How to safeguard against negative SEO for new sites?

[TheSEOGuy1]

Hi Mozers!! I have a question. The ugly tools for blog commenting etc are still out there, my question is what if your competitor notices you that you are new to the business and they start building 20,000+ backlinks to your new site, and they too with one exact match anchor text that you are targeting.

I know we can disavow tool, but I guess that would be too late?

What are your thoughts? What will be the solution the above case scenario?

[FedeEinhorn]

Hey,

Those creating the links will need to pay for them, or spend a lot of time creating those links to actually hurt you. Negative SEO, although very well known, is not that common, you can't know for sure that the site is going to be hurt, the negative SEO can actually do you a favor.

Just keep an eye on your link profile, see patterns, and if you start seeing new links (either using Moz Just-Discovered or Google's Latest Links), if you notice they are spam, just disavow the domains. Most likely, if a Website doesn't protect itself from spam you probably don't want a link from them even if it was naturally earned.

Hope that helped!

[MoosaHemani]

Although negative SEO is not common may be because he/she never know if it is really going to work or not because sometimes it really didn’t work! The best idea is to keep a good track of your links and if you see that the link has not built by you or coming from a spammy resource that you have no idea then update your disavow file accordingly.

[DougRoberts]

Just to add to Moosa's reply, as well as monitoring your links for bad/spammy links one of the best ways to protect yourself is to promote your own website in an authentic/natural way and earn great editorially given from relevant, authoritative sites in your market/niche.

[KarlBantleman]

Google is very good at devaluing links nowadays so I wouldn't worry too much. If a company wants to conduct negative SEO against your website then they can't be a serious competitor because nobody in their right mind would waste time and money trying to get a competitors' website hit.

As Doug said, concentrate on creating some great content around your business/niche and then look at your outreach.