Positive SEO would make you go up in the rankings Negative SEO has the opposite effect and makes you go down. Usually negative SEO is something that will get you penalized by search engines because they think they are trying to trick them. But it can also be bad work on a website that brings you down in rankings.
Negative SEO is a black hat technique and we shouldn't do it ethically, but there are some circumstances where you need to do it...
SEO which is not positive is called negative SEO. On a serious note, the process of demoting a webpage or a website from SERPs is called negative SEO Negative SEO attacks can come in a few forms. Generally, negative SEO refers to when one website buys links and points them at a competitor’s website in an effort to torpedo their rankings. Other instances of negative SEO have included such tactics as hacking a website to inflict some sort of malicious damage on a website, review bombing (pointing a large number of 5-star reviews at a business so it appears they paid for them), or simply by reporting another website’s “black hat” tactics to Google. Since external links are more or less beyond the control of the site owner, it would seem competitors could very easily improve their search rankings by using tactics to negatively impact their competitors. The reality of the situation is... this is only partially true. You can do things to protect your website. Before you get too worried about a competitor targeting your site to harm your rankings using negative SEO tactics, understand that: It’s generally agreed that a site with strong domain authority is less susceptible to negative SEO tactics. It’s very risky for a business to engage in a negative SEO campaign. Most legitimate businesses won’t take the gamble. Google has systems in place to review sites that might be affected, understanding the process can mean a swift recovery if something were to happen. It’s extremely important to monitor SEO factors that can easily be manipulated by competitors such as backlinks and reviews. Negative SEO Tactics Below are some notes on tactics that were part of what was considered to be a successful negative SEO campaign. Paid linking: If thousands of links get pointed to your site there is a reasonable chance it will most likely get on the radar of Google. Work with Google, change your site to comply within their guidelines the best you can, and submit a reconsideration request containing details on links you have no control over. Stealing content before it can get indexed: This is an attempt to copy a site’s content to make it look like the original site is actually duplicating it. You can prevent this from being an effective tactic by maintaining an updated sitemap and consistently re-submitting when new content is published. The use of an absolute rel=canonical tag on pages can help establish your site as the authority when content is getting scraped by a third party. A great way to identify if your site is getting scraped and duplicated is by performing a Google search containing a a sentence from your webpage within quotes.
Negative SEO has to be the easiest way of getting your competition out of the SERP's. It's a simple process of using spammy link building techniques that no longer work to bring down somebodys site.