Recently updated: January 4th, 2019

The entire world of SEO has seen lots of changes over the time – changes in the way search engines crawl and index a web page as well as in the strategies digital marketers employ to get traffic to and improve rankings of a website. Nowadays, ranking high for most competitive keywords is not as easy as it was a few years back.

Blackhat SEO was once a powerful tool for marketers who want to get rankings and traffic overnight. But with Google bringing up updates as to stop the unethical practices used to rank a website, this method of getting rankings has now become futile. But a new type of SEO has emerged called negative SEO that allows hackers to inject links to a website without the owner permission. This is also called SEO spam.

What Is SEO Spam?

Among the factors search engines use to determine where a website should rank in the search results is the number and quality of incoming links to that website. The more quality links your website has, the higher it will rank. SEO spam is an illegitimate way used to inject links or keywords into a website without owner’s permission.

The prime objective of SEO spammers is to get more and more links. And for that, they employ a variety of tricks and strategies to inject links and keywords to high-quality sites. This approach is called spamdexing that allows those marketers to push their low-quality sites to prominent positions in search engine rankings.

The most common ways a spammer can do that are:

• Inserting links into existing pages on a website
• Creating new pages full of links and spammy content
• Redirecting pages on your website to their other websites
• Adding spammy comments to blog posts
• Hosting spam content
• Adding wikis, forums, and other applications to your website which are populated with spam content and links.
• Including SEO spam content from other websites via iframes and file inclusions.

Negative Impact of SEO Spam

There is no doubt that SEO spam is a real cause of concern for businesses. And this is more so in case of small businesses and startups. SEO spam can do a huge harm to your business in many a way such as:

• Get your site blacklisted: As search engines penalize those sites with lots of spammy links. If those spammy links are not removed immediately, your site can be blacklisted by the search engines.
• Reduce the site rank: As search engines hate unethical practices used to rank, a website with many spammy links seems to use the practices not allowed by the search engines. And so the search engines do not consider such sites in crawling and indexing. And thus your site rank goes down.
• Tarnish your business reputation: When people visit your site and click on a link which is, in fact, fake and get directed to a website which is totally rubbish, this sends a bad impression. And that visitor even if that is your client won’t visit your site again. Even they will stop business with you.
• Mislead potential customers: Negative or incorrect keywords could direct visitors to sites that look unprofessional and spammy. For example, suppose you run a high-end salon, and you have the keywords like cheap sunglasses on your website. If this happens, this allows visitors to assume that the site is a scam. Also, Google, a leading search engine, flags such websites as potentially compromised.
• Causes other issues: An SEO spammer can target the sensitive parts in your websites such as outdated plug-ins, low strength password, or insufficient server security. Once they have gained control over your website, they can inject other types of malware, which can cause your business irreparable damage.

How to Know Your Site Has Got a Spam Attack

There are signs that show that your site has been SEO spam attacked. When you see those signs, before long you should take the right course of action to abate the negative impact. Here is how to spot those signs.

Check Your Google Search Console Account

 If your site is registered with Google search console, the search engine will provide alerts when it finds something unpleasant such as spammy links, hacker attacks. It also sends you a notification if your site is penalized, explaining the reason for it. Google sends you alerts when:

• Your website is being attacked by malware
• Your pages are not indexed
• You have server connectivity problems
• You get a manual penalty from Google

Check Your Google Analytic Accounts

If there is something unexpected in your Google analytic activity such as a sudden spike for some keywords, this means your site has got an SEO spam attack. This may be because spammers have started incorporating your site into their farm, which boosts a site traffic all of sudden.

Look at Your Backlink Profile

There are some tools for example Ahrefs that can provide you with all the details about every incoming link to your website. If there is any such attack, you will see the surge in the links coming to your site.

Check for Crawl Error

Go back to your Google search console account and click on the crawl error in crawl section to see if there is any page that is not found. If there is any page that you do not find in the crawl section, this means that page is attacked by an SEO spam. From the Linked From tab, you can see who is spamming your website.

In addition, you can also look at the website to see if there is an unexpected new page. Also, there are many third parties that provide services designed to help businesses to prevent their websites from spamming.

How to Prevent Spammers from Attacking Your Site

There is a saying: “Prevention is better than cure.” And it is truer of SEO spam attacks. Once your website is attacked, you cannot reverse the damage. All you can do is stop further damage. So it is better to take the right preventive measures. Here are some ways you can prevent your website from the threats of an SEO spam attack.

Register Your Website with Google’s Webmaster Tools

It is easy and free. If your website is registered with the tools, Google, one of the largest search engines in the world, will send you alerts of any threats to your website. It alerts you a day before it takes any step to penalize your site if your site is spammed. This is the best preventive step you can take, and the best thing is that it costs you zero.

Proactively Protect Your Website

Websites are constantly under attack, whether you deploy something on the server, application or in the cloud. So it is vitally important for you to deploy some form of a protective solution. Take for example a cloud-based firewall one of the most effective tools that help you keep attackers at bay. It actively adapts to attacks and helps keep your site spam free.

Continuously Check Your Backlink Profiles

This is one of the most effective measures you can take to prevent spammers from attacking your site. The spammers do negative SEO to create low-quality links or redirects. Checking your website regularly allows you to know when someone is trying to build spammy links into your website. You can do this manually with Open Site Explore or use tools like Ahrefs that automatically sends you email alters when your website gains or loses links.

Hire an SEO Agency

There are many SEO companies that provide monitoring services for businesses.  These types of services can help you monitor your website and identify any spamming threats to your website. They can also help you can spot red flags and warning signs. Hiring a reputed SEO company in India will provide you a peace of mind by protecting your website any from any potential spam attacks.

Monitor Your Keywords

This is a crucial thing that you must do. It is better to have a team of experts who can proactively monitor your traffic and the performance of keywords. Your marketing team should also be able to identify if there is a spike for keywords in industries you do not participate.

These are some best ways that can help you effectively prevent your website from any SEO spam attacks. You can also do things like:

• Protecting your best backlinks
• Securing your website from malware and hackers
• Checking for duplicate content and removing if there is any
• Monitoring social media mentions
• Employing the right SEO strategies
• Regularly checking site performance like loading speed

Doing those things will help you keep any SEO spam attacks at bay while giving you many other benefits.

What To Do If Your Site Is SEO Spam Attacked?

Those are preventive measures that help you to avoid any such attack. But what if your website is attacked and it is already damaged?

If you have checked and found that someone has tried to spam, there are some crucial things you should to stop further attacks and repair the damage.

• Identify and make a list of the bad links to your site. Do that manually and decide which links are hurting your rankings. Add tags to those links that need to be removed.
• Hire a webmaster expert who can help you remove the bad links from your website.
• If none those worked, you should use Google Disavow Tool. Create a Disavow list that you can submit to Google webmaster tools.

 To Wrap Up

With all said, website security seems something most important of part of a business plan. It helps you protect crucial information about your business but also retain site ranking by thwarting spam attacks that can cause damage in several ways. Having a team of professionals is a great way forward towards keeping your site secure or a hire professional SEO company in India that will help you with keeping SEO spam attacks at bay among others.