests that the best way to recover might be ‘to start all over with a fresh site’ seems to show a complete disconnect from reality and the fact that all businesses are operating in a difficult economic climate. Small and Medium sized businesses that might have spent years developing their brand online and improving the authority of their website might not be able to afford to just start all over.
Do I think Negative works?
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I feel confident enough to start forming my own opinions on these subjects now. But yet again I’ve made this blog far too long and at this point I’m probably talking to myself. But anyway, yes negative does work, have a look at this article about a guy who got SEOMoz to rank for ‘Dog Snuggie’ by redirecting a domain to their site. Okay, it could have been a lot more ‘negative’ but it proves it can be done, even on authoritative domains. However, I still think that for the majority of time, the people practicing negative are fully black hat and they tend to target other black hat domains in their niche. This kind of reduces the impact that neg is having on the SERPs, but the fact it is allowed to happen in the first place is worrying.
This blog was written over 6 months ago and Internet Marketing and is an always changing industry which means the information within this blog may be out of date. Use caution when using any methods or suggestions within it.
