What Is Reverse SEO? A Thorough Beginner's Guide From Basics to Advanced
As more companies and individuals struggle with negative information online, a technique called "reverse SEO" is drawing attention. When defamation or bad reviews appear at the top of search results, it can seriously harm recruiting, business deals, and customers' purchasing decisions.
This article explains reverse SEO in a way that is easy for beginners to understand, covering everything from what it is, to legitimate methods you can do yourself, cost estimates when outsourcing, and the NG (prohibited) techniques you should never use. If you are struggling with how to deal with reputational risk, please use this as a reference.
Reverse SEO is the practice of lowering the ranking of pages containing negative information—such as defamation or bad reviews—so that more trustworthy information appears higher in the search results. Whereas regular SEO is a practice aimed at ranking a website higher in search engines like Google, reverse SEO aims for the opposite, which is why it is also called "negative SEO" or "reverse SEO."
The main purpose of reverse SEO is to protect the online reputation of companies and individuals and to prevent loss of trust and missed opportunities caused by reputational damage.
Regular SEO: A practice that ranks your own site higher in search results to increase traffic.
Reverse SEO: A practice that lowers the ranking of pages containing negative information to reduce the chances of users seeing them.
Both have in common that they "leverage the mechanics of how search engines evaluate content," but the major difference is that they aim in opposite directions.
Today, in virtually every situation—recruiting, business deals, purchasing—people first search online to investigate the reputation of their target. When negative information lines the top of the search results, it alone can damage trust and create the risk of losing business opportunities. Reverse SEO is used as a defensive measure to minimize the impact of such reputational damage.
The basic idea of reverse SEO is not to directly tamper with the negative site, but to optimize your own site and trustworthy information to rank higher, thereby relatively pushing down the negative site.
The number of slots displayed on the first page of search results is limited. If you can line up multiple high-quality pages you control in the top positions, negative pages are naturally pushed to the second page or beyond, making them less likely to be seen by users. Since click-through rates drop sharply as rankings fall, this alone can be expected to suppress reputational damage.
Reverse SEO is not something you can only entrust to a specialized firm; you can also work on it in-house. Here we introduce legitimate methods that even beginners can put into practice, following Google's guidelines.
The most basic and orthodox method is to create high-quality content on your own site or owned media and rank it higher. First, identify the search keywords for which negative pages are ranking highly (often "company name" or "company name + reviews," etc.), then create content that is valuable to users for those keywords. Because Google emphasizes a user-first approach, useful pages are evaluated fairly.
Increasing the number of information channels you can manage yourself is also effective. Specifically, develop and strengthen pages such as the following.
When highly trustworthy official information occupies the top of the search results, you can relatively lower the visibility of negative pages.
It is important to continue SEO efforts for the keywords where reputation-damaging sites appear, targeting the pages you have created. By regularly updating content and increasing reviews within legitimate bounds, you can stabilize your higher rankings.
There are also cases where the target site is strong and it takes time to lower its ranking. If that page contains content that violates Google's policies or each platform's terms of service (exposure of personal information, clear defamation, etc.), requesting its removal from Google or the site's operator is also an option.
Reverse SEO also includes "gray to black techniques" that, while potentially effective, are extremely dangerous. These violate Google's guidelines and carry legal risks, so you must never use them.
This is a technique of creating large numbers of sites that copy the target site's content verbatim, so that the original site is penalized as the copy source. Creating copycat sites is itself a guideline violation, and there is also a possibility of being sued by the site operator.
This is a technique of sending large numbers of backlinks from low-quality sites to the target site, attempting to drop its ranking through spam detection. Not only is it ineffective given Google's improved accuracy, but there is a risk that your own site is mistakenly penalized and its search ranking drops sharply.
The iron rule is to approach reverse SEO purely as a "defensive measure" that pushes your own legitimate information higher.
Even if you implement reverse SEO, if you do not measure ranking changes, you cannot judge whether the measures are working or staying flat. Use a search ranking checker tool to regularly monitor the rankings of your target keywords.
Also, reverse SEO is not an instant-effect measure; it generally takes several months for results to appear. You need to understand that ongoing effort is a prerequisite.
Reverse SEO can be done in-house, but doing everything yourself places a heavy burden in terms of skills and labor. Consider outsourcing to a specialized firm depending on your situation.
Doing it yourself: You can keep costs down, but it requires content creation, SEO knowledge, and ongoing operational labor.
Hiring a specialized firm: You can leverage know-how and a track record, but it costs money. When hiring, always check whether the methods are legitimate and whether the firm's track record and fee structure are clear.
Reverse SEO is an important measure for relatively pushing down negative information in search results and protecting the reputation of companies and individuals. The basics are the legitimate approach of "ranking your own high-quality content and official information higher," while NG techniques like mass-producing copycat sites or spam links carry major risks and should be avoided.
Start steadily with the basic measures you can do yourself, and while borrowing the power of a trustworthy specialized firm as needed, protect your online reputation in a healthy way.
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