Punishment from link spam

I'm sure this is not a new thought so please enlighten me on the topic.

Wondering whats to stop someone from link spamming a competitor's website in the same niche to drop their SERP in the long run??? I mean if i'm ranked, lets say, 3 for a given keyword. it's probably a lot easier to build garbage links to drop the ranking of the 2 sites above me then it is to build quality links for myself to get ahead.

Thanks for the info! just a thought.

Here since 2011? Is this a joke I don't get?

If you do that, another competitor's site will take his place, then another, then another, you will just be taking them down again and again. work on your own site's SEO and reach that #1 spot.

GiorgioB said:

If you do that, another competitor's site will take his place, then another, then another, you will just be taking them down again and again. work on your own site's SEO and reach that #1 spot.

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I understand the logic behind that. Just wondering if there is any system in place to stop something like that from occurring. I mean you can seriously ruin some businesses if that were the case.

Have solid on-site SEO (plenty of free online tools and tricks for link building), and a good amount of authoritative backlinks and it won't be an issue.

If you focus on quality content and uniqueness, then getting authority backed links, you won't have to worry about negative SEO against you. And by the time you set your focus to solely that, you won't have to perform negative SEO against others ahead of you because you'll be gaining in ranks and it wouldn't be time effective.

If they build spam links there ranking will get dropped and will bounce back again. The time of drop will be very less and in that time its not certain that your site or site under him will come first. These things made negative SEO unpopular.
If you do negative SEO for your competitor's site they won't do that with your's?
As all said you can focus on your own site.

If your site affected by negative SEO you can use disavow tool to remove bad links and inform google about that.