Google’s John Mueller Offers Advice To Handle Negative SEO Attacks

Negative SEO attacks, like when a competitor builds spammy links to your domain, can be really frustrating. But luckily, Google Search Advocate John Mueller has an easy way to deal with them.

Mueller replies to a Reddit thread with details about this topic. In the SEO forum, an individual believes they may be the target of a negative SEO campaign and asks for advice.

So, keep reading to know what Google’s John Mueller says about this topic. Then, you can take full advantage of this to solve negative SEO attacks when facing.

19 Black Hat SEO techniques you need to avoid

How does John Address Negative SEO attacks?

Mueller’s advice is to try and ignore the problem. And that’s true what he said.

Here’s his full reply:

“I’d just ignore them.

Think of it this way, if your competitors are competent, they won’t build links for you. If your competitors are incompetent, the links won’t have any effect.”

A competitor that’s good enough to build links that Google will recognize is probably not going to waste its time on negative SEO attacks.

Mueller’s response is concise and to the point. A competitor good enough to build links that Google will recognize will probably not waste their time on negative SEO attacks.

So, why would someone build links to the website of a competitor?

There are a few reasons someone might build links to a competitor’s site. They may be trying to increase their ranking in the search engines by piggybacking off their competitor’s good reputation. Or, they could be trying to damage their competitor’s ranking by flooding their site with low-quality links.

However, Google has confirmed that link bombing attempts won’t negatively affect a site’s ranking, so website owners and SEOs can safely ignore these attacks.

Negative SEO is a topic that has come up now and then, and with the number of search updates rolled out in recent years, it’s worth revisiting Google’s guidance on the matter.

Besides, Mueller has given the same advice in the Reddit thread as he did in the past. He’s also said that if you’re worried about negative SEO, you shouldn’t be hurry to use the disavow tool.

Google’s disavow tool is more for recovering from manual action penalties than for ignoring spammy links.

According to a poll on Twitter earlier this year, most SEO professionals don’t use the disavow tool on spammy links, instead opting to trust Google to deal with them automatically.

However, there’s nothing wrong with using the disavow tool if it makes you feel comfortable. If you’re unsure whether or not to use the disavow tool, consider your comfort level – if you’re worried about spammy links, go ahead and use the tool. Otherwise, you can trust Google to take care of them.

Conclusion

Google’s John Mueller has a wealth of SEO knowledge and is willing to share it with people who are also willing to listen. There are a lot of debates around the topic of Negative SEO attacks and how to handle them, and John Mueller advises that the first step is to try and ignore the problem. This is because Google has confirmed that link bombing attempts won’t negatively affect a site’s ranking, so website owners and SEOs can safely ignore these attacks.

So, if you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to contact us anytime at EverRanks. Thank you for reading and we are always excited by the feedback we receive from our readers.

8 Confirmed Factors Affect your Google Ranking