There seems to be a strange connection with another website.

[weddingshoesandaccessories]

I noticed that some websites that we have no connection with are showing up in my stats as having links to me all with (Img Alt) replica watches tag

We are  www.bridalshoesuk.co.uk and we sell bridal accessories .so why do a web sites

http://www.heatecev.com/frequently-asked-questions.asp?cid=LLR

http://www.ejnelson.co.uk/index.asp

in fact there seems to be a whole host of different web sites showing up in my stats with the replica watches (Img Alt) tag.

Can anyone help me out with this and more important should i be concerned.

[weddingshoesandaccessories]

Hi Paul

You gave me some good advice and I have been in contact with the web design company who admitted that there server had been compromised which has affected many of there web sites sending out this spam in my direction. The list continues to grow and I know there on the case but I can also see my rankings slipping.

What do I do, Hang in there or disavow ?bearing in mind there could be more sites at a later date.

_Peter

[weddingshoesandaccessories]

Hi Paul

You gave some good advice as regard some very suspect links to my web site.I have acted on your advice and narrowed all the links to one Web site design company who it seemed had developed the offending web sites. We had a good and positive telephone conversation which has resulted in me forwarding a csv from Open site explorer so they can deal with the issue. I will record all correspondence but am hopeful of a swift resolution thanks to you.All the best and Kind regardsPeter

[weddingshoesandaccessories]

Hi Paul

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I think you could sense the lack of experience I have in Seo. A couple of years ago my site was penalized but I had no idea why because like many business owners we did not understand the mechanics of running a web site and so handed it over to  "professionals" to get us ranking some years previous.

Over the past 18 mnths I have taken things into my own hands and also had confirmation there is no penalty over us.

This latest find,I first came across in webmaster tools when I saw that this replica watch site cropped up under the authorship tab. 4 weeks later it disappeared, until now when I discovered it  while browsing opensite explorer.

I will do all that is required to sort this and will act on your advice and again thank you for going into so much detail.

Peter

[ThompsonPaul]

Peter, you're going to want to be careful of these links, and keep an eye out for any more of them.

The sites those links are coming from have been very severely hacked. Someone has hacked into those sites and hidden hundred of spam links on their pages. (You'll only see the links if you look in the source code of the pages.) At least some of those links pointed to pages on your site.

Why would they point links to your site? The most common reason is that they are trying to create a "link wheel". That's where they point a bunch of links at another page to try to give it ranking power. Then they insert more spam links on that second page, hoping that the increased ranking power will make those links more powerful. It's totally a spam tactic and doesn't really work anymore, but it can still be very damaging to a site that's been hacked to do it.

So what should you do? The very first thing you must do is conduct a review of your own site's pages to be CERTAIN you haven't been hacked and had links inserted on your site. I've done a quick review, and it doesn't appear that you have any issues with this, but you'll want to do a deeper check just to be certain.

Second, you need to decide if these types of links can hurt you. Because they are crap links from unrelated sites, they will look very spammy. Having too many of these crappy incoming links is what can trigger a Penguin algorithm penalty. This is only likely to happen if those crappy links form a significant percentage of your incoming links.

What I would do is immediately begin keeping a spreadsheet listing any and all of those crappy incoming links you detect. If there are only a few of them (less than 5% of your total incoming links), then I'd just keep adding to the list as you find them, and make a notation that they're coming from hacked sites. If you continue to see new crap links being created, keep adding them to the spreadsheet.

Once they get close to totaling 5% of your overall incoming links, I'd prepare a disavow file and submit them using Google and Bing's disavow tools. The point here is - you don't want to submit a new disavow request every time you find a few links. But if the number of bad links is starting to pile up, you want to inform the search engines that you know about them, know they are crap links, and are not responsible for creating them.

Some people will tell you that you shouldn't submit disavow requests unless you have received a penalty notification. My position on this from experience is that it is VERY hard to get a penalty lifted once it's been applied. Much better to try to avoid the problem in the first place. But as I say - you don't want to be sending a new disavow list every time a few bad links show up. That could be counterproductive too.

As a last effort, I'd also take an hour or so to send emails to the hacked sites that are sending you the bad links. Politely and helpfully inform them that they have been hacked and are being used for spam attacks. Let them know that their security problem is not only hurting many other sites, but that it is likely badly damaging their own sites' rankings as well. Some will be appreciative and try to fix the issue, some will just ignore you. But if you should ever receive a penalty, you will immediately be able to show Google your list of monitored bad links and proof that you tried to contact the offending sites to get the links removed. These are the two critical components to being able to get a penalty lifted quickly.

Bottom line - I don't mean to alarm you here, but you need to be proactive to ensure you are protected. As long as you're sure your own site is clean, and the total number of crap links isn't too high, there isn't much to worry about. And if the number of crap links starts to escalate, your monitoring and records will put you in a position to easily submit a list of all of them through the disavow tool.

I know that's a to digest, but since you indicated you're not yet well-seasoned in this kind of thing, I wanted to try to be thorough. If you still have questions, be sure to ask!!

Paul

[weddingshoesandaccessories]

Hey Dennis, Thanks for getting in touch.

Im not a seasoned seo expert and things like this worry me. I cant see why somebody would do this or what benefit they gain.  My worry is that I will be penalized in some way.

I will look at your advice at act best i can.  Thank you   Peter

[weddingshoesandaccessories]

Thank you for the reply, I appreciate it.

I will look into this. I did tidy up my links early last year and went through every single link but i have to say i never came across these ones. Thanks for your advice ,i will act on it.

All the best

Peter

[MoosaHemani]

If you are getting link back from the mentioned websites to your website, you probably are going to get some traffic from there and as a result you will see those websites in stats.

My advice is to look in to the link profile and see what websites are linking to your website and if you see any suspicious link that point back to your website, you probably should either remove the link or disavow them.

Hope this helps!

[DennisSeymour]

Hi Peter

It's possible that they got a link on your site pointing to one of their satellite sites. They hacked those sites/inserted their links and pointed it to you. It's possible that it's an invisible link

Try using your url (the exact page they are pointing to) on google. Look at the cache. You could see it there most of the time.

If not, then it's possible that it has been removed already, through an update of your site or something.