There is healthy competition in SEO.
Then there is the other kind.
The kind where somebody decides that instead of improving their own website, building better pages, earning stronger links and doing a better job for their clients, it might be easier to try to damage the business sitting above them.
That is where backlink spam enters the picture.
At PK SEO, we recently uncovered a wave of suspicious backlinks pointing at our own website. Strange domains. Repeated patterns. Commercial anchor text. Websites we had never worked with. Links we would never have built ourselves.
Could we prove exactly who placed them?
No.
And without proof, we are not going to point the finger at any particular SEO company.
But when you operate in a competitive market targeting terms such as SEO services Sydney, SEO services, Sydney SEO specialist, search engine optimisation Sydney and other valuable searches, you have to consider why somebody might suddenly start creating rubbish links to your site.
The obvious possibility is simple.
Somebody does not like being outranked.
And to be perfectly honest, we find that pretty funny.
If You Cannot Beat the Competition, Spam Them?
That seems to be the mentality behind negative SEO.
Instead of asking:
“How do we create better SEO services?”
“How do we improve our content?”
“How do we generate more enquiries for our clients?”
“How do we deserve to outrank the business above us?”
some people appear to take a different approach.
“How do we make their site look worse?”
That is the ugly side of search engine optimisation.
Link spam aimed at a competitor is designed to create a backlink profile that looks unnatural.
The person behind it may use:
- low-quality blogs
- automated websites
- manufactured publishing networks
- foreign domains
- unrelated article sites
- keyword-heavy anchor text
- large numbers of suspicious referring domains
The intention is obvious enough.
Create enough rubbish around somebody else’s website and hope Google eventually associates that rubbish with the business being targeted.
It is cheap.
It is lazy.
And it tells you quite a lot about the person doing it.
Why PK SEO Became Suspicious
PK SEO has been competing against much larger agencies for Sydney search terms for years.
We are not a big agency with multiple account managers and sales teams.
We compete by doing the work.
That means targeting the right searches, building commercially useful pages, improving websites, creating relevant content and focusing on the enquiries that actually matter to a business.
And sometimes that means an independent Sydney SEO specialist ends up sitting above companies with considerably larger marketing budgets.
Apparently, not everyone enjoys that.
When suspicious links started appearing, we did what we would do for a client.
We investigated.
Several domains had similar characteristics.
Some had very similar website structures.
Some were publishing content across completely unrelated industries.
Some used commercial anchors we would never normally use in that way.
Others simply had no logical reason to link to PK SEO at all.
Then more appeared.
At that point, it stopped looking like random internet rubbish and started looking like something worth taking seriously.
The Funny Part? It Is Almost a Compliment
Think about it.
If somebody really is spending time or money trying to damage your rankings, what does that tell you?
It tells you they noticed you.
It tells you your rankings matter to them.
It tells you that taking your position legitimately may be proving difficult.
And it tells you that your presence in the search results is commercially inconvenient.
For a business competing for SEO services Sydney, that is not exactly the worst feedback you could receive.
If another SEO provider is worried enough about PK SEO to try to manufacture bad links, then somewhere along the line we must be doing something right.
We would still prefer them to spend the money improving their own site.
But if they want to keep donating their time to our backlink monitoring exercises, that is their choice.
Why Link Spam Can Be So Destructive
The frustrating part is that negative SEO creates work for the innocent business.
We did not ask for the links.
We did not build them.
We did not approve them.
But we still had to investigate them.
That means checking:
- referring domains
- anchor text
- discovery dates
- site quality
- page relevance
- domain patterns
- link placement
- repeated layouts
- network footprints
Instead of spending that time improving SEO services, producing content, working on client campaigns or building legitimate authority, you end up cleaning up somebody else’s mess.
That is where the tactic becomes genuinely malicious.
The objective is not just to damage rankings.
It is to waste time.
We Used More Than One Source to Investigate the Links
We did not rely on one backlink tool.
Different platforms discover different links.
Some crawl faster than others.
Some find domains that other systems miss.
So we compared data from multiple sources.
We looked at:
- new referring domains
- suspicious anchor text
- clusters of recently discovered links
- domain quality
- website layouts
- topical relevance
- whether the sites appeared to exist mainly for publishing links
The more we compared, the clearer the pattern became.
Not every bad-looking backlink is negative SEO.
Every established website eventually attracts spam.
