With so many issues facing webmasters these days, it is more important than ever to ensure that security is a top focus. Search engine optimization isn’t just a way to guarantee better search rankings and more traffic, but it’s also essential to protect your website from the negative effects that search engine algorithms can inflict on you. Negative SEO is a common term for actions or effects that can negatively influence your search engine rankings and visibility; many people fail to take into account all the different ways that this might occur. In the following article, we’ll discuss a few simple ways to protect your website from negative SEO and guarantee more stable results for the future.

Secure Your Website

The most common way that negative SEO impacts websites without any overt action on the part of the webmaster is through security exploits. A hacker may decide one day to break into your website if security is vulnerable, installing malware and other scripts that can benefit them but harm you. Most of these instances are used to generate some form of covert revenue through your website – unbeknownst to you. Unfortunately, search engines can detect these installations and will perceive your website as a malicious entity. This can lead to reduced visibility in search engines and a serious case of negative SEO. The best way to avoid this is to frequently change your passwords, scan any computers used to access the website for viruses and malware on a regular basis, and always keeping your plugins updated.

Verify Your Reputation Through Social Media

Pinging search engines with positive SEO isn’t the only way to protect yourself from malicious intent: you can also use social media! In this day and age, an established social media presence can be a great way to enhance your traditional SEO efforts. Not only will active social media profiles drive more traffic to your website, but your brand will also have additional SEO clout spread across multiple entities other than your website. Because there is no way that a hacker can implement negative SEO tactics on a social media profile, you will always have several great portals that indirectly drive traffic to your website.

Build Large Amounts of Content

The simple fact is that hackers disproportionately target websites with smaller amounts of content when it comes to negative SEO tactics. If your website has just a few pages or pieces of content, then it is far more susceptible. If just a few pages are infected on your website and you have ample content, then pinging search engines becomes much more difficult with a higher percentage of your pages impacted. There is also a tendency for search engines for view sites with less content as “spammier” off the bat, anyway. These factors leave us with only one option in the fight against negative SEO: produce more content to balance out any risks.

Conclusion

Negative SEO can strike when we least expect it – sometimes through our own actions, but often through others. You can minimize the likelihood of the unexpected by securing your website/computer, boosting your online reputation by developing social media and by producing large amounts of content on your website.