Negative SEO victim : reply or give up ?

[idlabs]

Hi mates, let me tell you my story :
I was ranking perfectly on competitive keywords with a site I made from A to Z. High-end webdesign, perfect code, clean netlinking during years, so my site went quickly on top of SERP for targeted keywords... Until someone starts a negative SEO campaigns which was against me and some others of my competitors. The guy who did that blast like 10'000 optimized anchors per domain. My website was 5 years old and had a good authority, a PR4, but for almost all my keywords it dropped from #1 or #2 to #8 or more, second and sometimes 3rd page. The websites with more authority than mine haven't been impacted but mine and some others competitors have been hit by this negative seo campaign.

First of all, I decided to not panic when I saw new poor links created back in december 2012. In january 2013, rankings starts to drop, and it continues until negative seo campaign stop. Since then, rankings increase a little bit but I think it's due to some of the links disappearing and negative seo campaign ending. During the last few months I tried everything : create new quality links, disavow this bad links, submit a reconsideration request. My work on it didn't change anything over the last 6 months.

So now, after many efforts, what I should do ? Stay here and continue to spend hours focusing on my website and spend time due to someone's bad intention ? This is what I did first but now I am thinking of blasting fresh and young websites which took advantage of this negative seo campaign, to get my website back to top. If you guys experienced that, I would be pleased to share with you and learn from yur advices, but please don't come here to say "focus on your own efforts" or something like that, it doesn't work !!!

Thanks

 

[seocrab]

I will say it...FOCUS ON YOUR OWN EFFORTS. It does work!

Seriously, though, if your whole business is based on an "all-eggs-in-one-basket" approach, you are at the mercy of every Google update and competition blast out there. Start building up a network of unrelated sites that focus on different keywords in your niche. If you think ahead and stay smart, no-one can take your sites down with a few backlink blasts.

You made your site a success, from code to content and backlinking, so you can do it again and again and again. Keep at it and good luck.

 

[Getwhatchuwant]

It would depend on what type of site you have, if you are an affiliate or made for ad sense site Cant you just blow it all up, de-index it and use the same content on another domain?

If you are a BRAND I would suggest hanging in there, something like this happened to us but 6-8 months later sticking with it has us coming back to where we were. BUT we own our own product and we are a brand for our product. So we had traffic coming for search, and direct visits, we also were able to grab a few affiliates (some from here) that helped offset some of the losses we encountered. We also grew our Facebook presence and had a mailing list....

All of these things let us hang in there until we rebounded a bit now things look better than ever, and it even made us better marketers..

 

[idlabs]

It would depend on what type of site you have

We have a brand website, no adsense, no affiliation, just business.
Thanks for your opinion but I am still sceptic as I don't see any change after so much efforts.

 

[GreyKnight]

Well, basically the best way to go is just continue to move forward, try to create quality backlinks, have more quality content, and generally do more things to undo the damage.
If you really wanted to try some damage control, try Link Detox. I never try them by myself though, but sometimes it is also mentioned here to clean up bad backlinks.
But really, with more content, more quality links, I am sure you will rank again in no time.

 

[Getwhatchuwant]

We have a brand website, no adsense, no affiliation, just business.
Thanks for your opinion but I am still sceptic as I don't see any change after so much efforts.

its kind of silly to ask the question then isnt it? If you feel that way just scrap the site and start fresh. Im just saying we hung in there found other ways to drive traffic, built more white hat links and we have seen improvement no need to follow my example though

 

[idlabs]

It might be silly to ask, but I am looking for people who experienced that and get back the game.
I have worked hard other the last months and didn't see any important improvements, that's why I am sceptic when people telling me "continue your work", you cannot imagine how the thousands bad links have damaged my rankings.

I am suprised no one is telling me : "Go ahead and kick your competitors butt with big blasts", Google has changed the rules of the game and for the moment I am the loser but I used to be first. If my efforts are useless on my website, why do I risk doing that ?

 

[Bluearrow]

Did you try Google Disavow links tool ?

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1

 

[rugbyjack2005]

Hi mates, let me tell you my story :
I was ranking perfectly on competitive keywords with a site I made from A to Z. High-end webdesign, perfect code, clean netlinking during years, so my site went quickly on top of SERP for targeted keywords... Until someone starts a negative SEO campaigns which was against me and some others of my competitors. The guy who did that blast like 10'000 optimized anchors per domain. My website was 5 years old and had a good authority, a PR4, but for almost all my keywords it dropped from #1 or #2 to #8 or more, second and sometimes 3rd page. The websites with more authority than mine haven't been impacted but mine and some others competitors have been hit by this negative seo campaign.

