Online content marketing and SEO are great ways for a business to get more attention, but not every SEO tactic is ethical or worth the effort. Somewhere in the middle between modern high-value strategies and black hat tactics is something called reverse SEO, a recent topic with some divergent opinions surrounding it. Take a look at what reverse SEO is in detail, how it works, and whether it can be used effectively and ethically.
What Is Reverse SEO?
Typical SEO is designed to make certain desirable web pages, such as blog posts or a landing page, appear higher in search rankings. More suitable people visiting these pages leads to more revenue for that business through sales, subscriptions, etc. However, SEO can also be used in the exact opposite manner, to draw attention and page visits away from sites that a business doesn’t want people to see. If your goal is ever to worsen the ranking of web pages, you’re practicing reverse SEO.
As an example, imagine that a secondhand goods store with its own online presence is getting bombarded by unfair, unwarranted, and outright libelous negative reviews on independently hosted websites, all by someone with a grudge. Reverse SEO could be used to reduce the attention these pages get, worsening the rank of certain pages, thereby reducing the search traffic they get.
Why Is Reverse SEO Controversial?
In a sense, all SEO is about content visibility — pushing your own content up in search results and moving everything else down. Reverse SEO is just the most blatant form, and can be seen as a way for businesses to censor criticism, hide important truths from the public, or sweep unethical practices under the rug.
It’s easier to argue in favor of reverse SEO when using it against yourself. For example, let’s say that there are certain landing pages that you no longer want to draw attention toward, but for some reason, you cannot take them offline. Reverse SEO could help pull those pages further down in the search result pages of relevant keywords, helping the newer pages that you want people to visit show up higher.
How Does Reverse SEO Work?
he question of how reverse SEO works is as complex as asking how regular SEO works, because it’s essentially the same activity, only with the opposite objective. There are many acceptable means of reducing content visibility, such as creating large amounts of positive pieces. Essentially, moving on in this way is the best tactic you can use, in terms of ethics. Another perfectly acceptable method is to reduce the optimization of any pages you own that you don’t want seen, while emphasizing strong optimization for every page with similar or shared keywords.
However, there are also a number of morally gray strategies as well. These include creating brand new social media profiles, websites, and other content specifically to compete for traffic against negative keywords certain sites are built around. For instance, if there is a webpage made by a disgruntled ex-customer titled “[Business Name] Doesn’t Care”, positive content with similar keywords could be made, such as articles about how the business “Doesn’t Care If The Competition Cuts Corners”, using similar words and phrases to redirect traffic that could potentially have seen the ex-customer’s website.
When Is Reverse SEO Okay?
It’s up to a social media manager or other authority to decide how a business should focus its SEO resources and time, but in general, anything is acceptable so long as the intentions and choices made are honest and pro-consumer. On the other end of the spectrum, reverse SEO motivated entirely to protect your business, even at the cost of hiding legitimate information from the public, is unethical.
If you have acknowledged a mistake and released a statement of apology on your website, it’s perfectly rational to use reverse SEO that bumps this page above those who demonize you for something you’ve already made amends over. Helping more people get the full story and see your business in a complete picture is great, but refusing to acknowledge legitimate grievances and attempting to paint over them with obscurity is not, and such behavior will only backfire over time.
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