What's the chances of a negative SEO campaign on your competitor backfiring and helping them with the thousands of junk links etc?
I've heard that G doesn't penalize you for unnatural links because of the possibility of negative SEO but it's hard to believe that they don't implement something for these spammy scrapebox links all over blogs, etc...
Any thoughts?
PS: Since I seem to be getting a lot of "that's unethical" type of replies on this thread (kind of ironic on a blackhat forum) I'm editing this post to let you know I have no intentions of doing negative seo. I target micro niches that require nothing like that to rank over my competition (if u can even call it competition). All I was looking for was other peoples experience with this subject, not tips on how to wreck competitors lmao.
You would have to analyze the competition. Meaning that while I don't do negative SEO its very real. In looking at link profiles and analyzing sites that have been penalized vs sites that have not, and keeping on the pulse of the algos, you can see what a link "profile" looks like for sites that are penalized.
So then you could apply the same logic, and analyze the competitor link profile and figure out what it would take to tilt if off balance to the degree that it looks like a site that got penalized.
However you will likley, at least short term, help a lot of your competitors so you would in theory want to know what it would take to achieve your goal, else your hurting your self more then anyone. I suppose you could negatively apply Seth Godins "the dip" in this case.
However all the theory aside, as mentioned above you are really better off to just try and out rank your competitors. By the time you dive into trying to negative seo them, if you understand it enough to succeed and have the resources enough to succeed, you could at the same time apply that same effort to just making a positive influence on your own stuff.
Its sort of like the person who tries to avoid the boss all day at work and look busy but get nothing done, if they just put the same effort into working on something productive, everyone wins and they always have a job.
I certainly study negative SEO as its a means to understand what not to do and when you know what not to do you can look at a site that is suceeded and see what to do and when you understand both sides your able to make smarter decisions about positive forward progress.
Not to mention the "authority" of the domain that a url is on, can change the game all over the map. So I always like to keep tabs on negative SEO, but I use the knowledge as a means of getting a better total understanding of what works and what doesn't work in the marketplace.
My 2 cents.