Is this negative SEO? Should I disavow these links?

[DemiGR]

We have been doing our own internal link building for the last year and getting nice backlinks.  As of the last few days, ahrefs is showing a lot of new links that seem very spammy.  We have not hired anyone to do link building for us, and these are all being created on these sites under the same user name.  There is a good amount of them popping up, and I fear we will be subjected to a google pentalty for unnatural links if its not addressed.

My first question is, am I correct thinking this is negative seo, and not some random sites that picked up our content and is going across their affiliate websites?

If so, then should I preemptively disavow all these links?  Are there any good ways to stop this? How can I track who is placing these garbage links? Here are some examples of these bad links. I know I can find the webmaster via a whois but I think that really wont get me anywhere, but I could be wrong.

Here are some examples of the links that started popping up yesterday and today.

http://pligg-cms.info/story.php?title=student-loan-debt-relief
http://www.sharklinks.info/story.php?title=-student-loan-consolidation-options
http://factson37.com/story.php?title=student-loan-debt-forgiveness-website
http://social-marker.info/story.php?title=-student-loan-debt-forgiveness
http://makingbookmarks.info/story.php?title=-student-loan-consolidation-options
http://bookmarkingforseo.com/story.php?title=top-student-loan-consolidation-options
http://jadelinks.info/story.php?title=-student-loan-consolidation-options

There are quite a bit more and they don't seem to be stopping.  All of them look pretty much identical to this.

Thoughts?

[Ray-pp]

Hi DemiGR,

At very first glance I notice the Pligg CMS on your backlink list. This CMS is a highly targeted CMS by automated backlink tools, like Xrumer.

Those links are most definitely spam or spam quality.

Is this Negative SEO? I'm not sure it was done intentionally by a competitor, but this is what Google's Matt Cutts says about that:

"If you are at all worried about someone trying to do negative SEO or it looks like there's some weird bot that's building up a bunch of links to your site and you have no idea where it came from, that's the perfect time to use disavow as well," Cutts said.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2309486/Matt-Cutts-Use-the-Link-Disavow-Tool-Even-if-Your-Site-Hasnt-Been-Penalized

[DemiGR]

Any advice on how to get this to stop? Seems like it could be a never ending problem that will take a lot of time to combat if it doesn't stop.

[Ray-pp]

Here are my thoughts, I encourage others to add their own experiences and advice as well:

• I assume negative SEO will always exist. If my SEO is successful, someone will eventually come by and try to bring that success down and Negative SEO is one strategy to do just that.

• Google understands Negative SEO exists and they do simply ignore certain links and web properties. I'm confident they work to mitigate Negative SEO impact

• How organized is the Negative SEO? Is a competitor targeting certain terms they are trying to drag me down for? If not, then it may not even be effective

• Use your favorite tool to get a huge spreadsheet of spammy backlinks. Then use the file upload feature to bulk disavow all the domains you do not wish to have backlinks from.

[HashtagHustler]

Demi,

I am running into a very similar problem with my website, and after coming across the same Matt Cutts video as the one linked above I have begun a pruning campaign of my own. A plethora of the links that are coming to my website are all asking for 5$ for my link to removed. I haven't paid for anything, yet, and obviously would prefer not to, but drastic times call for drastic measures.

In one of my posts a few weeks ago EGOL, a member on every single SEO board ever made (literally), said:

"I don't trust having Google do stuff for me that I could do myself, because plenty of times Google says how they are gonna do things and then change their mind without tellin' anybody."

That says it all right there. At the time we were talking about redirects, which is slightly different then this, but still. The more that you can do on your own the better. Not only will it be immediate, but it will effect all search engines, not just Google. Even the Disavow Tool suggests contacting the webmaster and asking to be removed. The Disavow Tool is a very advanced dangerous tool, that used incorrectly, can harm your site.

Marie Haynes, one of the "penalty experts" around in the SEO world wrote a great article on the Disavow Tool. Here it is below.You can also find here around these boards if you're lucky! It's rumored she has an affinity for Penguins and Pandas, but that's just water cooler talk.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2330944/7-Things-You-May-Not-Know-About-Googles-Disavow-Tool

Anyway, I think the disavow tool is great FOR GOOGLE, but use it carefully and sparingly, and pretty much as a last resort. Ray-pp brought up some good points about Google ignoring some of the links, and I too am confident in their ability to weed through the jungle of negative SEO. There is also "link rot" which is the concept that over time a link that is left alone will slowly wither and die a painful death and stop hurting you as much as it is.

Depending on how deep the spam runs, it may be worth calling in some 3rd party SEO experts who deal with penalty analysis, and spam. Depending on the size of your website and just how much they are hurting you, it's always worth getting a second opinion.

Hope that helps!

[Ray-pp]

"but use it carefully and sparingly"

Absolutely, this is how most should approach the disavow tool. With that said, there are some obvious link farms and spam directories that, if you're experiencing a problems with, can be domain disavowed without much worry.

+1 to Hashtaghustler for expanding on a fundamental piece of the disavow tool

[DemiGR]

Thanks for the great replies everyone.  Its much appreciated.

Another question or something interesting I just noticed is that almost all of these bad links are nofollow, which kind of defeats the purpose of doing negative SEO, no? So either the person doing the negative SEO is really lost, or there is some kind of bot scraping info and reposting it over a network of websites?

Any idea why these would be nofollow links? Only three of the links are dofollow

[Ray-pp]

Most spammy backlink related services, especially those created from Xrumer and similar services, say that they do their customers a service by giving them a diversified backlink portfolio full of both do-follow and no-follow backlinks.

Their reasoning is that by creating both link types they fool Google and make the backlink portfolio look more natural and effective. You'll also see them pitch that the link anchor texts will be full of both keyword rich and generic terms, again to look natural and fool Google.

Most services like this are configured this way and automated. Someone probably bought a backlink package and just let the 'seo' go wild.

And yes, this is most likely a bot creating these links.

[MarieHaynes]

I think this could be an attempt at negative SEO.  But whether or not the links will hurt you is hard to say.  I see all kinds of odd links that just randomly appear in some site profiles, but these look like they were made deliberately.  One other explanation that is not negative SEO is if someone at your company, or a well meaning friend has ever purchased a cheap link building plan.  I've seen links like these appear as the result of fiverr gigs or purchasing one of those "buy 1000 links for $100" type things.

Google says they're really good at determining whether negative SEO is happening and just not counting these links.  However, if this were my site, I'd probably disavow these once every 2-4 weeks just to be sure.  Make sure you disavow them on the domain level.

If it is a competitor who is using xrumer or something similar to pepper the web with links to you then hopefully it will stop when they decide to give up.  There's really no way to determine who is doing it though as these really are all most likely automated.

I think that anyone who is in a really competitive space like this needs to be monitoring for negative SEO regularly.  Again, I think in most cases it won't hurt you, but Google is certainly not perfect and I wouldn't take the chance.