Is this Negative SEO?
-
Hello Everyone,
I have just spent the past 9 months designing, engineering, and manufacturing our first product. We just opened our web store and started selling product. http://miveu.com. I have spent zero time doing any kind of SEO. We haven't even put up a sitemap yet or any redirects. I'm just now starting to take a look at things.
As soon as I start digging, I find that it appears that someone is at least attempting to do some kind of negative SEO against us. It seems to have started about a month ago. Check this out.
At first I was thinking this isn't so good, but it seems they are just trying to build crap content about our keywords and make it relevant to us. After taking a closer look, I'm thinking maybe this isn't all bad. They have targeted all of our exiting YouTube videos and created new videos that use all of our keywords, titles, people, etc in an effort to make our existing videos irrelevant. They have have also done the same thing with articles that were written about us, awards we have won as well as started negative campaigns about us and people who have said good things about us.
Here are my thoughts. While the content is really crappy, it seems like they are actually building keyword relevance to us and our products. They have all the right keywords, the content is just crappy. "There is no such thing as bad press". I don't know if anyone has ever said this before, but I'm going to refer to their effort as "White-Hate SEO" because it doesn't appear to be a real dark effort.
Am I missing something here, am I way off base?
My bigger worry is that their campaign may include some much darker efforts that I just haven't found yet.
I'm pretty sure I know who is responsible for this. They have made it clear that they really do hate us. Frankly, I'm not interested in retaliation, I just want to get my own house in order with some good old-school whit-hat SEO. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks!
David -
Actually, I got the POV = Point of View OK, it was the Miveu = My View I struggled with a little.
Like Fransisco, I don't see any problem with the videos - other than some are not very good.
David, I think your product is really cool and I'd expect that a lot of your customers are going to be posting videos they have made with all kinds of keywords.
If I were going to market your idea, I'd have a blog on your site and embed some of the coolest YouTube videos that your customer make in some of the posts. A good blog that you update with really good stuff will be great for your SEO anyway.
This is a product you should be able to have great fun with!
-
LOL,,, the kid in the car used our product to make that video. It's all the ones under it that are in question.
Here is the resulting search without time filters.
-
I wouldn't worry about those videos. Just hire some 18 year-old skater to shoot a real video and bump these guys off the SERPS. I don't see anything negative about the videos. They are just boring. All I see is some dork recording his steering wheel racing a 4-cyclider Civic thinking it's fast. Don't loose sleep over this.
My 2 cents:
POV = Privately Owned Vehicle. Change the acronym in the logo so we aren't guessing watch POV means.
You'll get a high bounce rate from Android users like me!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best Practices for SEO 2021
What are the best way to do on page and off page seo in 2021?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SaraClay0 -
WhoIs, SEO & Privacy
Is WHOIS data used by Google as a ranking signal? We had a website that had some bad SEO work done a while ago hence took a knock, If I use the same WHOIS data on a new site is that likely to cause an issue? Also I don't like the idea of providing too much information for privacy reasons, so have tended to stick to general email addresses and department names rather than actual personal information. Is that a bad approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Are these URL hashtags an SEO issue?
Hi guys - I'm looking at a website which uses hashtags to reveal the relevant content So there's page intro text which stays the same... then you can click a button and the text below that changes So this is www.blablabla.com/packages is the main page - and www.blablabla.com/packages#firstpackage reveals first package text on this page - www.blablabla.com/packages#secondpackage reveals second package text on this same page - and so on. What's the best way to deal with this? My understanding is the URLs after # will not be indexed very easily/atall by Google - what is best practice in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
What can you do about negative SEO?
We have a list of 240 domains (look exactly the same) linking to our site for a certain keyword. over 3000 links in total. It means that 50% of our keywords are this keyword and it's not a branded keyword which can affect us in the long term. I have done a WHOIS search and found a name, email and number. Vikas Kumar. I linkedin searched him and found his "legit" SEO site which has EXACTLY the same registration details as the spam sites. I emailed him and he said it would cost 5$ a link removal. I phoned him and he DENIED these emails. He then denied owning these sites etc. We have disavowed them but the anchor text % is still affecting us. Is there anything we can do? I know negative SEO isn't illegal but it's really frustrating. Anyone else had any problems with this type of thing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyB_UK1 -
Move blog and keep the seo competence
I have my blog at www.blog.practo.com and wish to shift it to practo.com/blog since from an SEO point of view I dont think having good content on blog.practo.com is going to help. Without having to move the WP instance to /blog can I have all my urls directing as www.practo.com/blog/articles and still work to update the blog from www.blog.practo.com Is this possible and advisible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shanky10 -
Are dropdown menus bad for SEO
I have an ecommerce shop here: http://m00.biz/UHuGGC I've added a submenu for each major category and subcategory of items for sale. There are over 60 categories on that submenu. I've heard that loading this (and the number of links) before the content is very bad for SEO. Some will place the menu below the content and use absolute positioning to put the menu where it currently is now. It's a bit ridiculous in doing things backwards and wondering if search engines really don't understand. So the question is twofold: (1) Are the links better in a bottom loading sidemenu where they are now? (2) Given the number of links (about 80 in total with all categories and subcategories), is it bad to have the sidemenu show the subcategories which, in this instance, are somewhat important? Should I just go for the drilldown, e.g. show only categories and then show subcategories after? Truth is that users probably would prefer the dropdown with all the categories and second level subcategories, despite the link number and placement.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | attorney1 -
Do widgets and gadgets affect SEO?
I have added a number of widgets and gadgets to my site that I suspect act like Iframes. If true do these widgets and gadgets and the content that they are linked to help or hurt my site from an SEO perspective? Examples are facebook gadget, wordpress blidget, weather gadget, google maps widget.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
SEO Company Referral
I am looking for a great US based SEO company referral. I try to do as much as I can on my end but the more I learn, then more I find I need help to do a great job. Lately running the business takes most of my time, and we need a team who really specializes in SEO. Can anyone recommend a SEO company with a great reputation, someone who has done great work for you in the past? I get many people contacting me with SEO promises, but I need some advice from someone with more experience than me. I appreciate all of your insights.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fertilityhealth0