Dealing with Negative SEO and the Google Penalties ( Penguin ) Incurred

[Webzcas]

As mentioned in a previous thread I started in this forum in May 2017, my main site Online Casino Reviewer has been targeted by a crude, yet very effective Negative SEO campaign, with the home page of my site being the main recipient.

Since Penguin went live last year, meaning it now updates in realtime, google have also changed the algorithm whereby unnatural links to a page or pages of your site, does not affect the serps of your other pages.

This indeed has been borne out with what I am seeing. For example many of OCR's inner pages still rank and rank very well. Yet what has happened to the results of my homepage is, well, quite funky.

The purpose of this thread then, is to document and reference what I am doing to clean up those toxic links which have been pointed to my site and the final outcome as a result.

Instead of being downbeat and defeatist about the situation, I am now using my own personal experience as a way to 1) Generate useful content for my site and video channel. 2) Hopefully show my peers that there is a way to protect yourselves and recover your site from a Negative SEO attack.

Thankfully, I have had a LOT of help with this project. Andy Edwards from Outdated URL (Invalid) has spent many hours looking at OCR's link profile.

I have already provided an introduction in the latest OCR video blog, with the first video and page covering my 'Negative SEO Project' being added to OCR's Video Tips for Webmasters Section of the site later this week. - Outdated URL (Invalid)

If any other affiliate webmasters have experienced a Negative SEO attack, please feel free to share your experiences here in this thread.

 

[kahntrutahn]

This is interesting information. I wasn't aware someone could negSEO a single page at a time. I think I'm going to have to keep a better eye out on a couple of my main money pages rather than just the domain level links. Thanks!

I ran across something last night that I thought was cool and could be helpful to your situation. Most importantly it's free. Website called

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- You can go to this site and upload your personal disavow file into a big database of other users uploaded files. Then you can look at all of your disavowed links and see how many other people have uploaded disavow files with those same sites in it. It can help you identify sites that might be OK and those that are really bad and need closer attention to. There's some other cool data in there too.

Hope that helps.

 

[Webzcas]

Link Research Tools ( linkresearchtools.com ) is arguably the best software you can use to keep an eye on your 'toxic' backlink profile - However, it is not cheap, but again you get what you paid for.

Will be recording soon an update on this. Unfortunately I got sidetracked with the shenanigans with the Club World / Affiliate Edge Group.

Penguin has evolved so as instead of the entire site being hammered due to toxic links, only the page receiving the toxic links gets smashed. This IMO is actually a good move on google's part. Unfortunately they still haven't managed to stop people using negative seo and I doubt they will ever be able to. Despite what comes out of the googleplex to the contrary.

 

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

(I realize this is old, but....) Nope they won't change that anytime soon, but diligently submit disavow's once per week and we have been able to get pages and sites back on track. The links will always still show as they cannot remove them. Any updates?

 

[pereblue]

(I realize this is old, but....) Nope they won't change that anytime soon, but diligently submit disavow's once per week and we have been able to get pages and sites back on track. The links will always still show as they cannot remove them. Any updates?

Pehaps this tool could help you:

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[Webzcas]

Firstly so sad to resurrect this thread in light of the fact that Gary sadly passed away a couple of months ago. I believe the post above #4 was his very last on this forum

That said I am posting here as yet again my main site has been subjected to another Negative SEO Attack, which has coincided with a lovely comment on one of my videos. This was something to do with gutters.

As a result, yes, traffic has taken a hit. But I am taking steps to reverse the damage this current attack has caused. Obviously, I have upset some people.

Regardless, I have spent the last few days spending an awful lot of time researching and pulling reports from tools such as SEMRush, analysing my backlink profile and as Gary states, diligently disavowing any and all toxic links.

But moving forward, I would appreciate any input from my peers as to what they would do if they found themselves in the predicament I currently find myself in. Are there ways that one can bullet proof your site or sites? Or is it as Gary alluded to above, just keep on top of your backlink profile?

 

[kahntrutahn]

You can't stop people from linking to you Webzcas. In theory Google doesn't count bad links anymore, but in reality, no matter what they say, they do count some of them. As you can plainly tell by this negative SEO attack hurting your business.

You may want to look into Christoph C. Cemper's site, LinkResearchTools. I had heard of it for a couple years, but then at the London Affiliate Conference this year they held an SEO panel. He was on it and I liked what he had to say. I visited his booth at the show later and talked to the reps. When I returned from the conference I tried out the tools on a 7 day / 7$ trial. They were extensive and to be honest, a bit overwhelming for such a short time period. However, I focused on the link detox product and even though I diligently disavow every week, his tool found hundreds of extra crappy backlinks in our profile.

Disavowed them all.

LRT is expensive though as far as tools go. Few hundred a month. They have a cheaper detox only tool though.

 

[Webzcas]

You can't stop people from linking to you Webzcas. In theory Google doesn't count bad links anymore, but in reality, no matter what they say, they do count some of them. As you can plainly tell by this negative SEO attack hurting your business.

You may want to look into Christoph C. Cemper's site, LinkResearchTools. I had heard of it for a couple years, but then at the London Affiliate Conference this year they held an SEO panel. He was on it and I liked what he had to say. I visited his booth at the show later and talked to the reps. When I returned from the conference I tried out the tools on a 7 day / 7$ trial. They were extensive and to be honest, a bit overwhelming for such a short time period. However, I focused on the link detox product and even though I diligently disavow every week, his tool found hundreds of extra crappy backlinks in our profile.

Disavowed them all.

LRT is expensive though as far as tools go. Few hundred a month. They have a cheaper detox only tool though.

Thanks. Yes, I have used LRT last year, when I was first hit. Worth every penny. I blogged about it at the time. Will be interesting what happens this time.

The method they are using is scraping my content. Serving that up on 1000+ pages on a domain. Then redirecting to a Russian Portal. So GBot, sees my content duplicated across 1000 pages times X number of domains. All throwing thousands of links to my site.

 

[neilw]

But moving forward, I would appreciate any input from my peers as to what they would do if they found themselves in the predicament I currently find myself in.

Stop upsetting people

 

[Biti]

It seems to be a new tactic of some brands to try to remove everything that they do not like from the search results. In theory it shouldn't work, in reality it does sometimes.

I've had two times negative SEO attacks, mainly on some reviews, which makes that the casinos that are reviewed on that pages the main suspects. Unfortunately, it's alsmost impossible to prove it.

Instead of cleaning up your link profile and/or dropping the attacked pages, there's not much you can do. Or it must be building up a stronger link profile. The stronger the link profile, the less effect such an attack is having.

 

[Webzcas]

The key is I feel, disavow, continue creating good content and acquisition of strong links. A PITA nonetheless.

 

[kahntrutahn]

The key is I feel, disavow, continue creating good content and acquisition of strong links. A PITA nonetheless.

It is a pain in the ass, but yes, regular disavowing is something we place a high value on as well. Every single refresh there are a dozen+ new shitty/spammy/automated links that we have to get rid of. It doesn't take a hell of a lot of time, but we do have to pay for that work to be done one way or the other. I suppose it's the price we pay for being in this business... attracting the douchebag neg SEO'ers.