A competitor is attacking your visibility, or stealing your work
By ReputationKiln Editorial · Published
Beyond fake reviews, a competitor can come at you two more ways: by trying to damage how you are found, and by stealing the proof your reputation is built on. The first, often called negative search optimisation, means pointing thousands of junk links at you to make your profile look manipulated. The second is more painful for a trade: lifting your job photos and before-and-afters and passing your work off as theirs. The defence for both is monitoring and free takedown tools, and, crucially, keeping your originals, because the same evidence that proves your reputation proves the work is yours when a copycat takes it.
One honest note before you spend a penny: the big platforms now largely ignore junk links, so link-based negative SEO is real but heavily over-sold by firms wanting a monthly "protection" fee.
Defend your findability
- Watch your backlink profile for a sudden flood of irrelevant, spammy links, and if it happens, submit a disavow file through the search engine's free tool so it ignores them. Harden your site's security against the hacking version of the same attack.
- For scraped content, the words copied to another site, set up alerts for your own phrases, then contact the site and, if needed, file a copyright takedown with the host or search engine to remove or de-index the copy.
Defend your proof, which is the bigger one
When someone steals your photos and presents your work as theirs, the way you prove it is yours is the same proof-ledger this site keeps coming back to. The data in your original files, your dated originals and working versions, an archive showing your version existed first, and any commission records, are all things a thief who stole your photos cannot produce, and you can. That is the whole thesis in miniature: the honest operator can show their working, the copycat cannot. Document each use, send a calm takedown notice, escalate with a copyright complaint, and keep your originals safe and backed up.
The limit, and the panic-tax flag
The threat is real but uneven, and the fixes, the disavow tool and copyright takedowns, are free and yours to do. So treat "negative SEO attack, protect yourself for a monthly fee" with the same caution as the rest of the panic tax, because the search engines already discount most junk links and a permanent protection subscription rarely earns its keep. A legitimate helper does the disavow and takedown work and charges for the time; one that manufactures an ongoing emergency is selling fear.