Brand Name Cratering - possible N-SEO or Black Hat Attacks

[Dr-Pete]

If you are fighting a war, I'm not sure you'll win this war this particular way. There is not tool (including Google) that can give you link data in real-time (or even in a couple of days), so you'll end up acting late and always in a reactionary way. You'll have to cut as you go, and you'll always be a step behind, if they keep up the attack.

Google will often discount these links over time (unfortunately, it just takes them time to catch up), but your client's efforts may be better spent building a stronger link profile that can withstand attacks like this, even if it means some short-term pain. Otherwise, I fear this is a battle you'll keep fighting for months.

Unfortunately, the keyword-heavy brand name makes life a little tougher, because Google is more likely to see branded anchor text as suspicious (as opposed to having a brand name that isn't a general search term, like "Moz"). It may help to make sure the client's brand is strongly established in social channels and other profiles (including Google+). Let Google know this is associated with a brand, and you're not just keyword-stuffing (which may be how it appears to them, because of these targeted links).

[SBIM-Jake]

Hi Dr. Meyers,

Thanks again for the thoughtful answers.

I wanted to share our final findings about this matter with the rest of the community.  It turns out that our client did face a pretty brutal N-SEO attack.  They were targeted with over 300 bad links (and still counting) in a period of 3.5 months. The links were targeted at sections of the brand name in an effort to confuse Google, and cause damage to brand name in search results.  As a result several pages of the website are still gone from the search results (in relation to brand name searches).  And this causes a fake ROR report to continue showing at the top of the search results when you search for our client's brand name (and someone also has built positive links to this ROR report).

The final question to be answered was this:  what should be done about it?  Dr. Meyers was right that this is not a war that our client could win.  The only thing the client could try was to "build up the positive link profile to counter the bad links." Unfortunately, our client does not believe in chasing Google's algo changes around.  Therefore they won't spend money on link building strategies (and I don't disagree with this).

During this process I learned a lot about N-SEO and the various types of people involved in it.  And it is not "very rare" like Google or the "just keep creating quality content" crowd want everyone to believe.  Here is very good (and I believe well researched) article about what is actually going on: web master world. com/ google/4677866. htm  And while we did not experience this N-SEO technique, here was a very good article on link injection: site olytics. com / black-hat-seo-technique-demystified/

Bottom line:  your average local small plumbing business, tire store, landscape company, etc., can be easily decimated in the search rankings in 2-4 weeks. And do most small companies like that have the resources to pay someone to start building positive link profiles to try and counter the attack?  The answer for most small businesses is No.

Our client seems to think that the only way to really counter this garbage is force Google to do the right thing, via legislation. By the "right thing" he means this:  giving all companies on the Internet a "Bill of Rights" for their virtual storefront.  One of the Rights should be that the small business can determine what geography can be allowed to impact their search results.  99% of small businesses in the United States don't sell anything internationally.  Why should they then be penalized because someone posts garbage links on penalized servers in Europe, China, Mexico, etc.?  If they set their Webmaster Tools geo-target to "Illinois" or the "United States" then only links from servers in those areas should be allowed to affect their rankings (positive or negative).  Furthermore, if someone does find a way to institute a N-SEO attack from within the United States against your brand you would then have legal recourse to immediately do something about it.  It would not even require most small businesses to file a TRO/lawsuit/injunction. Most of it could be handled directly with the handful of U.S. hosting companies.  Would this idea stop all N-Seo attacks?  Of course not. But the situation would at least be manageable in your own country.  Furthermore, I think it would take the wind out of the sails of many N-SEO people if much of their cheap foreign labor was rendered useless (as U.S. hosting companies could be required to block foreign IPs that are caught posting garbage more than 1 time).  I think the reason a lot of people employee N-SEO people now is because it is easy, and they can't get caught. Make it more difficult and only the hardened criminals are going to continue with it.

Our client has no resolution, but hopefully something in here helps a small business out there.

Jake