What is deposition and when can we deal with it?

If you read regularly blog SEOSki, then you already know quite a bit about SEO. The topic we are going to cover today is of particular curiosity and controversy. What are we talking about? About depositioning, which is also referred to as negative SEO. Wondering if this practice is legal? When is it even resorted to? What activities are involved? The answers to these questions, you will find in today's article. 

Deposition - what is it?

As is not difficult to guess, deposition is the opposite process to positioning. It is therefore not intended to raise the site's position in the search results, but to... to lower the ranking! Such actions are fully conscious and planned. They can be both carried out legally as well as not. In the first case - we ourselves want to lower our site's ranking, but do not want to completely remove it from Google's index. This is a rare situation. It is encountered when website owners end their cooperation with agencies with which they worked on the basis of the - positioning per effect. Sometimes the cancellation of such a service, is not equivalent to the exemption of the "effect" fee. Thus, in order to avoid the costs associated with a highly ranked site, owners decide to deposit the site. However, these are sporadic situations. In most cases, deposition is done by competitors - directly or 'through the hands' of hired individuals. 

Deposition - acts of unfair competition

For a long time, Google claimed that it was impossible to negatively affect a page's position in the SERPs. Over time, however, the Californian giant itself has admitted that, in extreme cases, sabotaging the actions of competitors does have an effect. The desire to overtake business competitors in search results causes some to resort to unambiguously morally reprehensible actions. Why? Because they are often far easier (and cheaper) than ... positioning your own website. 

How do you deposit? On-site methods

We would like to point out at the beginning of this section of the article that it is purely educational in nature. we do not support the actions outlined belowand the deposition of a site you do not own is simply another manifestation of the phenomenon of black PR-u. 

Just as we divide SEO into on-site and off-site, deposition activities can also be grouped in this way. On-site are all activities which directly affect a party. These include addition of poor quality content and duplication of content. But that's not all - the removal of keywords, meta tags, the insertion of noindex-blocking tags, etc. will also have a negative impact on a site's position. indexing of the site by robots and getting rid of internal links. Hacking a site allows the criminal to influence SEO in whatever way they can. 

Off-site web deposition

Off-site refers to those activities for which access to the site is unnecessary. We can include:

Linkbuilding in spammy sources and the creation of toxic backlinks

One way to deposit is to connect competing sites under so-called SWL - or spam link exchange systems. Such a link exchange programme belongs to Black Hat SEO and is highly risky, although some people notice temporary positive effects. How does SWL work? It is a platform that gives paid access to hundreds (yes, even thousands) of low-quality sites from which a large number of links to the site can be obtained quickly. In the long run, the use of spam SWLs is unprofitable. What's more - Google imposes filters on sites using them and even bans them! It is therefore easy to see that this tactic is ideal, for example, for dishonest SEOs. The search engine, thanks to its algorithms, will notice that someone is trying to manipulate the results. Fortunately, the legitimate site owner can prevent this. The link relinquishment tool is used to do this Disavow on Google.

Publication of false, negative opinions about the website

Posting false opinions about a brand from fake profiles is unfortunately an increasingly common practice. It primarily affects damage to the company's reputation and can therefore lead to drops in organic traffic. 

The heckling is becoming a huge business problem, and to say that competition in some industries is unhealthy is far too little. Hate speech, fabricated reviews and opinions and slander increasingly affect financial performance and hit companies' positions - that of the market and that of the web. It is imperative to respond to black PR. Leaving comments unanswered is counterintuitively not a good method. You should take care of your online image and moderate your brand content skilfully online. 

Sending fake requests to web masters to remove high quality backlinks

Hackers can attack a website's backlink profile in yet another way. They are talking about impersonating you (or agencies representing you) and contacting web masters to convince them to remove links leading to the site. In this way, competitors can remove good quality links from your site.

How do you know if you are a victim of negative SEO?

Wondering if you yourself may have fallen victim to depositioning done (or commissioned) by a competitor? If your rankings have recently dropped sharply - to quote famous words - know that something is going on. Investigate the situation using tools such as Copyscape (allowing you to check that your texts are not duplicated), Google Analytics or Search Console. Also keep a close eye on what links lead to your pages - use Ahrefs, for example, or Google Search Console. If you notice that suspicious, spammy sites are linking to you, use the Disavow tool, which we have already mentioned in the article. With the help of this tool, you can you will relinquish "dubious" links and avoid filters being imposed on your site by Google.

Remember that site deposition by competitors is a real threat. Therefore, take proper care of your sites on the web yourself or entrust them to honest agencies such as SEOSki.