Clean-up Question after a wordpress site Hack added pages with external links from a massive link wheel?
-
Hey All, Thought I would throw this out to ensure I am dotting my "i's" and crossing my "t's".....
Client WordPress site was hacked injected 3-4 pages that cross linked to hundreds (affiliate junk spam link wheel).
- Pages were removed, 3rd party cleared all malware/viruses.
- Heavy duty firewall and security monitoring are in place.
- Hacked pages are now showing as 404.
- No penalties, ranking issues....If anything there was a temporary BOOST in rankings due to the large link-wheel type net that the pages were receiving....That has since leveled out rankings.
I guess my question is, in your opinion is it best to let those pages 404, I am noticing a large amount of links going to them from all over the world from this large link net that was built. I find the temptation to 301 re-direct deleted pages to the homepage difficult...lol..{the temptation is REAL}.
Is there anything I am missing? Any other steps that YOU would take? I am assuming letting those pages 404 would be the best bet, as in time they will roll off index....
Thank you in advance, I appreciate any feedback or opinions....
-
It may not be an issue, but be sure to keep checking Webmaster tools and if needed you might have to disavow those links.
Good Luck
-
- Use Sucuri remove all bad URL/URI's & to make sure the site is clean. https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/
- Don't 301 not relevant junk to you site.
- Use a 410 page to show Google you want "the bad links dead. in time they will roll off index"
- Add Sucuri WordPress plugin to check site.
Hope helps,
Tom
-
If you know what you do then you can use 410.
Because with 404 bot will coming to check that pages many times. With 410 it's only one or twice. Example from mine .htaccess:
Redirect 410 /salons/galka-3/
Redirect 410 /salons/galka-4/
Redirect 410 /salons/galka-1/
Redirect 410 /salons/galka-2/As you can see it's very easy and and sleek. BUT beware because if you send 410 to normal page then later you can't get this page ranked!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hacked Websites (Doorways) Ranking First Page of Google
Hello Moz community! I could really use your help with some suggestions here with some recent changes I've noticed in the Google serps for terms I've been currently working on. Currently one of the projects I am working on is for an online pharmacy and noticed that the SERPs are being now taken up by hacked websites which look like doorways to 301 redirect to an online pharmacy the hacker wants the traffic to go to. Seems like they may be wordpress sites that are hacked and have unrelated content on their websites compared to online pharmacies. We've submitted these issues as spam to Google and within chrome as well but haven't heard back. When searching terms like "Canadian Pharmacy Viagra" and other similar terms we see this issue. Any other recommendations on how we can fix this issue? Thanks for your time and attached is a screenshot of the results we are seeing for one of our searches. 1Orus
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | monarkg0 -
Links Identified in WMT not on Webpages
Hi, We're currently reviewing one of our clients backlinks in Google Webmaster Tools, Majestic & OSE as we can see many toxic links. However we cannot find the links on the webpages that are listed on Google WMT. We have searched through the website along with checking through the source code. Should we still disavow the domain? Thanks, Edd
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tomcraig860 -
How to 301 redirect from old domain and their pages to new domain and pages?
Hi i am a real newbie to this and i hope for a guide on how to do this. I seen a few moz post and is quiet confusing hopefully somebody able to explain it in layman terms to me. I would like to 301 redirect this way, both website contain the same niche. oldwebsite.com > newwebsite.com and also its pages..... oldwebsite.com/test >newwebsite.com/test So my question here is i would like to host my old domain and its pages in my new website hosting in order to redirect to my new domain and its pages how do i do that? would my previous page link overwrite my new page link? or it add on the juice link? Do i need to host the whole old domain website into my new hosting in order to redirect the old pages? really confusing here, thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Massive site-wide internal footer links to doorway pages: how bad is this?
