Should You Worry About Negative SEO?

With the recent onslaught Google’s been dishing out to blog networks like BMR or any webmaster who’s been engaging in paid link building, those in the know about SEO are growing more and more concerned about “negative SEO.”

What is negative SEO?

Basically, it’s when competitors spam those outranking them with enough paid, over-optimized and/or low quality links in an attempt to push ‘em down in the rankings.

And the scary part is, this is a legitimate concern.

Theoretically, based on what’s transpired over the past few weeks, it’s easy to see how some shady online marketers might try to exploit this.

Now, my hope is that Google is smart enough to have envisioned this problem way before they began wiping out blog networks and penalizing website owners.

I believe the answer to whether or not you should concern yourself about negative SEO has a lot to do with whether or not you believe sites that have tanked recently have done so because of an actual “penalty” or simply because many of their links were devalued due to the de-indexing of blog networks they were using.

In almost all cases, I’m fairly sure it’s the latter.

I mean, that’s what would make the most sense.  If Google doesn’t want us paying for links and using search engine optimization to manipulate the search results, the simple solution would be to discredit any backlinks that are seen as unnatural.

I’m sure that is easier said than done.

But still, it’s Google.  If negative SEO was as easy as me spending $50 to blast my competition with a couple hundred perfect anchor text links from bad neighborhoods, it’d eventually result in the same problem they’re working so hard to fix in the first place: undeserving sites climbing to the top of the organic results…

I believe our best bet is to take a step back and think about things logically.

Whether it’s negative SEO, or the best form of “whitehat” link building or keyword density or anything else we tend to become fixated on in the world of search engine optimization…

… the funny thing is, if we could just forget about all of it and focus solely on creating the most kick ass blog within our niche, chances are, things would work out the way they’re supposed to.

You have to have faith that a giant like Google is going to get their way, no matter what.

And their “way” is to offer users the most insanely awesome search experience one could ever imagine.

If you’re the proud owner of a blog that contributes to this awesomeness — and if you stay away from dodgy manipulative practices — I guarantee you’ll never have an issue securing and maintaining top page one rankings.

Even if the haters try to attack you with negative SEO.

‘Cause if you’re elite enough to join club awesome, you’ll have already earned major brownie points on so many of the umpteen thousand criteria Google assesses to spit out their rankings.

Meaning, in the case that suspect backlinking can actually get you penalized, you’ll undoubtedly be ‘protected’ from this penalty by some characteristic of the algorithm that poetically says:

If your site clearly rocks, then it rocks.

They can’t touch you.

At least, that’s what I like to believe would happen.

Maybe I’m just a wishful thinker.  It’s an interesting topic for sure.  But I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

Instead, I plan on focusing even harder on the only thing I can control, which is, once again, publishing content that makes my site worthy of page one rankings.

Dwelling on the potential for my competitors to wipe me out with negative search engine optimization is like obsessing over the fact that some dude could sideswipe you on the way to the store.

Sure, it could happen, but you still gotta get in the car and drive.  And all you can do is follow the rules of the road and do your best to ensure YOU never cause an accident.

You feel me?

What do you think?  Would love to hear your thoughts…