How do you defend against black hat SEO attacks that can damage rankings overnight? In this interview, James Dooley speaks with cyber security expert Brian Kato about the real risks behind negative SEO and how businesses can protect their sites in 2026. Many SEO issues are self-inflicted because poor link building, weak site structure and bad practices create vulnerabilities that attackers exploit. The discussion covers entity poisoning, review bombing, toxic backlinks, canonical issues and how competitors attempt to manipulate brand signals. Brian explains that understanding your baseline performance is critical because sudden changes highlight coordinated attacks. Instead of relying heavily on disavow, building stronger links, improving topical relevance and reinforcing brand authority protects rankings because stronger signals outweigh manipulation attempts.

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