Negative SEO
Negative SEO is the method of not trying to increase your site’s standing directly, but to tear down the competition through essentially attacking their sites.
Negative SEO is accomplished through purchasing an abundance of spammy links (by the thousands) and pointing them all toward your competitors. Doing this will ultimately turn Google’s attention toward your adversary and penalize them accordingly. The results can be absolutely devastating.
While this strategy certainly does still work, I will admit this practice is a bit shady. While there is really no “ethical” way to take this approach, your perspective can be shifted in how you view the competition. Instead of viewing other sites as rivals, why not try to develop something of a working relationship? Try to gain links from these sites, acquire guest posts, and so forth. Additionally, much like private blog networks, it would seem that your time could be much better spent focusing on how to positively impact your own business instead of just trying to bring down others.
The bottom line here is that black hat SEO campaigns still work. But for how long? That depends on how good you are at not leaving any breadcrumbs. But seeing how much work can go into deceiving Google, it would certainly seem that you are better off just playing by the rules, and finding genuine and reliable ways to increase your site’s ranking. Do you want to be constantly looking over your should to see if Google is hot on your heels?
What are your thoughts on black hat SEO? Do you think any methods are worth implementing, or is it better to just abide by the rules?