But when several suspicious domains appear with similar characteristics and commercial anchors, you take notice.
Building the Disavow List
Once we had reviewed the domains, we began compiling a disavow file.
The purpose was not to create some enormous list just for the sake of it.
The goal was accuracy.
We separated genuine links from suspicious ones.
We deliberately left legitimate domains alone.
We added domains where the overall evidence suggested the links were manufactured, automated, irrelevant or potentially harmful.
In many cases, the entire domain was the problem rather than a single page.
That meant using domain-level disavow entries.
The list was then updated as more suspicious domains were uncovered.
There is nothing glamorous about this part of search engine optimisation.
It is simply cleanup.
But it matters.
You Do Not Automatically Blame Every Ranking Drop on Spam
This is where proper SEO analysis matters.
A suspicious backlink profile does not automatically mean every ranking movement is caused by negative SEO.
Google rankings move all the time.
There are:
- algorithm updates
- spam updates
- competitor improvements
- search intent changes
- local search changes
- mobile and desktop differences
- crawling and indexing changes
- normal ranking volatility
That is why good SEO services in Sydney require investigation rather than panic.
You compare dates.
You compare queries.
You compare pages.
You examine what competitors gained.
You check technical issues.
You monitor indexing.
Then you make a decision.
Jumping to conclusions is not SEO.
Neither is ignoring obvious warning signs.
What It Says About the SEO Industry
There is a strange irony in an SEO company potentially using link spam against another SEO company.
The whole point of offering SEO services is supposedly to help businesses become better at search.
If your strategy for beating another provider is to sabotage them instead of improving your own work, what exactly does that say about the quality of your SEO?
A good SEO provider should be able to compete through:
- stronger strategy
- better content
- better technical work
- stronger links
- better local signals
- clearer search intent
- better conversion paths
If you cannot do that, manufacturing spam backlinks against a competitor does not suddenly make you good at SEO.
It just makes you desperate.
We Would Rather Compete Properly
PK SEO is happy to compete.
That is what search results are.
We compete against agencies for SEO services Sydney.
We compete for SEO services.
We compete for Sydney SEO specialist searches.
We compete for local SEO Sydney, search engine optimisation Sydney and related commercial terms.
If another provider builds a better website, creates better pages, earns stronger links and outranks us, fair enough.
We will improve.
What we are not going to do is spend our time spamming their website because we cannot beat them.
That is not competition.
That is sabotage.
The Best Response Is to Laugh and Keep Going
Once we identified the suspicious domains, documented them and updated the disavow list, there was not much more to do.
You take the corrective action.
You keep monitoring.
And then you move on.
There is no point becoming obsessed with whoever may be behind it.
If anything, the whole thing becomes slightly amusing.
Someone may have spent money trying to hurt PK SEO.
We spent some time reviewing it.
We cleaned it up.
And now we are writing about it.
So if the objective was to make us disappear, it has not exactly gone to plan.
If anything, it reinforced why businesses need experienced SEO services.
Search is competitive.
Algorithm changes are constant.
Spam exists.
Bad actors exist.
And sometimes your own competitors may be the problem.
What Business Owners Should Learn From This
Business owners should not assume every backlink is a good backlink.
They should also not panic every time they see a strange domain.
Look at the pattern.
Look at the anchor text.
Look at timing.
Look at relevance.
Look at whether the sites appear legitimate.
And if you are paying for SEO services Sydney businesses rely on, make sure whoever handles your campaign understands the difference between genuine link building and manufactured spam.
A backlink should strengthen the relationship between your business and the subject you want to be known for.
It should not exist purely to manipulate a metric.
Maybe Being Targeted Means You Are Doing Something Right
Nobody wastes time trying to sabotage the business sitting on page ten.
They worry about the business taking the customers they want.
That is why the situation at PK SEO is irritating, but also strangely satisfying.
We cannot prove who created the spam links.
We cannot prove another agency was responsible.
But if somebody out there is spending their time trying to weaken PK SEO because we keep competing successfully for valuable Sydney SEO searches, we are not losing sleep over it.
We will keep doing what we have always done.
Build better pages.
Target better searches.
Earn legitimate links.
Improve client websites.
Monitor the rubbish.
Remove what needs removing.
And keep competing for SEO services Sydney the proper way.
If that annoys the competition, they are welcome to keep watching.
We will be busy ranking.
Are you being spammed? Contact PK SEO Today and lets fix it