The Dark Side of SEO: How Marketers Get Competitors Banned (and How to Protect Yourself)

Edward Sturm

2,059 views • 9 months ago Save 4 min 6 min read

Video Summary

The video discusses two aggressive marketing tactics: negative SEO and negative Reddit tactics. Negative SEO involves intentionally harming a competitor's search rankings, a tactic proven possible and often inexpensive, as demonstrated by an experiment where $40 worth of spam links caused a significant ranking drop. While some believe it's harder to execute now, examples from 2022 and 2023 indicate it still occurs, frequently using exact match anchor text to appear manipulative. The best defense against this is a strong, natural backlink profile, not disavowing links.

Negative Reddit tactics include getting competitor URLs or brand names banned from the platform. This can happen through aggressive self-promotion that violates Reddit's unwritten 9:1 ratio of engagement to self-promotion, or by intentionally trying to get a competitor banned by mentioning their brand name rather than their URL. Moderators actively blacklist offending brand names and domains. Awareness of these tactics and reporting malicious activity to moderators are key protective measures.

Short Highlights

Negative SEO is a real and potentially inexpensive tactic to harm competitor search rankings by directing spam links at their sites.
An experiment showed that $40 worth of spam links, particularly with repetitive anchor text, could cause significant ranking drops for a website.
While harder to execute now, negative SEO still occurs, often involving a large volume of exact match anchor text links to appear manipulative.
The primary protection against negative SEO is maintaining a strong, natural, and diverse backlink profile.
Negative Reddit tactics involve getting competitor URLs or brand names banned from the platform through aggressive self-promotion or malicious reporting, with moderation tools in place to blacklist offending content.

Key Details

Understanding Negative SEO [00:10]

Negative SEO is a tactic to negatively impact competitor search rankings.
Google changed its stance in 2003, acknowledging that competitors could harm rankings.
An experiment by Tasty Placement aimed to harm the search rankings of poolingh houston.com by purchasing numerous spam links.
The experiment involved purchasing 45,000 comment links for $15, 7,000 double-tiered forum profile links for $5, and sidebar blog links for $20, totaling $40.
These links were pointed at the target website over two weeks, starting with comment links, then forum profile links, and finally sidebar links.
Initially, the comment links had no effect. After forum links were added, the site's ranking surprisingly improved from position 3 to 2.
Adding sidebar links resulted in a significant plummet in rankings, with the main keyword and 26 other keywords moving down noticeably.
This experiment suggests it is easy and cheap to negatively affect a competitor's rankings, potentially due to repetitive anchor text or links from bad neighborhoods.
The speaker witnessed negative SEO happening in 2022 to a friend's new site, which was hit with exact match anchor text back links, causing a loss of rankings.
In 2023, a fintech client's competitor bought many exact match links, leading to significant ranking loss for the client.
A thread on the SEO subreddit in 2025 indicated that negative SEO still happens, with one user experiencing thousands of links from spammy domains using their existing anchor text, making it look like self-purchase.
The consensus from the thread suggests negative SEO is harder now but is usually done with an abundance of exact match anchor text links, making the behavior appear manipulative.

It seems pretty easy and cheap to destroy a competitor's rankings if you were so inclined.

It's not that the links themselves are so spammy. It's that the behavior looks very, very manipulative.

Protection Against Negative SEO [05:32]

The best protection against negative SEO is not to disavow links, as there are risks associated with using Google's disavow tool.
A strong organic backlink profile is the most effective defense.
It requires more effort to make a site look manipulative if it has a large number of great links from various sources.
Building real, solid links through active marketing is crucial.
A holistic, natural backlink profile is the best way to protect against negative SEO.
If attempting to manipulate Google, avoid using a lot of exact match anchor text links, as this is where trouble arises.

The best protection is to have a good organic backlink profile.

Negative Reddit Tactics [06:34]

Negative Reddit tactics involve getting competitor URLs or brand names banned from Reddit.
One user shared an experience of their domain being banned by Reddit after aggressive self-promotion, even though their traffic initially increased.
The user's domain was so banned that it could not be used even in direct messages.
Reddit has an unwritten 9:1 ratio, suggesting that for every nine answers given, one post of a domain is acceptable.
The key is to avoid overt self-promotion and maintain a natural presence.
A safe approach is to use one's name as the username for posting, which increases awareness without being flagged as spam.
Another tactic involves mentioning the brand name instead of the actual domain to avoid immediate URL bans.
However, moderators actively catch this and can permanently blacklist brand names; one subreddit moderator mentioned having around 35 blacklisted brand names.
The existence of moderator tools to ban domains and words is a natural consequence of platform management.
A personal anecdote from 2018 involved a friend's crypto company whose domain and brand name were banned from a subreddit due to aggressive self-promotion.
Hearing about this happening to a prominent subreddit commenter highlights the reality of these tactics.

The trick is to mention the brand name and not the actual domain.

Oh, we catch this and we can permanently blacklist them.

Protection Against Negative Reddit Tactics [09:38]

If one witnesses negative Reddit tactics happening, the best action is to flag it to a moderator immediately.
If concerned about this happening to oneself, flag it to a moderator, stating "Ban this person. This isn't me and I don't want my brand name blacklisted. I don't want my URL blacklisted."
Knowing these tactics exist can be a form of protection.