How to buy websites - Learn from a seasoned veteran

My definition of negative SEO is to promote your competitors so much, that the google algorithm deems the promotional techniques to be overkill, and unnatural.  When Google senses these signals, the site in question is at risk for a serious ranking demotion in the SERPs.

This has been talked about for many years, and it really has never been a serious problem (until now).  The biggest misconception is that one of your competitors will invest time, energy and money to over-optimize your site so that google will devalue the trust of your site, and your rankings.

When this happens, google will send you a message to your webmaster tools account.  The message is like this :

Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://-yourdomain-.com/

Shortly after you get this message, you will get another one like this :

http://-yourdomain-.com/: Big traffic change for top URL

I’ve received two of these messages for sites that I purchased.  I never solicit links for my sites, since I only buy sites that have a solid foundation, and don’t require any backlinking.  Their popularity is without questions, legitimate.

At any rate, I can only assume that my competitors have sabotaged my site with negative SEO.  This is a dog-eat-dog type of business and google had pre-anounced the “over optimization” algorithm two or three months prior to the penguin update.

Here’s what google expects you to do :

1. Find out where your shady backlinks are
2. Have them removed
3. Apply for a re-inclusion request

Okay ..  For one thing, I have never purchased links, I have never solicited links and I have never done reciprocal linking.   Where do I start ?

Google Webmaster Tools tells me which domains link to my site.  There are roughly 15,000 links.  Keep in mind, these sites (that are linking to me) are NOT MY SITES !  They link to me and I don’t have any access to have these links removed.  Even if I was to go through each of these, and obtain contact details for each of the site owners, the links in question are from spammy sites, and there is little chance I will even get through to the site owner, nevermind convince him to remove the link to my site.  This is an enormous task.

I’ll be the first to admit that negative SEO is probably not worth going after unless :

1. You rank #3 for a very competitive term
2. You want the #1 position since the traffic difference is HUGE
3. You over optimize / gather tons of spammy links for the #1 and #2 competitors
4. Wait for the google algo to kick in
5. Voila #1

It is completely rediculous to do negative SEO for any other reason.  Rest assured, some smart and p-o’d SEOs are taking this on right now just to make a point, even if it is rediculous.

I am predicting that sites like facebook, amazon or ebay will be a target of negative SEO simply to prove that a competitor can harm you, if they invest the effort, time and money.

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