Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Save 36% now!
      Moz Pro

      Save 36% now!

      Sign up
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      Save 36% now!
      Moz Pro

      Save 36% now!

      Sign up
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. What Tools Should I Use To Investigate Damage to my website

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    What Tools Should I Use To Investigate Damage to my website

    Technical SEO
    indexed urls seo seo audit
    5
    6
    457
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • blogwoman1
      blogwoman1 last edited by

      I would like to know what tools I should use and how to investigate damage to my website in2town.co.uk I hired a person to do some work to my website but they damaged it. That person was on a freelance platform and was removed because of all the complaints made about them. They also put in backdoors on websites including mine and added content.

      I also had a second problem where my content was being stolen.

      My site always did well and had lots of keywords in the top five and ten, but now they are not even in the top 200. This happened in January and feb.

      When I write unique articles, they are not showing in Google and need to find what the problem is and how to fix it. Can anyone please help

      ShahSahb11 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • meltingpointgoat
        meltingpointgoat last edited by

        Repairing website damage requires a structured approach. Start by assessing any issues caused by the freelancer using tools like Wordfence for WordPress to detect backdoors or malicious changes. It’s possible Google penalized you for whatever work the freelancer did. You might need to disavow toxic links they built, for example, or address other issues. Tools such as Google Alerts can help identify content duplicates for action.

        For future reference, regular monitoring helps prevent unauthorized changes and stay informed about industry trends. If you monitor a web page for changes, you will ensure no unauthorized adjustments are made on your site. There are several ways to approach this, and several tools you can use; some will notify you when your webpage changes. Monitoring competitors for content trends can also guide your strategy and reveal potential areas for improvement.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • ShahSahb11
          ShahSahb11 last edited by

          use google search console and screaming frog

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • ShahSahb11
            ShahSahb11 @blogwoman1 last edited by

            The best tool that i used to diagnose problems in my office interior designs service based website is the Google search console GSC. You can also use screaming frog or also use moz to analyze and solve issues

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Voilet12
              Voilet12 last edited by

              Page Freezer: Instantly preserve web pages and social media profiles to capture evidence of website damage

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Haroldpinter22
                Haroldpinter22 last edited by

                To investigate damage to your website, you should consider using tools like Google Search Console for monitoring search performance and detecting issues, website security scanners like Word fence to check for malware or vulnerabilities, and website auditing tools such as SEMrush or Screaming Frog for comprehensive analysis of technical SEO issues and website health.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Dan_Tala

                  My website is constantly decreasing

                  loss of ranking

                  For few weeks ago my website is constantly decreasing in search position. I lost keywords and is gooooing down.
                  Although it is well rated on several on page and off page seo verification software that I have tried.
                  I checked Google search console and Analytics and found no major problems. However… from one day to another it keeps going down.
                  I also checked what the main competitors are doing and they are not doing well, at all.
                  The main competitor actually has a creepy website. Totally devoid of onpage or offpage SEO but with an enormous number of backlinks. And of a very bad quality, which should disqualify it, still…
                  Few weeks ago I changed something.
                  In the pages I had H1, 4xH2, no H3 and an H4 without content.
                  An unnatural H tag structure.
                  Now I have H1, H2, H3, 3xH4, with the coherent information.
                  Theoretically, Google should have been “happy” or I’m missing something. I use a SAAS platform.
                  I just found out that they made changes to the keywords (tags).
                  I am selling toner cartridges for printers.
                  So…
                  The tags are printer models and generate a url in which they have the products.
                  Ex. https://www.sertit.ro/cartus-imprimanta-cilindru-color-hp-laserjet-pro-m-177fw goes to the products for that printer model.
                  The question is… should I make tag canonical?
                  Is it possible for products to loose so much in Google search?

                  Technical SEO | | Dan_Tala
                  0
                • landlwoof4

                  How to get rid of bad backlinks

                  off-page seo seo backlinks spam score

                  So I noticed my rankings going down and spam score going up. So under my spam score there are over 100 links for different websites but ALL redirect to semalt.com I researched it and it says they hijacked a bunched of backlinks but don't know much more. How can I get rid of all those backlinks? I was told I could use the disavow tool but apparently that can hurt my ranking as well. The semalt.com site has no backlink to me - it looks like the pages that have/had my backlinks, they've redirected to them. For instance this is one of the links http://www.oxvideos.xyz/indianantyphotoxxx 422005fb-9240-40a4-8b65-f5b1f5079dea-image.png

                  Link Building | | landlwoof4
                  0
                • jasparcj

                  Is page speed important to improve SEO ranking?

                  seo page rank google seo tactic search visibility

                  I saw on a SEO Agency's site (https://burstdgtl.com/search-engine-optimization/) that page speed apparently affects Google ranking. Is this true? And if it is, how do I improve it, do I need an agency?

