Found hidden pages of outbound links created via ex-SEO consultant. Best way to detect other possible problems?
-
We paid for an SEO contract in addition to our new website design (same company did both) and after 12 months cancelled the SEO. I have been very suspicious ever since of our bad page rank and general lack of traffic (despite my efforts) and today found a hidden page of outbound links. Currently in shock that this happened although my own fault for lack of due diligence. The SEO consultants were very unhappy that I cancelled the contract so I am worried about the extent of bad links or negative google juice they may have created (god knows what else they may have done).
So my questions are:
-
How can I detect any other (potentially hidden) problems?
-
How can I recover from this - any right/wrong way to approach google?
-
What is the best way to bring this up with the SEO consultants?
Thank you in advance.
-
-
Removing the page should more than likely be a basic task. However knowing if what they have done was worthwhile would require a well-practiced eye. I don't want to discourage you, but it sounds like you may not be that well-versed with off-page.
So, for the low low cost of reading this; I can give you a few things to watch out for. I'm sure some others will jump in, and I would be grateful for that as well. I probably won't remember to mention everything, and I may learn something.
All of that is the real reason I come back to Q&A, aside from the fact that I want to solve problems. I blame my dad.
Nevertheless, here's what to look out for:
- A lot of exact match anchors (your target keywords)
- Low quality directories (You will know them if you can search adult, pharma and casino keywords in their search function.)
- Paid stuffs (A dead giveaway is an 'Ad' that actually passes juice - not nofollow or otherwise 'neutered'.)
- Unrelated links (This means you, due to the reciprocals. You aren't related to a thatcher in New Zealand... or at least most likely not.)
All of the above are examples of things that may get your site penalized, depending on the circumstances.
Now if the agency was doing a lot of low quality directory listings, there's actually something pretty new you should be aware of. A lot of low quality directories are blocking popular crawlers. So maybe a lot of links aren't gone, just your favorite crawlers have been blocked.
Get all your standard link datas: GWT, BWT, Majestic, Ahrefs, etc. - filter duplicates and commence crawling. That's where Screaming Frog also comes in handy. You can spoof a popular user agent, thus you will not be blocked. So you will have a better idea of the actual links that exist, or don't exist, to your site.
This is what you have to do, brochacho. Chin up.
-
Thanks everyone for your helpful responses. Some further info and responses from me:
-
The site definitely hasn't been hacked - the links all go to other customers of our ex-SEO company. So I assume it is part of a reciprocal link exchange however we don't seem to have any returning links anymore as I would expect since we no longer pay for their SEO services.
-
site:domain search in Google does not pick up the page - it hasn't been indexed - what is the value if Google is unaware? The only way I found out about this is watching Analytics in real time and seeing a strange URL I didn't recognise then navigating to that page.
-
Screaming Frog is a great tool however it doesn't appear to be detecting these links either - nothing appearing under the "External" tab.
-
Re "I don't want to make you paranoid, but there's also a possibility that a sufficiently miffed contractor may also pull links. But since we don't know the actual site, we can't really say if that's happening - or if their work is worth worrying about in the first place." - How do I go about checking this myself?
In summary I will have a discussion about this with the SEO company shortly and maybe just ask them to remove this page? I just want to be sure they are not doing anything else untoward.
-
-
I 'third' the screaming frog recommendation. I honestly couldn't do my job effectively without it! It'll tell you loads about your site, not just to help with this problem.
Also look at your backlinks in WMT. Is there anything untoward there?
I think you should speak to the company you believe did this. I wouldn't go in all guns blazing though, as mentioned by others, the site could have been hacked. Maybe just say 'I found this page, do you know anything about it?' which isn't accusing them of anything, simply asking if they know about it.
Sometimes companies do strange things when you stop using them. A very very long time ago, I worked for an agency which would remove as many links as possible (sometimes pointing them to other clients in the same niche) when a company cancelled their services. I used to lie and say I'd removed the links when I hadn't (I know, naughty to lie, but IMHO more naughty to take someone's money for a service and then delete as much of the service that they paid for as soon as they stop paying - despicable). Another thing they did (when customers particularly annoyed them) was to put nofollow, noindex in the robots.txt when a client left to use the services of a competitor - they even had a betting book of how quickly it took the competitor to work out why the site wasn't listing. Again, despicable. I should say, this company (funnily enough) went bust and no longer exists. I only worked there for a very short time, it gave me a foot in the door of SEO as it was my first SEO job and for that I am grateful to them. I love my job and wouldn't want to stop doing SEO.
All the agencies I've worked for since have not operated in this way.
I am only telling you this to say, you may be right about the agency doing something they shouldn't (and hidden link pages are quite common), but the site could have been hacked and if you have a conversation with the company about it, I would not say 'I think you did it' because if they did, they'll deny it (and where's your proof) and if they didn't they will be very very offended.
As a precautionary measure, I would change all the passwords to your site (ftp, admin etc) so if someone got in (hacked or this company) through a password breach they can't get in again.
-
I second the Screaming Frog crawl. Last I knew, it was free - up to 500 URLs. The paid version may seem expensive, but the value I've received is pretty solid. Seriously, fractions of a cent on the dollar type stuff.
Download your OS flavor here. You will be happy you did. The learning curve isn't very steep. Most everything runs 'out of the box', but you may find the advanced features pretty snazzy as well.
I also agree that the page you found may be reciprocal links list. But is there any way it could be a, real, resource page that wasn't finished? That's another possibility.
I don't want to make you paranoid, but there's also a possibility that a sufficiently miffed contractor may also pull links. But since we don't know the actual site, we can't really say if that's happening - or if their work is worth worrying about in the first place.
