Site hacked in Jan. Redeveloped new site. Still not ranking. Should we change domain?
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Our top ranking site in the UK was hacked at the end of 2014.
http://www.ultimatefloorsanding.co.uk/
The site was the subject of a manual spam action from Google. After several unsuccessful attempts to clean it up, using Securi.net and reinstating old versions of the site, changing passwords etc. we took the decision to redevelop the site. We also changed hosting provider as we had received absolutely no support from them whatsoever in resolving the issue.
So far we have:
- Removed the old website files off the server
- Developed a new website having implemented 301's for all the old URL's (except the spam ones)
- Submitted a reconsideration request for the manual spam action, which was accepted.
- Disavowed all the spammy inbound links through Webmaster Tools
- Implemented custom URL parameters through Google to not index the SPAM URLs ( which were using parameters)
Our organic traffic is down by 63% compared to last year, and we are not ranking for most of our target keywords any longer.
Is there anything that I am missing in the actions I have taken so far? We were advised that at this stage changing domain and starting again might be the way to go. However the current domain has been used by us since 2007, so it would be a big call.
Any advice is appreciated, thanks.
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Hi Kate,
Thanks for your message:
SPAM was identified in October 2014, so we asked our hosting provider to re-install a clean backup of the site. We didn't have a clean offline version, so we were using automatic backups stored on the server. We changed FTP and CMS passwords.We did this on 3 separate occasions in October, but the issue remained.
In November, we subscribed to Securi.net and had them scan and clean the site. They did this twice, but the spam remained.
By January 2015, all the content keywords for the site were showing as Chinese, so we took the decision to re-develop the site on a new CMS and move hosting, as our hosting provider had provided no assistance whatsoever.
The new site launched in March 2015 - we did all the 301s etc. that are required when re-developing a site.
The Manual SPAM action was also applied in March. There is no user-generated content on the site.
We submitted the reconsideration request on 4th of April and it was accepted on April 17th.
I started to disavow the links and work with parameters to ask Google to no-index the URLs using parameters at the start of May and removed the old files from the old server on 3rd of June.
At the end of August, I went through all the remaining records for SPAM URLs returning 404s and amended the robots.txt to disallow the remaining SPAM directories. I also ran the google Site:ultimatefloorsanding.co.uk search and added all the remaining SPAM URLs to the robots.txt and Google URL removal tool.
I'm really not sure what else I can do. So we are thinking of starting again, but are reluctant to do so. Is there anything else you can think of that I can do.
All advice would be gratefully received.
Thanks
Sue
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I actually wouldn't change the domain unless you are doing it for another reason. It's been around since 2007 and I am reluctant to tell you to dump it in favor of a new one. Changing your domain sets everything fresh and you'll most likely seen a bigger loss in organic traffic.
When was the reconsideration request accepted? Can you give us a timeline of everything that happened?
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Hi Matt,
We are leaning towards changing domain. I can't find anyone to argue towards keeping it. However, I did find some URLs that still haven't been removed from the index, through the site:ultimatefloorsanding.co.uk Google search function. I was going to use the URL removal tool in search console to address that.
Do you think I should wait a while after doing that to see if it has any impact or go ahead and start from scratch?
Any thoughts are welcome, it's good to get a few opinions before deciding.
Sue
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Hi galwaygirl!
Did everything get sorted out?
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Hi galwaygirl.
I'm going to be PMing you my thoughts as I've taken a bit of a peek at your backlink profile and my advice is specific only to your scenario and might be taken wrong and applied to others incorrectly if anyone else read it.
Dave
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Hi Dave,
Thanks for your message.
The manual notice that we got was 'Hacked Site' and the notice applied to spam rather than Malware.
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Which manual action notice did you get? I'm assuming from what you noted that it's the user-generated spam notice but thought it better to check before replying. The only other one I can guess might apply was the unnatural links penalty. If it was the unnatural link penalty then you'll have to wait for the next Penguin update but if you can confirm the penalty I'm happy to look into it further.
Regards.
Dave
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