Is there a way to find out who is trying to damage my site
-
Hi, to cut the story short, i hired a seo guy to do work on my site, paid a lot of money, but then when he was let go all the links to the site were stripped and other work had vanished. I want to know if there is a way to prove this and to also check on any other damage that he could be doing at the moment to my site. The site was running high in the search engines and then dropped a short while after he was let go.
-
Bad SEO can be really disruptive to your ranking performance. It sounds like this person may have been using black hat link building techniques and decided to remove them once you parted ways.
There are ways to monitor and remove bad links that may negatively impacting your rankings. We have done this for many clients at GetBackOnGoogle.com to recover rankings after bad SEO work. It involves identifying incoming negative links and strategically requesting removal. In some cases you may need to disavow backlinks through Google Search Console, but the best option is to get them removed manually if possible first.
You can use the Moz Open Site Explorer to review and monitor inbound links.
If you truly think someone may have done something malicious, I would also recommend a full SEO audit to see if the setup of your website or SEO plugins have changed in any way and to make general improvements since your rankings have dropped. You'll also want to start working on content and building legitimate backlinks of your own from related sites in your industry.
Mark / AdFicient.com
-
Hi, everything vanished. the site was ranking high and then dropped like a lead balloon. Its authority dropped as well
-
He was probably paying for those links to be up while he worked on the project and then when he was let go he stopped so whoever supplied the links took them down when they didn't receive their monthly payment.
It happens quite often.Were the links removed instantly as he left or was there a space between the two events? Did the links that you had before you hired that guy also disappear?
As for website losing positions, that's an obvious reaction on losing a bunch of links all at once.
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
-
Potential new URL structure for my ecommerce site
At the moment my site suffers from a flat product category structure where over 600 items fall into one category alone. This category is then filtered using a faceted search which appends query strings to the category URL and changes the products displayed on the page. At the moment our product category URL is as follows, www.domain.com/category/greeting-cards and this holds all cards including occasions such as anniversary, birthdays etc and also themes such as animal cards, contemporary cards etc I have proposed changes to my developer to change this structure to include subcategories. I can now go two subcategories deep. For example, "greeting cards > occasions > birthday cards" or "greeting cards > themes > animals". This is reflected in the new URL structure, which has been proposed, www.domain.com/greeting-cards/occasions/birthday-cards. In this URL do I need "occasions" in the URL as I don't think it adds much value to the user? Would I be better of having www.domain.com/greeting-cards/birthday-cards. If a user searches for "birthday cards" then I think this would be more relevant?
On-Page Optimization | | joe-ainswoth0 -
Multi-Site SEO using Host Headers
Hi - I'm working on a proposal for a client who runs 3 different career websites. He uses "host headers" to direct the website visitor to the correct website. For example, if the visitor comes from Washington he goes to one url. If he is in Kansas, he goes to another URL. Does anyone have any experience doing SEO with this type of system? What do I need to know? What are hurdles I'll encounter? Thanks, -Hunter
On-Page Optimization | | HunterW0 -
Competitor Out Ranks My Site
Hi This is my first question on SEOMoz and I am confused how a competitor can out rank me for a local search term SEO Tamworth. I have a higher Page Authority, Domain Authority, Number of links etc.. Would this be down to the quality of the links to my site or could it be down to the structure. I score an A for SEO on the on page analysis. Regards James
On-Page Optimization | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Duplicate product information on ecommerce site
I am planning to launch an ecommerce website soon. There is no way to start with the original content for such a small startup like me. It's pretty expensive to get original content for 1000 (around) products. You know, there are a lot of other costs such as, software licences, modules, developer, designer fees, wholesale purchases, monthly subscription for services etc... This is what i am planning to do: Start with duplicate manufacturers' or amazon's product description, meta tags etc. Then gradually turn them into an original one. I assume, google will give me a low score due to duplicate content but, if i start with duplicate content first, and then change with the original ones over the time, will this change my score?
On-Page Optimization | | Emphi0 -
Working on this site...
and wondering what is wrong in terms of on page SEO (basically just want some feedback on tips/changes to make) http://www.stevenholmesstudio.com/ I'm assuming that the title shouldn't be just the img file name..any suggestions for what it should be?
On-Page Optimization | | callmeed0 -
Customer forum on an ecommerce site, good or bad idea?
Hi, We are an online furniture retailer in Ireland and have been going for about 4 years, there is about 1000 visitors onto the site everyday. We have been thinking of new ways to interact with the customer and build the sites online content and constantly working to improve rankings. Have been toying with the idea of a user/customer forum and was wondering what the general consensus was with that as an idea, I appreciate that there could be negative aspects for the brand and was wondering if anyone had experience of similar and how that was perceived by the user and in what way did people interact with the forum. I assume differently to how they would interact with an "independent" furniture forum. My hope would be that the forum would be used for discussing general home improvements, asking questions relating to the home for community feedback and assistance and other similar home related topics. All thoughts and feed back welcome. Cheers. Eunan.
On-Page Optimization | | eunaneunan0 -
How to find competition for a particular keyword
Is there any operator to find the level of competition for a particular keyword in Google ? Is intitle:keyword a fair indicator ?
On-Page Optimization | | seoug_20050 -
Internal link structure for large site
I am working on a very large directory site which is undergoing a complete redesign. I am considering the internal link structure from first principles. When a site has over 100,000 pages, how do you ensure that each page is linked to from somewhere so that there are no orphans? Trying to get my head around the structure makes my brain hurt. Any tips?
On-Page Optimization | | mascotmike0