In regard to contacting the consultants, if the relationship ended poorly - I wouldn't exactly hold my breath. They've likely moved on by now. They might not have the time or the inclination to respond to you.
But if you're inclined to confront them, I would avoid the prosecuting attorney approach and err toward the Columbo style of questioning.
-
Hello,
It is possible that your website has been hacked and someone has created additional pages, which link back to their money site.
Some of our clients websites occasionally get hacked with spammy link pages being added. If you google site:domain.com it should show you all the pages of your website that have been indexed by Google.
Rob
-
The links might of been for a link exchange (you link to us and we link to you type of thing) wouldn't be the first time I've seen it so don't assume its an evil plot to take over the world just yet! You can use a handy little tool called screaming frog to detect out going links on your site.
If you monitor your site via OSE (or any similar alternatives) you can also keep track of any impact that you may fear be it negative or other wise. You mention recovery but are you sure you need to recover? Could just be you need to do some SEO and build some links its not really a recovery thing more of a just do it right thing. I'm confidant that you would know right/wrong (white/black hat) way to approach it.
Have you tried just straight up asking them what the page is for? They might explain it, deny it etc. but at least you will be better off than wondering why or what.
Best of luck and let us know what they say the page is for.
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
-
Filter Pages
Howdy Moz Forum!! I have a headache of a job over here in the UK and I'd welcome any advice! - It's sunny today, only 1 of 5 days in a year and i'm stuck on this! I have a client that currently has 22,000 pages indexed to Google with almost 4000 showing as duplicate content. The site has a "jobs" and "candidates" list. This can cause all sorts of variations such as job title, language, location etc. The filter pages all seem to be indexed. Plus the static pages are indexed. For example if there were 100 jobs at Moz being advertised, it is displaying the jobs on the following URL structure - /moz
Moz Pro | | Slumberjac
/moz/moz-jobs
/moz/moz-jobs/page/2
/moz/moz-jobs/page/3
/moz/moz-jobs/page/4
/moz/moz-jobs/page/5 ETC ETC Imagine this with some going up to page/250 I have checked GA data and can see that although there are tons of pages indexed this way, non of them past the "/moz/moz-jobs" URL get any sort of organic traffic. So, my first question! - Should I use rel-canonical tags on all the /page/2 & /page/3 etc results and point them all at the /moz/moz-jobs parent page?? The reason for this is these pages have the same title and content and fall very close to "duplicate" content even though it does pull in different jobs... I hope i'm making sense? There is also a lot of pages indexed in a way such as- https://www.examplesite.co.uk/moz-jobs/search/page/9/?candidate_search_type=seo-consulant&candidate_search_language=blank-language These are filter pages... and as far as I'm concerned shouldn't really be indexed? Second question! - Should I "no follow" everything after /page in this instance? To keep things tidy? I don't want all the variations indexed! Any help or general thoughts would be much appreciated! Thanks.0 -
Problem crawling a website with age verification page.
Hy every1, Need your help very urgent. I need to crawl a website that first has a page where you need to put your age for verification and after that you are redirected to the website. My problem is that SEOmoz, crawls only that first page, not the whole website. How can I crawl the whole website?, do you need me to upload a link to the website? Thank you very much Catalin
Moz Pro | | catalinmoraru0 -
Crawl Diagnostics - Crawling way more pages than my site has?
Hello all, I'm fairly new here, more of a paid search guy dabbling in SEO on the side. I have a client that I have in SEOMoz and the Crawl Diagnostics report is showing 10,000+ pages crawled and I think the site has at most 800 pages (e-commerce site using freewebstore.org as the platform). Any reasons this would be happening?
Moz Pro | | LodestoneGen0 -
I want to create a report of only de duplicate content pages as a csv file so i can create a script to canonicalize them.
I want to create a report of only de duplicate content pages as a csv file so i can create a script to canonicalize them. So i get something like: http://example.com/page1, http://example.com/page2, http://example.com/page3, http://example.com/page4, Because I now have to open each in "Issue: Duplicate Page Content", and this takes a lot of time. The same for duplicate page title.
Moz Pro | | nvs.nim0 -
Open Site Explorer WAY Off in Terms of Link Profiles?
Hey, One of our websites is www.inspireeducation.net.au. I have noticed although tools like Raventools capture our links well, Open Site Explorer is doing a terrible job... For example the following page >>> http://www.inspireeducation.net.au/courses/training-and-assessment-courses/certificate-iv-in-training-and-assessment/ has many many more than 8 root domains linking, however Open Site Explorer only presents 8? We are finding the same problem for almost any page we review through Open Site. Does anyone have any idea why the numbers would be so out? The new links are NOT fresh links. Many are well-established (been there for years), and even many newer ones have been there for more that 60 days. I find the same thing when reviewing competitor sites.. is Open Site Explorer working properly at all at the moment?
Moz Pro | | love-seo-goodness0 -
Why my competitor have a Page Authority lower then mine, but still in the best position?
Hello Guys, my situation is: I have more Page Autority More Backlinks More Root Autority But my competitor still in a better position then mine! How it´s possible? Tks
Moz Pro | | MarcioMoura0 -
On Page Analysis and Grading
I received an email that my on page analysis for my campaigns were completed. But when I click on the link there are no grades there. What does that mean? Another question on this topic....when your campaign is graded are pages graded on all the keywords in the campaign or is each keyword graded invidividually? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | Confections0 -
Where is the best SEO Glossary of Terms?
Where do you feel the best existing Glossary of SEO / SEM Terms explained currently resides. (and is there a better way to ask this question?) 🙂
Moz Pro | | iansears0