Negative search engine optimization has surfaced as the latest attack of cyber-abuse and is a tactic that some unscrupulous firms use to kick competitors where it hurts online. Pascal Fintoni, head of e-business at The North East Regional Portal, reveals what to watch out for and how to prevent it.

Fintoni said:

One important element of SEO is building a link strategy - the more quality inbound links included throughout your site, the higher the search engine will rank it. A website peppered with lots of incoming links indicates a site that's well used and reliable, and if it has authoritative links from respected directories or even sites with a .gov.uk suffix, then so much the better.

Equally it is important to avoid link farms, which are random directories of links with no connection to one another. Excessive inclusion on these can get you blacklisted by the search engines. And this is where underhand tactics come into play - listing your competitor with as many link farms and other dubious directories makes them look badly behaved, and their punishment is losing their ranking position with the search engines.

So what can businesses do to ensure that competitors aren't mounting a negative SEO campaign against them? The only feasible defense is to meticulously monitor the website rankings and check who is linking to it. If you find any links that are questionable contact the website and firmly request for your link to be removed.

Like in the real world it's always best to treat others as you wish to be treated yourself.

[via n-e-life]