{"id":15521,"date":"2020-08-04T09:25:45","date_gmt":"2020-08-04T09:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/?p=15521"},"modified":"2020-08-07T08:12:28","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T08:12:28","slug":"1-in-5-businesses-would-consider-sabotaging-a-competitors-online-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/1-in-5-businesses-would-consider-sabotaging-a-competitors-online-business\/","title":{"rendered":"1 in 5 businesses would consider sabotaging a competitor’s online business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Building a business is tough. But sometimes, the hardest challenge is competing with established businesses, especially if your business has a limited marketing budget. <\/span>Consequently, competition from other brands in your niche may cause some to act unethically and consider sabotaging a competitor (hindering\/damaging the reputation of an online business).<\/span><\/p>\n

Acts of online sabotage can involve discrediting a business\u2019s products\/service with negative (and often fake) reviews, as <\/span>well as running a link spam campaign to bring on\/cause a Google penalty, or even hacking a website.<\/span><\/p>\n

In light of just how sinister the nature of sabotaging a competitor\u2019s online business and reputation can be,\u00a0<\/span>Reboot Digital\u00a0<\/span><\/a>surveyed 1,672 business owners to expose just how many businesses would consider sabotaging a competitor if they THOUGHT THEY WOULD get away with. <\/span>Reboot Digital also sought to uncover out of those who had sabotaged, which industries appeared to be more culpable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reboot\u2019s survey can reveal that 18.3% WOULD consider sabotaging\/damaging a competitor\u2019s online business if they knew they would get away with it.\u00a0<\/span>Encouragingly, 81.7% WOULD\u2019T consider it at all even if they knew they could get away with.\u00a0<\/span>99.7%\u00a0<\/span>haven\u2019t sabotaged a competitor, whilst a tiny\u00a00.3%\u00a0admitted they have!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The 18.3% of businesses that would consider online sabotage were then asked what the reasons would be (if they got away with it):<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b7<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I have a better product\u00a0\u2013 30%<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b7<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0To make them lose their clients\u00a0\u2013 18%<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b7<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My competitor is doing \u2018black hat\u2019 SEO to get ahead\u00a0\u2013 15%<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fortunately, there\u2019s a big difference between saying you\u2019ll damage a competitor\u2019s online business and reputation and knowing\u00a0how\u00a0you\u2019d do it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Business owners cited these four techniques they\u2019d use to sabotage a business:<\/span><\/p>\n

1.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Fake reviews on popular review platforms\u00a0\u2013 57%<\/span><\/p>\n

2.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Running a negative influencer campaign\u00a0\u2013 26%<\/span><\/p>\n

3.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Running a negative SEO campaign\u00a0\u2013 14%<\/span><\/p>\n

4.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hacking a website\u00a0\u2013 3%<\/span><\/p>\n

Reboot Digital were so intrigued by the results of the survey that they sent out a fake email\u00a0to 87 local businesses offering to sabotage their competitor\u2019s online reputations and the results were interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00d8<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Accepted the offer and wanted further details\u00a0= 13%<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00d8<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Declined the offer\u00a0= 35%<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00d8<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Didn\u2019t reply\u00a0= 52%<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Oliver Sissons<\/span>, SEO manager of Reboot has provided tips on how to spot if your website has been under attack from negative SEO: Link Tracking Tools<\/span><\/p>\n

Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush and Majestic SEO provide up-to-date reports on who is linking to your website and regularly auditing their reports will help you keep an eye on any potentially malicious activity. Google also provides an overview of who is linking to your website in Google Search Console.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you do find someone pointing toxic or spam links to your website, you should put together a disavow file and submit it to Google. This should help nullify any negative effects the links might have on your website.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tracking Brand Mentions<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Not everyone trying to hurt your business will link to your website. It is possible that a competitor or disgruntled ex-employee is leaving fake, damaging reviews and mentions of your brand online to scare off potential new customers. Using tools like Google Alerts, BuzzSumo and Hootsuite can help you find new mentions of your brand online and decide if they are legitimate or being created to hurt your marketing efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Google Search Operators<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

By getting comfortable using Google search operators, you can search Google\u2019s database of billions of websites to find those specifically talking about your business. Start playing around with them by switching the example text out with your businesses or website name and details. You might be surprised by what shows up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Review Advertising Data<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If you are running any paid ads online, you need to know how to review the campaigns\u2019 performances and dive into the huge amount of data made available to you. Look out for any sudden spikes in the amount of impressions or clicks from a single area (especially if you are targeting a broader location) and start analysing where the money you are spending is going.<\/span><\/p>\n

Keep an Eye on Your Review Profiles<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

You should already be responding to new positive and negative reviews on your website or business. You should know about and have access to all review profiles about your business so you can dispute any fake ones which might be sent your way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Keep Your Logins Safe<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The best way to prevent a hack or recover quickly from one is to keep any login or access details secure and safe. Also, familiarise yourself with who to contact if your website is ever hacked.<\/span><\/p>\n

Check for Duplicate Content<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes spammers will take your content and publish it on countless other websites to lower the value of your website. Check by taking random strings and sentences from your key pages and search them in Google surrounded by quotation marks. If any of these spammy websites are outranking your own content, you need to find out why. You could look at having the duplicated websites taken down for copyright reasons or might even have to update and improve your own content.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Building a business is tough. But sometimes, the hardest challenge is competing with established businesses, especially if your business has a limited marketing budget. Consequently, competition from other brands in your niche may cause some to act unethically and consider sabotaging a competitor (hindering\/damaging the reputation of an online business). Acts of online sabotage can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-news","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15521"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15539,"href":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15521\/revisions\/15539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewnews.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}