Negative SEO

It is hard enough to get anywhere in Google, Yahoo or MSN/Live listings on your own. Your SEO Company should be helping you out and working on ways to streamline your web site, keyword density, and other legal ways of getting to the top of the list. What happens though when your carefully wrought SEO campaign gets torpedoed because your competition resorts to negative SEO.

But Scott and other search marketers say it also makes possible a powerful form of negative SEO. Search marketers claim they can frame certain competitors as cheaters by posting thousands of links around the Web, making a competing site look like it’s engaging in “link spamming,” a tactic that draws the disfavor of major search engines. Source: Forbes

We have had friends who have had their web sites obliterated off the internet because of spammers, and it is no surprise that a company would resort to dirty tactics to get to the top of heap. Ethics and business while needed, it is sometimes too tempting and too hard to say no when someone says “torpedo your competition”. Beyond dirty pool, there is something here for someone who is seriously thinking of negative campaigning to get to the top of the heap.

Remember this guy?

Eventually it backfires.

Eventually the company that engages in Negative SEO is going to have to deal with the fall out from their tactics.

No one likes a cheater

Companies need to do things honestly, and while this is a pipe dream in reality, business ethics are heavily taught in schools, mostly because of the fall out of Enron and WorldCom. In reading the article in Forbes, using these kinds of tactics is not something that a responsible good ethical company would do.

If you contemplate them, you need to have a PR team ready for the eventual disaster. While it might feel good for a moment, the long term ramifications of negative SEO can haunt the company for years to come.