                  On-Page Optimization | | jasparcj
                  0
                • denakalami

                  My backlinks are not showing in webmaster tools? Why

                  Hi Experts, I have follow backlinks from a domain for 6 months, but its not apear in Links to Your Site tools (search console) that domain has 302k indexed pages in google! Could you please explain me why google not showing this type of backlinks?

                  Technical SEO | | denakalami
                  7
                • Deacyde

                  Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?

                  Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?

                  Technical SEO | | Deacyde
                  0
                • sparrowdog

                  Using the Google Remove URL Tool to remove https pages

                  I have found a way to get a list of 'some' of my 180,000+ garbage URLs now, and I'm going through the tedious task of using the URL removal tool to put them in one at a time. Between that and my robots.txt file and the URL Parameters, I'm hoping to see some change each week. I have noticed when I put URL's starting with https:// in to the removal tool, it adds the http:// main URL at the front. For example, I add to the removal tool:- https://www.mydomain.com/blah.html?search_garbage_url_addition On the confirmation page, the URL actually shows as:- http://www.mydomain.com/https://www.mydomain.com/blah.html?search_garbage_url_addition I don't want to accidentally remove my main URL or cause problems. Is this the right way this should look? AND PART 2 OF MY QUESTION If you see the search description in Google for a page you want removed that says the following in the SERP results, should I still go to the trouble of putting in the removal request? www.domain.com/url.html?xsearch_... A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more.

                  Technical SEO | | sparrowdog
                  1
                • MaartenvandenBos

                  403 forbidden error website

                  Hi Mozzers, I got a question about new website from a new costumer http://www.eindexamensite.nl/. There is a 403 forbidden error on it, and I can't find what the problem is. I have checked on: http://gsitecrawler.com/tools/Server-Status.aspx
                  result:
                  URL=http://www.eindexamensite.nl/ **Result code: 403 (Forbidden / Forbidden)** When I delete the .htaccess from the server there is a 200 OK :-). So it is in the .htaccess. .htaccess code: ErrorDocument 404 /error.html RewriteEngine On
                  RewriteRule ^home$ / [L]
                  RewriteRule ^typo3$ - [L]
                  RewriteRule ^typo3/.$ - [L]
                  RewriteRule ^uploads/.$ - [L]
                  RewriteRule ^fileadmin/.$ - [L]
                  RewriteRule ^typo3conf/.$ - [L]
                  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
                  RewriteRule .* index.php Start rewrites for Static file caching RewriteRule ^(typo3|typo3temp|typo3conf|t3lib|tslib|fileadmin|uploads|screens|showpic.php)/ - [L]
                  RewriteRule ^home$ / [L] Don't pull *.xml, *.css etc. from the cache RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^..xml$
                  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^..css$
                  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^.*.php$ Check for Ctrl Shift reload RewriteCond %{HTTP:Pragma} !no-cache
                  RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cache-Control} !no-cache NO backend user is logged in. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !be_typo_user [NC] NO frontend user is logged in. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !nc_staticfilecache [NC] We only redirect GET requests RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} GET We only redirect URI's without query strings RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ We only redirect if a cache file actually exists RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html -f
                  RewriteRule .* typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html [L] End static file caching DirectoryIndex index.html CMS is typo3. any ideas? Thanks!
                  Maarten

                  Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
                  0
                • James77

                  Is using a Href in Div OK?

                  Hi, I was just wondering what your thoughts are on using a Href in a Div, which contains anchor text. We currently use the Href on the div, as opposed to just the anchor text as I want the whole div to be clickable as opposed to just the anchor text. So currently I have: Keword 1
                  Keyword 2 Is this perfectly fine to do it like this as opposed to using <a tags="" ???<br="">I suppose there are various alternatives - if you must use the</a><a tag="" like:<="" p=""></a> <a tag="" like:<="" p=""></a> Keword 1
                  Keyword 2 However I would assume a search engine is smart enought to know its the same thing??? Thanks

                  Technical SEO | | James77
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.