According to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines what is done off site can negatively effect a site’s rankings in Google’s search engine results is:

• Doorway pages
• Keyword Stuffing
• Exact anchor text of links
• Purchasing Site Wide Links
• Automated Querying of Google
• Links from “Bad Neighborhoods”

Here are some tactics that your compititor can use to down yor site in search engine ranking.

Google Bowling:

This is universally hated method of negative SEO. Anybody could get your site banned through a method called Googlebowling? Your competitors can link your web site to thousands of spam or bad sites in very short period across a wide range of social media. As a form of negative SEO, they can buy links from bad neighborhoods to ANY site they want. Bad links like Spam domain links, Computer generated content, Same anchor text, Over keyword stuff etc.

Spam Under Your Name:

Your compititor may use your Web site’s URL for spamming in online forums, social-network sites and blog comments & add your website to several spam linking schemes to hurt your site. This all can done by your compititor on behalf of your name. But for you it will be hard to prove that you’re innocent. Result is, your site becomes banned.

Your Exposer To Search Engine:

Google hates to buy links on other Web sites to improve your search engine rankings. Your competitor might report Google and your rankings might drop.
If you are using some black hat seo techniques your compititor may complaint Google for this also and in result your search engine ranking will drop.

Copyright Complaint:

According to the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), if a search engine is notified that a copyright infringement exists (or might exist) on a Web site, it immediately take down content. Your site will be removed temporarily and it will affect your site ranking definitely. A negative SEO practitioner may file a copyright complaint with a search engine against a competitor, claiming to be the copyright holder.

Google Insulation:

“Google insulation” is the idea of padding the web with friendly-sounding content about a client and then pushing that content to the top of Google results. This technique is used to hide online criticism of clients.

Duplicate Content Creation:

As we know that search engine dislike duplicate content.
If someone creates duplicates of your website’s Web pages,these duplicate pages will split rankings with those of the original site.

Click Fraud:

Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link.(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Google Said, “There’s almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.”

But i think you should be aware of these tactics so you can protect your site against such practices, or at least identify these attacks when they are occurring.

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