Last Updated on September 17, 2022 by Muhammad Tabish
Negative SEO: 4 Reasons: Online businesses are very convenient. One can simply work from home and monitor the growth of his or her business. Due to this convenience, the number of online businesses has multiplied in the past years. If you sell products or services online, search engine visibility is a valuable competitive advantage.
However, a crucial issue called “Negative SEO” is rising as a counterproductive force, as it is used for the sole purpose of attacking competitors’ rankings in the SERPs. In this article, you will find out why you shouldn’t venture into this kind of practice. 🙁
Why Negative SEO Is Bad Business Practice
1. Facing penalties and lawsuits.
Nothing is more time-consuming, expensive, and counterproductive than having to show up in court and carry on with legal proceedings should your competitor sue you for hacking his site or affecting it with a virus attack.
Instead of constantly updating one’s skills to create quality goods and services for your customers, indulgence in negative SEO does the opposite. It veers your business away from your customers by becoming an entity that seems bent on attacking other businesses, instead of simply improving customer satisfaction.
Keep in mind that business owners are meant to work, improve and spend time with their businesses — not the courtroom.
2. Killing the business environment.
There are three worrisome motivations behind the use of Negative SEOs, namely political, personal, and financial. These three passionate factors could escalate into a full-blown online war that could directly affect the business environment.
If all online businesses resorted to believing their own biases and attacking all competitors just to remain on top, the purpose of having a budding online business for one’s personal convenience is clearly defeated.
3. Negative SEO practitioners are against socially-responsible business ethics.
A business loses its meaning once it starts devoting its time to bringing down competitors instead of improving its offers to the consumers. Due to the advent of negative SEO, some businesses with a strong online presence now have to invest in avoiding these attacks. 🙂
Resorting to this behavior just for the sake of being on top will cause a divide amongst consumers, namely the pro and anti. But owners should also consider those in the middle since consumer apathy is a dangerous thing. With the vast amount of information on the Internet, consumers would opt to find more peaceful alternatives than participate and go through the ongoing wars between businesses.
4. Negative SEO practitioners lose all credibility and opportunity to get future clients when they get caught.
When an SEO practitioner gets caught doing negative SEO, they not only lose all their credibility as a professional SEO practitioner but they may also lose potential clients in the future.
Having branded as someone practicing negative SEO is not something an SEO practitioner would want in his/her portfolio. Most online business owners who would want to engage in using SEO to further increase their revenue wouldn’t want their company’s name tied up with a “delinquent”. Most often, they would reject and find SEOs with a clean slate instead.
MY FINAL ADVICE:
If you are thinking about engaging in practicing negative SEO, you should reconsider and remember the consequences listed above. We all know that gaining an advantage against competitors can you bring you to the top spot, but it would not be as fulfilling if success is achieved the wrong way.
So what are your thoughts regarding negative SEO? Feel free to discuss it with your fellow readers below. 🙂
I’m Mohammad Tabish Blogger and a Professional web developer SEO Consultant and Freelancer. I am from Pakistan. I started My first blog (BlogRankSeo) in 2016 and then, and I have never looked back. I Have managed lots of blogs.
