The concept and practice of “negative SEO”-using malicious tactics to get a website de-valued in search engine results-is nothing new, but has gained a lot of attention recently due to Google’s failure to provide a definitive answer as to whether or not negative SEO really works. According to Google’s Matt Cuts, negative SEO is rare, however, he does not deny that it can be successful.

“People talk about negative SEO far more than people actually attempt it, because you’re never quite sure what effect (say) pointing some links to a site might have-it might help the site instead of hurting it-plus it’s typically a better use of your time to develop your own site,” Cutts advises.

While we certainly agree that focusing on your own website and marketing is ultimately more effective than trying to harm competitors, we cannot overlook the fact that negative SEO can (and does) happen, and probably more frequently than Google cares to admit. It’s hard to tell if negative SEO proves successful for companies who do choose to engage in such cutthroat tactics, but online reports by webmasters claiming they were victimized are rampant. Even more telling: there are companies who offer negative SEO as a service, promising millions of harmful, spammy links pointed at your competitor’s domain for a low, one-time charge. (You can Google that at your own risk.)

To that end, it’s always smart to monitor your links closely, and doing so on a regular basis could help you identify any sudden changes in the number of inbound links.

Here are 4 free tools to help you analyze your links:

 

1. Google Webmaster Tools

A staple of any webmaster or SEO, Google Webmaster Tools analyzes the sites that are linking to yours. Per Google’s guidelines, “the quantity, quality and relevance of links influences your ranking. The sites that link to your can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity.”

 

 

2. Backlink Watch

Backlink Watch gives you a fairly detailed inbound links report for your site, and includes PageRank (PR) data, the number of outbound links coming from each website linking to you, and if those links contain the “nofollow” attribute. Very useful for pulling together a lot of information about your links quickly.

 

 

3. Moz Open Site Explorer

Similarly, Open Site Explorer by Moz helps you analyze your backlinks and assigns an Authority rating for your domain based on the tool’s findings. What we really like about this tool is that it lets you compare your link metrics against up to 4 other sites at a time-very useful for competitive analysis!

4. Bad Neighborhood Link Checker

Bad Neighborhood’s Text Link Checker Tool will scan the links on your website to check and see if they are linking to any “bad neighborhoods.” A bad neighborhood is defined by Google as a site (or group of sites) that are of low-quality, spam-like content of little value to users, identifiable by over-optimization and dubious linking practices.

 

The sobering truth is, anything controlled by an algorithm-like search results-can be gamed, and there will always be someone out there who will try to take advantage, whether it’s a competitor looking to knock your top Google ranking down a few pegs, or just someone with an axe to grind. (Similarly and even more common is negative social marketing-the practice of placing bad reviews and ratings with the intent to harm business.)

We always advocate for SEO best practices, and steer clients away from black-hat (and gray-hat) tactics that could get them penalized by Google. Positive SEO, high-quality content, building community through social media, monitoring ratings and reviews, optimizing for the user and not just the search engine-these are all elements of the holistic approach to SEO that Web Ad.vantage offers. We also offer an affordable SEO Audit that can help uncover any negative SEO practices used against your site.