What is negative SEO and how to guard against it

SEO is a double-edged sword: While it can help a site improve its ranking in search engine results, it can also have the opposite impact. Some malicious people use the techniques of SEO to deteriorate the SEO sites of their competitors. This practice is called negative SEO (NSEO for intimates).

The main negative SEO techniques

We fight better against an enemy when we know how he acts. Before seeing how to protect yourself from negative SEO, I suggest you first analyze the techniques it uses.

You are not unaware that search engines are constantly improving their algorithms to bring out quality sites at the top of the ranking of results. On the other hand, sites that do not comply with their recommendations will be poorly referenced. Therefore, the NSEO is inspired by the penalties of search engines to impact the SEO of a site negatively.

Here are for example some practices that search engines sanction:

• duplicate content
• SEO over-optimized content
• the backlinks en masse and irrelevant
• content farms
• Techniques that aim to deceive the search engines: cloaking, spamdexing.
• etc.

To destroy the referencing of a site, it is enough to apply to the letter these bad practices. If a competitor has a tooth against you, he can plagiarize your content and mass-cast it on the web, or buy thousands of poor quality backlinks that will damage your reputation with Google. Provided you can hack your site; it can also take control of your site and add advertising, rework your content to affect their quality or edit files for your site to practice spamdexing without you even see it. Not cool at all.

Along with these practices, people who use the NSEO may want to damage your e-reputation so that your site looks less reliable to both users and search engines. They have several levers of action available to them: denounce your site to Google via a spam report, create content denigrating your site, fake profiles on social networks to harm you, etc.

How to know if your site is a victim of negative SEO

Do not panic: if the negative SEO does exist, do not fall into paranoia. Three clues allow to suspect an attack:

•          a sudden drop in your site in search engine results
•          a significant and unexplained drop in traffic
•          an alert from Google, telling you that your site does not comply with good SEO practices (valid only as an index of NSEO if you do not do nonsense on your side ...).

Apart from these signs, there is no reason to worry.

Fight against the NSEO

You have noticed one of the three warning signs and thought that you are a victim of NSEO? We will have to take possessions in hand very quickly. The first thing to do is to secure your site so that nobody can enter it. It can be useful in the wake of changing the host for one that will be more secure.

Once you have regained control of your site, you will need to check your contents and files and remove any changes that the hacker has made.

Finally, you will probably have to disallow backlinks that affect your SEO. You can locate the links that point to your site through Open Site Explorer, a site offered by Moz (SEO expert). Then you will be able to erase the links you do not want by connecting to the Google Webmaster Tools tool, which will guide you step by step.

Prevention is better than cure

Let's face it, going back to its initial ranking after a negative SEO attack is not an easy task, and you have to be patient. The simplest is still to prevent, rather than heal. These tips will help you protect yourself against the NSEO (even if an attack is still possible):

•          secure your site as much as possible when it is created
•          Regularly check your backlinks and keep an eye on your traffic sources
•          monitor that your content is not Replicated (you can use tools such as Positano or Plagium )
•          link your social network profiles with your website
•      practice the white hat to get a good SEO and counter-carré NSEO attacks.

18 Bad SEO Tips

A small anthology of false good ideas, revolutionary concepts of SEO, secret techniques or so tactics so stale that they do not report anything anymore... here is a preview of what not to do to improve its places in the search engine.

1. Buy 2000 backlinks for only 29.99 euros in major directories and search engines. And yes, everyone knows that there are 2000 major engines in the world. The first is Google, the second Bing / Yahoo and the third is uh ...
2. Make automatic exchange of links. A technique of the last century that is not used naturally like most techniques or the word "automatic" is related elsewhere.
3. Submit your website to the "New Site" forms for search tools. It's not good for nothing.
4. Make false positive reviews in user reviews sites. It's noticeable, and it's illegal.
5.   Rename all images in his product catalog. There are many other things to do before doing micro-optimization ...
6. Regularly change the title of articles published to a position on several keywords for the same article — no comment.
7.   To be first, just buy Google Adwords. It's good for the traffic, and it also affects the SERPs. And it's good for Google's wallet.
8. Buy only a position tracking service. To better measure that we do nothing?
9.  Write in white on a white background. Variation: outside the screen / fill the footer of barely readable text... And why not show different content to search engines?
10. Spinner and publish. The writing assistance tools will never be as good as the work of humans. Producing text porridge that is not cool for the web and it's not great for users who might fall over.
11. Click on its results in the engine results. The more you click, the better you are. Beware of personalized search results that affect the profile of a single user, and that refers to false links between clicks and positions.
12. Refine his meta keywords. Websites having time fill their meta keyword by respect of the standards. But not for SEO. Moreover, this tag has no value for more than ten years. At the limit, we can put keywords that are not intended to deceive the most naive competitors.
13.  Post on his blog at least every 2.5 days. Polluting the web with poor quality content has never been a good tactic. If, on the extra hand, you are able to produce quality text at this frequency and keep it in time, do not hesitate.
14. Buy a lot of domain names with keywords in it. Dashes of the style vente-en-ligne-de-briquets-de-haute-savoie.com separate the words. The contents? A copy-pasted on all sites of course. Too bad, it does not fit on business cards
15.         SEO is out of date Variation: SEO is dead / SMO is the new niche / The latest Google updates have made SEO inefficient. After a year of an SEO service that does not work, if we sell SMO to our customers not to lose face in front of our inability to generate results.
16.       The ideal density is 18.5%: I recommend 33 repetitions of your keyword. Myths have a hard life.
17.       Our agency is having a special partnership with the Google engineer we assure you a good investment in the top 3. My name is Pinocchio.
18.        Have a sitemap.xml or a canonical rel. Or whatever ... In SEO, there is not a key factor that makes all the difference; it is the accumulation of many optimizations coupled with quality content and beautiful links real and sincere that allows a good investment and longevity in the best positions.

