Take your visibility to the next level and grow your business with Aphexmedia. Leverage our expert SEO services for actionable insights and strategies that drive results. Book a call today to explore personalized growth tactics that will help you stand out in the competitive digital landscape.
and grow your business with Aphexmedia. Leverage our expert SEO services for actionable insights and strategies that drive results. Book a call today to explore personalized growth tactics that will help you stand out in the competitive digital landscape.
Comprehensive SEO services, including link building and viral strategies
Challenges
High competition, volatile search environment, negative SEO attacks
Main Goal
Maintain keyword rankings mid Google updates and competitive pressures with negative SEO
Message to attacker from Aphex Team:
“Dear…person, you should really find a new hobby. We’re not going anywhere. 🤷”
During our daily monitoring of the website, we started noticing something unusual – incoming suspicious and spammy looking backlinks appearing at an alarming rate. At the same time, our client reached out with concerns that their website had become slow, raising a red flag that something bigger was happening. This was the beginning of a full-scale negative SEO attack.
For nearly two years, we’ve been working with this casino affiliate website in this market, helping it rise through the ranks and secure top positions for some of the most competitive keywords in the industry. The iGaming sector in this market is an ultra-competitive landscape, dominated by major players with deep pockets and aggressive strategies. With so much at stake, it’s not uncommon to see tactics like negative SEO attacks aimed at bringing down competitors.
The website had been steadily climbing the ranks, thanks to a robust SEO strategy that covered technical optimization, high-quality content, and strategic link-building efforts via Instalinko & our viral traffic service – InstaRankers. However, the nature of the market meant that maintaining those top positions was just as challenging as achieving them.
Challenges We Faced
Once we dug deeper, it became clear that this wasn’t just a minor issue. The attacks came in multiple forms, each designed to damage the website’s visibility and authority:
Spammy Backlinks at Scale 📈
Thousands of low-quality, irrelevant links were being pointed at the website from spammy domains, attempting to trigger a penalty or loss of trust in Google’s eyes.
These links were often anchored with irrelevant or harmful keywords, which could dilute the site’s topical relevance and authority.
DDoS Attacks & Forceful Crawling 💻
The client’s complaint about slow website performance was traced back to sustained DDoS attacks, where malicious bots flooded the servers with fake traffic, causing performance issues and potential ranking drops due to slower page speeds.
In addition, forceful crawling techniques were used to overload the site’s resources, leading to potential downtime and indexing issues.
Content Duplication on Aged Domains 📄
Entire sections of the website’s content were copied and published across aged, authoritative domains in an attempt to create duplicate content issues.
The goal? Confuse search engines and force the original pages to lose rankings in favor of the duplicates.
These attacks posed a serious threat to our client’s hard-earned rankings, authority, and overall online presence. In an industry where visibility equals revenue, even a slight dip in rankings could mean losing a significant portion of traffic and conversions.
Our Primary Objective
Our mission was clear: protect the website’s rankings and reputation by mitigating the impact of these attacks while maintaining stability across Google’s algorithm updates.
To achieve this, we took a multi-layered approach, combining technical SEO expertise, proactive content management, and a strong defense strategy, including:
Daily backlink audits to detect and disavow harmful links before they could cause damage.
Server-level security enhancements to mitigate DDoS attacks and maintain site speed and uptime.
Content protection measures to ensure originality and combat duplication issues.
Strategic use of InstaRankers to maintain healthy engagement signals and reinforce rankings with real, geo-targeted traffic signals.
SEO Strategy Implemented – This is what we did!
In response to the negative SEO attacks and the ever-evolving challenges of the ultra-competitive iGaming market, we developed and executed a multi-layered SEO strategy to protect and sustain the website’s rankings. Our approach focused on four key areas:
1. Technical SEO Enhancements 🛠️
We conducted comprehensive site audits to identify and resolve performance and security issues that could impact search rankings. This included:
Security Reinforcements: Strengthened defenses by implementing stricter CDN rules to filter and block harmful traffic, effectively mitigating DDoS attempts and forceful crawling.
Crawl Efficiency Improvements: Fine-tuned the site’s architecture to prevent search engine bots from getting trapped on low-value pages, ensuring an efficient crawl budget allocation.
Robots.txt Optimization: Introduced targeted blocking of suspicious search queries and specific directives aligned with attack patterns to prevent exploit attempts and unnecessary resource consumption.
Comment Section Hardening: Enhanced the site’s comment section security by implementing anti-DDoS measures to prevent automated spam attacks and protect user-generated content integrity.
2. Content Quality Assurance 📚
Ensuring that all content met high-quality standards was crucial to maintaining authority and trustworthiness in the eyes of search engines. Our approach included:
Regular content audits to identify and remove any low-value or duplicate content.
Enhancing existing content to better align with search intent and E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) principles.
Implementing structured data to help Google better understand and feature content in search results.
3. Link Profile Monitoring 🔍
Given the large-scale spammy backlink attacks, we closely monitored the website’s backlink profile to identify and neutralize threats. This involved:
Daily backlink audits using industry-leading tools to detect harmful links.
Strategic use of Google’s Disavow Tool to ensure spammy links were ignored.
Continuous monitoring to stay ahead of new spam link waves.
