Why SEOs Engaging in Negative SEO Deserve to be Outted

Negative SEO has been getting more and more buzz lately. Despite years of Google insisting that there is nothing a competitor can do to hurt your site, good SEOs know that is a bunch of crap. While some negative SEO campaigns are little more than competitors buying loads of sketchy links and pointing it to your site, some are a lot more sophisticated than that (but that is a post for another day!) While negative SEO has been a dirty little secret for a couple of years now – and yes, some very well respected SEOs who claim to be completely white hat HAVE engaged in negative SEO against their competitors – the number of websites caught up in Google’s aggressive updates this year who had been victims (or claim to be victims due to their own SEO screw ups) of negative SEO has gone up dramatically. And of course, some of those SEOs are doing it simply because their own SEO can’t compete with that of their (or their client’s) competitors, and they believe they won't be caught. And a word to the wise, if you think you won't leave a footprint behind your negative SEO campaign, think again. Throw into the whole negative SEO arena the fact that Matt Cutts commented at SMX Advanced about allowing webmasters to disavow links to combat people pointing bad links to competitor’s sites, and then Bing actually launching their own disavow link tool, it is a real problem not just affecting the most competitive spaces (which was where it was most often seen in years past) but in less competitive spaces too. Yes, even spaces where a halfass skilled SEO should be able to get the job done without resorting to a negative SEO campaign are getting hit. But really, targeting a negative SEO campaign against a competitor as not much above someone hacking a website, database or Wordpress blog or adding spyware to trigger an unsafe site warning. Those doing negative SEO are the sleazy used car salesman of the industry and are lower than pond scum. Just because someone can’t cut it in the market for themselves or their clients doesn’t mean they have the right to screw over some innocent webmasters. Basically, they aren’t real SEOs but merely the scourge of the industry that gives the good SEOs a bad name. Cleaning up from a negative SEO campaign, if you are unfortunate enough to be targeted, is a real challenge and will have you cursing every SEO who has ever done it. If you can even manage to contact sites where links are pointed at you, chances are it will cost you a pretty penny to get them removed – if you can get them removed at all. And even worse if the links are from hacked Wordpress blogs, forums or CMS sites because people will also assume you are engaged in hacking. And an unsafe warning for spyware? That can have a huge detrimental effect to your website, because getting it out of an unsafe site purgatory with Google or antivirus companies can be a real pain in the ass to do, and it usually cannot be fixed immediately, even if you happen to notice it right away. And in case you are wondering, negative SEO can go well beyond someone just buying a load of spammy links and having them point to your site. Many in the search industry have a policy of not outing spammers, or at the very least, only outing big brands for spamming. But do those engaging in negative SEO really deserve to be protected by the code of silence? Or should they be strung up by their heels if they get caught? I know I speak for many when I say throw any and all SEOs engaging in negative SEO under the bus (even though I also know some of them have also participated in that very thing for some of their clients, but I digress.) If someone is willing to engage in such high risk practices that screw over a competitor, they deserve to be outed so long as there is proof – just as Josh Davis managed to unearth Iacquire was behind a paid link campaign, webmasters have definitely been able to identify those behind some negative SEO campaigns. And those people deserve to be outted as the scum they are. What do you think? Have you been able to identify parties behind a negative SEO campaign targeting you or a client and were any of them notable names/companies in the SEO industry? And do you think those involved in negative SEO should be outted or have you outted them somewhere?