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
-
Too many dofollow links = penalty?
Hi. I currently have 150 backlinks, 90% of them are dofollow, while only 10% are nofollow. I recently hit position #10 for my main keyword, but now it is dropped to #16 and a lot of related keywords are gone. So I have a few questions: 1. Was my website penalized for having an unnatural backlink profile (too many dofollow links), or maybe this drop in positions is just a temporary, natural thing? 2. Isn’t it too late for making the backlink profile look more natural by building more nofollow backlinks and making it 50%/50%? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NathalieBr0 -
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 -
Link Espionage?
Can anyone tell why pages like this are linking to our site? http://iga.edu/facebooktabs/images/inscribirse/formulario/en/noclosingcost.html This .edu page looks benign, however if you read it, it wont take long to see what appears to be machine generated content related to finance. It has ONLY ONE outgoing link and it to my site. To me it seems to be an attempt to make us look like a link buyer. We aren't! There are dozens of these type of pages linking to us. Here's the text around the link to our site, ERATE.com Apr the origination fee alone will cost you at closing however what your broker isn t should you pay a loan origination fee or get a no fee mortgage when refinancing refinancing mortgage rates scandal could cost you a year arkansas california colorado connecticut delaware. Any insight and opinions are welcome. Jeff Howard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | corlin0 -
Link worth?
These are not my links but does anyone know what the value of one link from something like below is (bio or body) http://designwebkit.com/web-and-trends/how-many-fonts-designer-really-need/ www.thebuildingblox.com/termite-turmoil-how-to-identify-and-remedy-the-problem/ http://creativeoverflow.net/the-10-best-alternatives-to-dropbox/ in comparison with links from below www.01fangchan.com
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson
www.1.inerdentos.ru
www.1000empregos.com
www.1stdirectory.co.uk
www.2halsi.com
www.3dir.co.uk
www.514friends.com
www.57billion.com We disavowed around a 1000 links of the above quality (crap) and need to rebuild decent quality links and i would just like to know what the guess is on how many links such as below would need to be built to compensate for the loss. http://designwebkit.com/web-and-trends/how-many-fonts-designer-really-need/ vs www.01fangchan.com Would need to replace 1000.0 -
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 -
Should We Pull The Plug On This Site?
I am helping a retailer out with their site. They were hit hard with the Penguin update, and traffic has dropped by about 75%. Here are the stats: It is fairly new, has been up for about 3 years. Has partial match domain name Is nearly fully indexed with over 4K pages Has NOT received an unnatural link message from Google, so no manual penalty. Has had most keywords BURIED in the search results. Link profile: Has done about 50-100 blog comments, 500 directory submissions, 800 social bookmarks, 5-6 press releases, 300 article submissions (most removed), about 30-50 guest blog posts. I am thinking it may have just been hit because of aggressive use of anchor text as opposed to massive spamming. Then again, the site has never really added great content and the product pages have no unique content. Any thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | inhouseseo1 -
Trying to determine if my site was de-indexed...
I ran a search using the allinsite:floridainboundmarketing.com command and found that virtually all of my pages are not being returned in the results. I'm one of those who (foolishly) used ALN blog network for a few months, got the unnatural links notice in WMT and on advice of other SEOs (including some here) I ignored it based on the idea that if my SERPS dropped due to alog update that a request for reconsideration was of no value. As I watched my SERPs dropping I was confident that it was simply because those links were no longer being counted and overall link profile was poor, so the results started dropping. I've not read where G has gone back and started de-indexing pages for such sites but it may be happening as (unless I'm wrong) my site is gone... Anyone got any ideas? Am I searching correctly?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sdennison0 -
Auto-link inside your own site to the same domain is white-hat?
Hi, I am using a plugin in wordpress that make auto link for some certain keywords in my site suppose: My site is example.com My important keyword is: sample and across the domain example.com through out the content if there is the word: sample it is linked automatically to example.com I like your opinion about this practice, if it may carry any kind of punishment by SEs? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Pooria0