My company has stuffed several hundred links into the footer of every page. Well, technically not the footer, as they're right at the end of the body tag, but basically the same thing. They are formatted as follows: [" href="http://example.com/springfield_oh_real_estate.htm">" target="_blank">http://example.com/springfield_pa_real_estate.htm">](</span><a class= "http://example.com/springfield_oh_real_estate.htm")springfield, pa real estate These direct to individual pages that contain the same few images and variations the following text that just replace the town and state: _Springfield, PA Real Estate - Springfield County [images] This page features links to help you Find Listings and Homes for sale in the Springfield area MLS, Springfield Real Estate Agents, and Springfield home values. Our free real estate services feature all Springfield and Springfield suburban areas. We also have information on Springfield home selling, Springfield home buying, financing and mortgages, insurance and other realty services for anyone looking to sell a home or buy a home in Springfield. And if you are relocating to Springfield or want Springfield relocation information we can help with our Relocation Network._ The bolded text links to our internal site pages for buying, selling, relocation, etc. Like I said, this is repeated several hundred times, on every single page on our site. In our XML sitemap file, there are links to: http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BD69
http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/Homes/
http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/Townhomes/ That direct to separate pages with a Google map result for properties for sale in Springfield. It's accompanied by the a boilerplate version of this: _Find Springfield Pennsylvania Real Estate for sale on www.example.com - your complete source for all Springfield Pennsylvania real estate. Using www.example.com, you can search the entire local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for up to date Springfield Pennsylvania real estate for sale that may not be available elsewhere. This includes every Springfield Pennsylvania property that's currently for sale and listed on our local MLS. Example Company is a fully licensed Springfield Pennsylvania real estate provider._ Google Webmaster Tools is reporting that some of these pages have over 30,000 internal links on our site. However, GWT isn't reporting any manual actions that need to be addressed. How blatantly abusive and spammy is this? At best, Google doesn't care a spit about it , but worst case is this is actively harming our SERP rankings. What's the best way to go about dealing with this? The site did have Analytics running, but the company lost the account information years ago, otherwise I'd check the numbers to see if we were ever hit by Panda/Penguin. I just got a new Analytics account implemented 2 weeks ago. Of course it's still using deprecated object values so I don't even know how accurate it is. Thanks everyone! qrPftlf.png0 -
People buying links to their profiles on my site
As we have a major Penguin update looming in the background, I am looking for expert advice on how to deal with professionals buying into link programs whether they are doing it deliberately or not. Our site provides detailed profile information on hundreds of 1000's of professionals and some professionals apparently believed that buying into link program will lift their profile in the SERPS. About 10 professionals have paid shady link building companies to buy links to their profiles on our site. The biggest offender bought over 1,500 links to his profile. Aside from adding the known toxic links to our disavow file, what else can we do to avoid any link penalties? I can think of three distinct options and would love to hear feedback especially based on actual experience. Option 1. 404 the existing profile - "http://www.anysite.com/jones_smith" and create a new URL "http://www.anysite.com/jones_smith_1". Option 2. Keep the existing URL and fully rely on the disavow file. Contact the professionals and kindly ask them to stop buying links and to contact their link building companies to remove the links. Any other ideas?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | irvingw0 -
Advice on using the disavow tool to remove hacked website links
Hey Everyone, Back in December, our website suffered an attack which created links to other hacked webistes which anchor text such as "This is an excellent time to discuss symptoms, fa" "Open to members of the nursing/paramedical profes" "The organs in the female reproductive system incl" The links were only visible when looking at the Cache of the page. We got these links removed and removed all traces of the attack such as pages which were created in their own directory on our server 3 months later I'm finding websites linking to us with similar anchor text to the ones above, however they're linking to the pages that were created on our server when we were attacked and they've been removed. So one of my questions is does this effect our site? We've seen some of our best performing keywords drop over the last few months and I have a feeling it's due to these spammy links. Here's a website that links to us <colgroup><col width="751"></colgroup>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | blagger
| http://www.fashion-game.com/extreme/blog/page-9 | If you do view source or look at the cached version then you'll find a link right at the bottom left corner. We have 268 of these links from 200 domains. Contacting these sites to have these links removed would be a very long process as most of them probably have no idea that those links even exist and I don't have the time to explain to each one how to remove the hacked files etc. I've been looking at using the Google Disavow tool to solve this problem but I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not. We haven't had any warnings from Google about our site being spam or having too many spam links, so do we need to use the tool? Any advice would be very much appreciated. Let me know if you require more details about our problem. <colgroup><col width="355"></colgroup>
| | | |0 -
Getting Credit for your own inbound links
Good afternoon, I have been comparing competitors with the Open Site Explorer looking at their inbound links. I have noticed that they have been getting credit for their own inbound links within their site. Is there something I am doing wrong as inbound links on my site aren't getting found? Could this have anything to do with Webmaster tools? Thanks in advance, SEO_123
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TWPLC_seo0 -
Landing page for ppc
Is it okay to create a landing page with a different url to get additional traffic to my site with ppc? The purpose would not be for link building; I would only use it for direct marketing with ppc and people would click through to my main site via a no-follow link. Is there anything wrong with doing this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BradBorst0