Digital marketing is one of the leading foundations on which businesses these days rely on for thriving in today’s competitive world. Whether you’re a startup or have been in the market long, you need to strategize in order to rank the best. SEO tools do just the thing by optimizing your online appearance. However, where there are positives to such techniques, they also have the capacity to keep negatives as well. Your competitors can go at great lengths to cause you damage by ensuring a decrease in the traffic of your website and search engine ranking. They go to the extent of indulging in Black hat practices which has recently coined a new term called the Negative SEO.
Both can harm your website. Protecting yourself should be at the top of your priorities’ list especially if a certain website generates big revenue. Since you may be depending on SEO for transforming your growth exponential, you need to be ready to survive in the market and, also, to sidestep a promoter of malpractices. Note that for any SEO activity to work, you need a working internet connection in your area. You can simply google ‘internet service in my area,’ and with location services at its disposal, Google will suggest a good fit for you. With that covered, we are going to discuss a few ways in which you can either steer clear of such problems or can fight back if you’ve already been struck.
1) Email alerts through Google Webmaster tools
Google has developed analytical tools to provide answers to the dilemma that a website can face if it comes under attack. You can receive Google alerts through email in case your website comes under attack because of negative SEO. If the pages on your website are not properly indexed or you find that connecting to your website has become more of a headache, Google can check if any website/individual is playing tricks on you. You can also find that out when a penalty is sent by Google. That can happen when Google finds out that your website doesn’t comply with search engine guidelines.
2) Google Authentication Plugin
You can never be too concerned about security whether it’s about your physical business space or your online presence. Digital marketing comes with risks and it’s good to be secured because any malware attack can be fatal to your business. Install the Google Authentication Plugin to make sure that no one can access your website without proper protocols. Google recommends that you create a difficult and different password, using letters and numbers as well as special characters so that the act of hacking your domain becomes nearly impossible. Create data backups so nothing of importance is ever lost, and use antivirus especially if you at any point you have allowed users to enter data in the form of comments or other uploads.
3) Keep an account on your backlinks
Spammers harm your website by creating false backlinks that redirect users when they access your content. This can be extremely agonizing as all your efforts for generating traffic to your website will be lost. They can create low/bad links to your domain and it’s essential for any business to realize when something of this nature happens. Quite a few tools out there deal with this issue. You can manually input data and run an analysis to monitor how your real and precious backlinks are behaving through Open Site Explorer or Ahrefs. Another way to achieve this is by using MonitorBacklinks.com. Register yourself by making an account and by entering your domain name, which is to be connected to Google Analytics afterward. It works by sending reports through email every time you lose a backlink or when you gain one.
4) Remove bad/low-quality Backlinks
Once you have completed and received the details regarding the backlinks for your domain, it is recommended that you get rid of the weak ones. Achieve this by sending an email to Google, requesting them to remove those bad Backlinks. You can also contact the webmasters for any such concerns and directly, albeit, politely ask them to remove such links. To ensure that this actually works, send in your profile information, your position and personal/contact information and if still doesn’t seem to work, file a complaint with Google.
5) Disavow file and protection of best Backlinks
If you find yourself in that grey area where your request has not met with the required response then disavowing file is going to be the last expedient. This tool needs careful consideration so be accurate while sending in information about the links that you want to be removed from your link profile. Create a spreadsheet with details of all the bad backlinks that you found to be harming more than profiting your website. Select only the negatively affecting ones. Keep a copy of the file with you before uploading the data to your webmaster account. The result is effectively seen in a few days but it can take more than that which requires you to be patient while consistently keeping a check on the backlinks.
6) Protect the best Backlinks
Always use your own domain name instead of the usual Gmail or Yahoo. Webmasters are instantly sure of your authenticity, getting you immediate attention and response. Stay in touch with the status of your backlinks and contact the relevant webmasters in case of any changes that might occur. The bad competitors create a new profile on your name and request the webmasters to remove their link from your backlinks. Staying proactive is the only key for survival.
7) Use Copyscape
You can utilize the services of Copyscape to ensure that your content isn’t being plagiarized and repeated by your competitors or haters on other websites/domains as well. Google may either remove your website completely from its index or give you lower ranks due to the mixing of data content.
Enter your domain name into Copyscape search engine and it will bring up all such websites that have the same content repeated time and again. This infringement upon your rights is difficult to deal with because no matter how much you try, you cannot turn your website into a private show. The only way is to keep working on it by keeping any sudden drops in the visibility of your domain.
7) Monitor your website’s run time
If there is an error while the website loads, make sure that it’s not due to unnecessary traffic, directed to your domain. This is easily acquirable through a tool called Pingdom.com. If your website takes too much time loading, this tool will alert you in the spur of a moment so that you are able to prevent the loss in the traffic headed to your site. Fake traffic means that your real customers or visitors will become wary of your domain. Since our world is getting rigorously advanced day-by-day, no one has time to spare, especially when it has to be on a website stuck on loading for too long.
8) Social Media Presence
Keep a close check on your media presence. Do this through an amazing tool known as Mention.com. Every time your domain name is used on social media, you get an alert. You can either take an action according to the nature of the alert or let it be if it doesn’t affect the repute of your domain. The most usual but alarming situation for any business is when spammers start creating fake websites on your name. You can very easily report to Mention.com to monitor these issues while its job is to alert you about all the other spammers.
These are just a few of such tools, which can fortify your website and in return your business against the onslaught of spammers and hackers. Make sure that you follow the guidelines set by Google to guarantee that you don’t end up harming your own website.
Contributed by:https://www.getattonline.com/
