What is Negative SEO?
Negative SEO or “Black Hat” SEO is when a competitor uses online tactics to damage or tarnish your online reputation to steal traffic, search rankings, or clients. It could be as simple as changing your phone number (to an incorrect number) or asking to delete your profile.
Negative SEO refers to unethical practices that sabotage a competitor's online search engine rankings. These tactics often involve violating search engine guidelines or using “black hat” SEO techniques that can lead to penalties or decreased rankings for the targeted website. Negative SEO aims to gain a competitive advantage by harming a rival's online presence.
Common negative SEO tactics include:
Link spamming:
Creating low-quality or spammy backlinks to a competitor's website, which can negatively impact their search rankings. This is done to make search engines believe that the targeted website uses black hat link-building practices.
Content scraping and duplication:
Copying a competitor's content and publishing it on multiple websites, which can lead to duplicate content issues and dilute the original content's value in search engines.
Negative reviews and false complaints:
Leaving fake negative reviews or reporting false issues to tarnish a competitor's online reputation, which can affect their credibility and search rankings.
Hacking and security exploits:
Attempting to hack into a competitor's website, injecting malicious code, or exploiting security vulnerabilities to compromise the website's performance and user experience.
Removing valuable backlinks:
Contacting the owners of websites linking to a competitor's site and requesting them to remove the links. This can weaken the competitor's backlink profile and negatively impact their rankings.
This is why we receive so many requests from fake email addresses to take down dentist profiles in California.
There are only so many patients. Therefore, each new patient you secure for your dental practice is one less for your competitors. One of the best ways to decrease the number of patients finding your dental practice online is to reduce potential online sources.
Your chances of securing new dental patients in Californai are directly related to the increased visibility of your Golden State Dentists profile. Even a free up-to-date profile that has not been claimed can send your dental practice 5-10 inquiries per month.
Putting in requests for profile deletions across the internet is a common negative SEO tactic. This tactic will remove online traffic sources to your dental practice and leave more patients to find your competitors.
Interestingly, most opt-out requests from LOCALSYNC‘s professional directories are from these free “fake” [dentist's name]24@gmail.com-type email addresses.
Over 97% of those who require additional proof of identity don't respond when we ask.
What Should I do if My Dental Listing Needs to be Updated, But I’m Not Ready to Claim My Listing?
While we will remove your California dental listing for free if asked, why not take advantage of our one-time fee of $5.00 and let our team update your listing? In addition to potentially reaching a new patient through a different marketing channel, each professional directory profile gives your dental practice a valuable backlink and helps improve your SEO and search ranking results in Google.
Select the dental directory you want updated on the right and pay, and we will update your profile with the correct information.
Before making any changes to your profile, we will verify your identity by emailing you at the email address provided for payment. Your payment will be canceled and refunded if we cannot complete this verification step.
If I Claim My Listing, Do I Have to Set It Up?
Nope!
We know that you are busy with your dental practice.
Your annual marketing subscription includes a free profile setup. Simply select your preferred subscription below, make payment, and we'll take care of the rest.
If we have questions or if you need more information, our team will get in touch with you.
