Negative SEO appears more real than ever after Penguin. However, not everything you call "Negative SEO" really is negative SEO. Is it possible to identify negative SEO campaigns and what can you do to minimise the damage?

1. Myths and Reality
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2. @irishwonder BrightonSEO, April 2013

3.  Is Negative SEO Real?
 And should I really be worried?
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4.  Google has updated the text of a webmaster
answer in May 2012
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?
hl=en&answer=34449
“There's almost nothing a “Google works hard to prevent
competitor can do to harm other webmasters from being able
your ranking“ to harm your ranking”
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5. http://www.seobook.com/stop-questioning-negative-seo
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6. @irishwonder BrightonSEO, April 2013

7.  Another extremity…
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8.  Negative SEO is to blame for everything that
goes wrong
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9.  Self-inflicted
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10.  Self-inflicted
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11.  Self-inflicted
◦ Insecure plugins
◦ Incorrect redirects
◦ Robots errors
◦ Deindexing own site
◦ Duplicate content
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12.  Self-inflicted in Wordpress
◦ Indexable search results
 http://www.domain.com/search/buy+viagra
 http://www.domain.com/?s=buy+viagra
◦ Default robots.txt or no robots.txt
◦ Result: duplicate content + can be indexed for any
sketchy stuff
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13. @irishwonder BrightonSEO, April 2013

14.  Can
I protect myself from
negative SEO?
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15.  No, sorry
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16.  But you can make it economically unviable to
run a negative SEO campaign against your
site
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17. @irishwonder BrightonSEO, April 2013

18.  Watch your anchor texts
Bonus: How to spot a possible negative SEO campaign using MajesticSEO:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-use-majesticseo-to-identify-a-possible
-negative-seo-campaign-by-irish-wonder/56921/
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19.  Watch your links
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20.  Negative SEO is real
 So is people’s stupidity and laziness
 Avoid mistakes that can make a negative SEO
campaign against you easier
 Make it economically unviable to run a
negative campaign against your site
@irishwonder BrightonSEO, April 2013

21.  Oh, and add this to your Wordpress site’s
robots.txt:
◦ Disallow: /search/
◦ Disallow: /*?s=
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Who am I:
• Independent SEO consultant at
irishwonder.com
• CMO of ContentMango.com
• Chief SEO Scientist at SearchWorks.eu
@irishwonder BrightonSEO, April 2013