Off-Page SEO & Links

Negative SEO

Quick Definition

Negative SEO is the practice of deliberately harming a competitor's rankings by directing spammy links, scraping content, or other manipulation.

In context

Google's algorithms now ignore most negative SEO attacks automatically. Disavow only when there's clear evidence of an attack and ranking impact. Most negative SEO panic is overblown.

Have a question this didn't answer?

Book a free 60-minute strategy call. We'll explain how this concept applies to your specific situation.

Book a Free Call Browse 50+ Detailed Answers

Related terms

Toxic Backlink

A toxic backlink is one that could potentially harm rankings — links from spam sites, link farms, hacked sites, or sites unrelated to your industry.

Link Insertion (Niche Edits)

Link insertion is the practice of adding a backlink to an already-published, indexed article on a third-party site — typically negotiated with the site owner, sometimes paid.

Co-Citation

Co-citation occurs when two sites are mentioned in the same article without linking to each other, signalling topical association to search engines.

Trust Flow

Trust Flow is Majestic's 0–100 metric measuring the quality of links pointing to a page or site, based on proximity to trusted seed sites.

Broken Link Building

Broken link building finds dead links on relevant sites and offers your content as a replacement.

PageRank

PageRank is Google's original link analysis algorithm that estimates page importance based on the quantity and quality of inbound links.

Back to all terms