4. Fighting Against Content Duplication on Aged Domains 📄
One of the most alarming challenges we encountered was the unauthorized duplication of entire sections of the website across aged, authoritative domains. This tactic was designed to confuse search engines, potentially causing ranking drops by making the original content appear as a duplicate. If left unchecked, this could have led to significant visibility loss and credibility issues.
To counteract this, we implemented a multi-layered strategy focused on detection, prevention, and reinforcement:
1. Proactive Monitoring & Detection
We utilized advanced plagiarism detection tools and Google Search Console reports to track unauthorized content duplication across the web.
A combination of manual and automated searches helped us identify domains that were hosting stolen content and targeting our client’s most valuable pages.
Leveraged Google Alerts and few industry standard tools to track mentions and unauthorized republications of key content.
2. Content Ownership Reinforcement
Strengthened internal linking structures to reinforce site authority and create clear content relationships that help search engines prioritize our pages.
Regularly updated and republished key content with strategic timestamps, helping Google recognize freshness and originality.
Filed DMCA takedown requests against offending websites at CDN, web hosting, domain registrar & Google layers, requesting removal of duplicated content from search engines and web hosts. We also took legal action against a few websites by sending reports to domain registrars and hosting companies directly.
3. Strengthening E-E-A-T Signals
Enhanced author bios and structured data, reinforcing the site’s expertise and trustworthiness in Google’s eyes.
Incorporated unique content elements, such as original case studies, user-generated content, and interactive media, making it harder for copied content to gain traction.
Improved schema markup and OpenGraph tags to ensure search engines and social media platforms prioritize the correct version of content.
4. Rapid Indexation Strategies
Leveraged Google Search Console’s URL Inspection Tool to request indexing of the original pages immediately after content updates.
Used internal linking and sitemap updates to help search engines quickly crawl and prioritize our authentic content over the duplicates.
Used a few 3rd party indexing tools to boost the speed and crawling rate of our website as well.
Increased social media sharing and engagement, driving real user interaction that differentiated our content from duplicated copies. (this part was taken care by other company since we don’t manage client social media channels but with our guidance)
5. Strategic Link Building with Instalinko 🔗
To counterbalance the impact of negative SEO and reinforce domain authority, we leveraged Instalinko to acquire high-quality backlinks from trusted sources, focusing on:
Securing contextual links from reputable casino and iGaming websites.
Diversifying anchor texts to maintain a natural backlink profile.
Targeting niche-relevant authority websites to boost the site’s credibility.
6. Viral Traffic Strategies with InstaRankers 🚀
We employed InstaRankers’ viral traffic strategy to enhance engagement signals and reinforce keyword rankings during turbulent periods. This included:
Driving geo-specific social media traffic to critical pages to boost behavioral signals.
Encouraging real engagement to show Google that the site remained valuable to users.
Using traffic bursts strategically to push stagnant keywords back into top positions.
Results
Despite aggressive negative SEO attacks and algorithm updates, our strategic approach delivered outstanding results:
1. Keyword Stability 📈
We successfully maintained or improved rankings for all major high-value keywords.
No significant drops were observed even during peak attack periods.
Competitive terms remained on the first page, driving valuable traffic and conversions.
Positive engagement signals contributing to ranking stability.
What Aphex Media Team Learned
We learned the challenges of a highly competitive and volatile industry like the iGaming market don’t come without breaking a sweat. Our proactive approach to SEO, combined with strategic execution, allowed us to protect and sustain rankings amidst negative SEO attacks and algorithm fluctuations.
1. Proactive Monitoring is Crucial 🔍
Continuous oversight is key to identifying and mitigating potential threats before they become major issues. From daily backlink audits to real-time performance tracking, staying vigilant allowed us to counteract negative SEO tactics effectively and prevent ranking losses. By closely monitoring technical aspects, content quality, and backlink profiles, we ensured the site remained resilient against malicious attacks and algorithm shifts.
2. Quality Over Quantity in Link Building 🔗
In an ultra-competitive industry, securing high-quality, niche-relevant backlinks proved far more valuable than acquiring links in bulk. Using Instalinko, we prioritized authoritative, contextual backlinks that strengthened the website’s trust signals and ensured long-term ranking stability. A strategic, focused approach to link acquisition played a significant role in outpacing competitors without risking penalties.
3. Leveraging Trusted Services for SEO Success 🚀
Utilizing specialized services like InstaRankers and Instalinko gave us a competitive edge in maintaining rankings during periods of volatility. InstaRankers helped reinforce engagement signals and counter ranking stagnation, while Instalinko provided a steady flow of authoritative backlinks to enhance trust and visibility.
4. Adaptability is Key to SEO Success 🔄
SEO is a constantly evolving field, and staying flexible in response to algorithm changes, competitor strategies, and emerging threats is vital. Our ability to quickly adapt to new challenges, whether it was dealing with spammy backlinks, DDoS attacks, or content duplication attempts, allowed us to safeguard our client’s digital presence and remain competitive. The willingness to pivot and implement new strategies as needed ensured continued success.
At Aphex Media, we remain committed to staying ahead of the curve, continuously refining our strategies, and implementing best practices to ensure our clients’ websites are not only protected but positioned for ongoing success.
Our journey with this client has shown that with the right combination of technical expertise, strategic link-building, and proactive monitoring, it’s possible to thrive even in the most volatile search environments.
Looking to protect and grow your online presence? Let’s talk. 🚀