The budget for your website

The question most frequently asked by business owners is: "How much will my website cost?" Unfortunately, there is no ready answer to this question.

We can, however, give you useful tips on how to approach budgeting for your company's website.

First, you will need to determine what your goals are for the site and what features you need: virtual shopping cart, searchable catalog, mobile version, ability to subscribe to a newsletter, videos, etc.

Find a Web Developer

Once you have defined your needs, you can begin to compare the cost estimates presented by web developers.

However, beware of developers who offer you a prize without taking the time to understand your business or have listed the features that fit your goals.

A continuous investment, not an expense

Many entrepreneurs still see their website as a one-time expense and a sunk cost. They are wrong to think so.

Websites are a marketing tool for most businesses and should be viewed as an investment to generate revenue and drive growth.

Do not forget to update your site

You need to invest frequently in updating your website to reflect the evolution of your business, products, and services.

Another key factor in setting your budget online is assessing the role that the Internet can play in growing your business.

If online marketing and your website are critical to your growth, you should consider investing more in your online presence.

Analyze the activities of your competitors

A relaxed way to do this is to do a Google search on your competitors. Review their website, social media pages, and online ads. If you find that they are investing in online media, it's a good sign that you should do the same.

At BDC, we work with many companies to help them develop their online marketing strategy and create their website.

Usual price range for BDC customers

For most of our clients, website design usually costs $ 10,000 to $ 30,000 for initial development, but we have already seen exceptional cases where the costs were between $ 60,000 and $ 60,000. $ 100,000.

As mentioned, there are also ongoing maintenance costs, such as content updates, which vary from company to company and for which average figures cannot be provided.

For standard costs, such as hosting your website, the usual price range is between $ 20 and $ 60 per month, depending on your site traffic and other variables.

How to take full advantage of your investment

Our team of cyber marketing experts can work with you to develop your online marketing plan, help you find the right web developer, and make the most of your investment in your website.

There are also many free or inexpensive website creation tools that we recommend to businesses that are taking their first steps in this area. We invite you to read our article comparing these different tools.

5 tips for a successful translation of your websites

In a context of globalization and international development, more and more websites are releasing a version of their site in other languages, especially in English. The objective is to benefit from the increase in the overall volume of sales made abroad: this has indeed exceeded one trillion euros. However, if a good dose of common sense facilitates this exercise, few sites have the resources and skills to translate and locate their site internally. Adapting a website to a foreign audience requires certain key skills, particularly linguistic and technical.

To help you make your business visible all over the world, Text master introduces you5 practical tips to optimize the translation of your websites:

1. Choose your domain name carefully 

If you are already considering multilingual versions of your site before it is created, be sure to opt for a domain name that is understandable and easy to remember, for the different language groups you want to reach. In general, we prefer to opt for a URL expressed in English because it is the language most likely to be understood by the greatest number.

2. Think about your SEO in search engines

Optimizing the SEO of a multilingual site (SEO) is not an easy thing, and there is no real miracle method. Depending on the resources or the time you have, you can opt for three different strategies:

•          One directory per language (mydomain.com);
•          One subdomain per language (fr.mydomain.com);
•          A unique domain by language (mydomain.fr and mydomain.es).

The latter solution is the one favored by Google because it greatly facilitates the search engine to provide relevant and targeted results to users through recognition of language and country.

3. Avoid automatic translations

A magic translation button would be so much simpler, would not it? Although the APIs developed, have made great progress, be aware that the quality of your translation will not be perfect (far from it). The problem is that in addition to conveying a very bad image of your company, translation errors are now sanctioned by search engines, which will disadvantage your website in their results. Our advice: always prefer the work of a human translator to that of a machine.

4. Consider the cultural context

Translation implies much more than a word-for-word transposition, for one simple reason: each word carries cultural baggage that nuances its meaning. This is why a common term or banal expression can sometimes have a very different meaning depending on the language chosen. Poor translations due to misguided cultural interpretations can lead to situations of misunderstanding (or worse), which can have negative repercussions for your business. So be sure to use a seasoned translator with an excellent understanding of the cultural differences between the source and destination languages ​​to avoid this kind of inconvenience.

5. Pay attention to the choice of languages 

The fact that you have a particular affinity with Italian and Portuguese is not enough reason for you to decide to translate your website into these languages. You must put aside your personal preferences and think only of your current or potential target audience. Also, pay attention to the language features of the country you are in interested. Some have two or even three official languages. This is predominantly the situation in Belgium, anywhere a company that wants to gain visibility throughout the country would be well advised to consider at least a French and Flemish version of its site.