First of all, I decided to not panic when I saw new poor links created back in december 2012. In january 2013, rankings starts to drop, and it continues until negative seo campaign stop. Since then, rankings increase a little bit but I think it's due to some of the links disappearing and negative seo campaign ending. During the last few months I tried everything : create new quality links, disavow this bad links, submit a reconsideration request. My work on it didn't change anything over the last 6 months.

So now, after many efforts, what I should do ? Stay here and continue to spend hours focusing on my website and spend time due to someone's bad intention ? This is what I did first but now I am thinking of blasting fresh and young websites which took advantage of this negative seo campaign, to get my website back to top. If you guys experienced that, I would be pleased to share with you and learn from yur advices, but please don't come here to say "focus on your own efforts" or something like that, it doesn't work !!!

Thanks

Do you actually know that you have been hit with negative SEO or are you just guessing because your rankings have dropped? Do you monitor your backlinks regularly and suddenly 10k exact match links suddenly appeared that you didn't create or what? No offence bt dropping from 1 to 8 or even to the 2nd or 3rd page sounds like pretty rubbish negative SEO to me. It sounds like you have just dropped in the rankings... If I was going to do negative SEO on someone and get them hit by penguin, I would blast them out of top 100 results no problem otherwise there is no point, you're just building links for a competitor which they will then just pad out with generic anchor links.

I would analyse your links properly and understand what is going on. If you are hit with negative SEO, spend time adding more broad match and generic anchors where required...

 

[idlabs]

Did you try Google Disavow links tool ?

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1

Please read the thread before posting your answer :

During the last few months I tried everything : create new quality links, disavow this bad links, submit a reconsideration request.

 

[ciganluk]

Bro I got the SAME EXACT thing happening currenly...I just got hit with 25k backlinks over a few days...goddamn!!!!

 

[*zap*]

Myself I would use htaccess to 301 the links away from mydomain
If it works to boost a domain then it should also redirect the penalties away

 

[verilix]

If it's damaged irreparably, then 301 it to the guy that did it to you. Then make a new site. Otherwise, keep at it. It is possible to return.

 

[idlabs]

Do you actually know that you have been hit with negative SEO or are you just guessing because your rankings have dropped?

Yes I know and I do monitor frequently backlinks.

 

[idlabs]

Bro I got the SAME EXACT thing happening currenly...I just got hit with 25k backlinks over a few days...goddamn!!!!

I can do 301 redirects for incoming links on specific pages, but not the domain as it's a brand domain name, it's like if i have to change from mybrand.com to mynewbrandcauseofnseo.com for me it has no sense.

 

[idlabs]

Myself I would use htaccess to 301 the links away from mydomain
If it works to boost a domain then it should also redirect the penalties away

Thanks but as I explained previously I cannot create a new domain or 301 my current domain name as I have a brand website.

 

[Getwhatchuwant]

It might be silly to ask, but I am looking for people who experienced that and get back the game.
I have worked hard other the last months and didn't see any important improvements, that's why I am sceptic when people telling me "continue your work", you cannot imagine how the thousands bad links have damaged my rankings.

I am suprised no one is telling me : "Go ahead and kick your competitors butt with big blasts", Google has changed the rules of the game and for the moment I am the loser but I used to be first. If my efforts are useless on my website, why do I risk doing that ?

Well I am one of those people and my rankings werent just a drop from 1 to 10 or even 20, it was from 1 to 500+ over time we improved, took 6 months + though, it wasn't easy, continuous white hat link building, starting an affiliate program, more aggressive on Facebook etc.. Now we are doing fine but the 1st couple of months were a struggle.

Sure you could blast your competition but if you are wrong about who did it then you attacked an innocent person and you may have started an unnecessary war. On top of that you could focus that energy and effort into creating a new site or recovering the old one.

 

[Wilson Grant Fisk]

So somebody f*cked you over so now you want to f*ck up others peoples sites ?

Unless you know for sure who did this to you, don't go down that path.

 

[ciganluk]

I can do 301 redirects for incoming links on specific pages, but not the domain as it's a brand domain name, it's like if i have to change from mybrand.com to mynewbrandcauseofnseo.com for me it has no sense.

Exactly what's the point? Starting from scratch......white hat....just to get targeted again.....

 

[idlabs]

Thanks for your opinion guys, I will follow the general advice and do not blast competitors, although I really would like to.
I will continue to do white hat link building and see it it improves.