Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Kristina

Problem fixed - the websites analytics was suffering from Ghost Spam URLs.

A new one for me!

Best

Duncan

Hi Guys

So we manage a client website doing their seo and ppc

The site has become a success so the client has now asked if we would like to create our own site and become an affiliate of theirs

The idea is target the same set of keywords etc.

My question is - in the world of google is this ok?  I know about google penalising same business owners for having two websites targeting the same keyword....

But in this case - the websites are owned by different owners, different hosting, different domain ownership, different analytics code, different code development, different about us

Everything is different but I am just a little paranoid that google knows we SEO the clients website

Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks

Duncan

Hi Guys

So we have a whole load of mystery urls showing in analytics .The urls are completely not relevant and have somehow been created

However - when you click on the URLs - they all go to 404 pages - pages not found.

The website is a travel website but is showing pages like

/overcome-fatigue-during-mesothelioma-treatment/ in analytics.

Webmaster is not showing any of these pages - but analytics is showing traffic for them???

My initial thought was that it was a spam URL injection - but they are not pages. They don't exist

Our database is fine, WP admin seems fine - none of these supposed pages have been created on WP - so why are they showing on analytics as having driven traffic???

None of the urls are indexed on Google.

Its a mystery!!!! Can anyone help?  Has anyone seen this before????

Hi Guys

I am currently working on a website where one of the keyword targets is fluctuating.

The keyword is fluctuating between page 2 and page 5.

What makes this strange is that we are not experiencing the issue with any other keyword targets.

They are all ranking fine.   It is only 1 keyword.

The keyword target happens to be the main homepage keyword target - not sure if this makes a difference?

The homepage targets 2 keyword e.g. Business Offices & Accessories.

The homepage ranks perfectly fine for e.g. Business Accessories but is fluctuating for e.g. Business Offices! Very strange.

What makes it even stranger - the keyword variations of the fluctuating keyword e.g. office for business  - these variations are all fine and not fluctuating. Its only 1 keyword.

If anyone has any ideas  or feedback that would be great!

Thanks, Duncan

Hi Guys

I'm currently working on a website and scratching my head.  It seems certain pages of the website rank absolutely fine.  The homepage, certain pages on footer and the primary navigation pages are ranking fine.

Pages, however, that sit on the inner navigation (e.g 3rd level navigational pages) - do not rank well at all.

Looking in webmaster, it is apparent these are fluctuating in and out of the Google index - sometimes they are there - sometimes not.

I fully understand issues with Google penalties but I don't believe this is case as other pages are ranking fine. Link building has been done to these pages  but to no effect.  We have also increased internal links e.g by putting the pages on the footer - but still nothing.

One thing that may impact the ranking is possibly the URL structure

The website URLs are all www.Example.com/widgets - even if they sit on the 3rd level of the user navigation.  Could this be a reason why? Would it help if 3rd level pages had the URL structure www.Example.com/services/widgets ?

If anyone can provide help that would be great!!!

thanks, Duncan

We got a hacked site warning on Google results for the company Brand name....but nothing in the Search Console.

Performance is not exactly site wide - some pages only rank for exact match page title search term but not any variations...  (e.g. Very Green widgets -  page title - the site will rank for Very Green widgets but no variations e.g. Green widgets).

Other pages seem to be fine.... but none rank on page one.

It does seem those pages that had the most links pointing to them have been affected the worse.  However, that said - there is a page that that has several 1000 internal spammy links showing but the page does rank ok and does rank for different keywords....another piece of the puzzle!

We checked rankings and at the time of the hack - the site definitely dropped.

Hope that helps!!

Duncan

HI Kane

Thanks for your response!  We did do a disavow just on some old directories which looked ok - but it was more of a precautionary measure.

CMS is now all good and secure.

The spammy links were a in subfolder which was deleted (creating 1000's of 404's).  The website was then entirely moved to a new secure hosting environment.

Just on your questions...

Yes - the website was fine up until the hack.

The hack happened in May of this year.....a full clean up happened within 3 days after the attack.

Your last point.....yes - they are showing up as 404's.  The website initially had 17,000 spammy 404 errors.  Google has since reduced that to 3000.  As these pages are removed from the index, this gives me hope that the problem is being resolved.

However - the strange part - even though the 404's are being reduced in Webmaster, the number of internal spammy links showing in the Console are not being reduced.  It's static.

For example, the homepage shows 6,300 internal links.  In reality it only has about a 120.  The rest are all spammy (404) links. I do believe that this is causing ranking problems.....?  Do you think that is right?

Thanks, Duncan

Hi Guys,

I am currently working on website that has been penalised by Google for a spam link injection.  The website was hacked and 17,000 hidden links were injected.

All the links have been removed and the site has subsequently been redesigned and re-built.  That was the easy part

The problems comes when I look on Webmaster.  Google is showing 1000's of internal spam links to the homepage and other pages within the site.  These pages do not actually exist as they were cleared along with all the other spam links.

I do believe though this is causing problems with the websites rankings.  Certain pages are not ranking on Google and the homepage keyword rankings are fluctuating massively.

I have reviewed the website's external links and these are all fine.

Does anyone have any experience of this and can provide any recommendations / advice for clearing the site from Google penalty?

Thanks, Duncan

Hi Guys

I have a question...I am currently working on a website that was hit by a spam attack.

The website was hacked and 1000's of adult censored pages were created on the wordpress site.

The hosting company cleared all of the dubious files - but this has left 1000's of dead 404 pages.

We want to fix the dead pages but Google webmaster only shows and allows you to download 1000.

There are a lot more than 1000....does any know of any Good tools that allows you to identify all 404 pages?

Thanks, Duncan

Hi Guys,

We are working on a website - changing the upper case URLs to lower case.

The developer looked at a 301 solution but is having issues with this.

Instead, they have come back with the following piece of code

<rule name="lowercaserule1" stopprocessing="true"></rule name="lowercaserule1" stopprocessing="true">

<match url="[a-z]" ignorecase="false" ></match url="[a-z]" ignorecase="false" >

<action type="redirect" url="{tolower:{url}}" ></action type="redirect" url="{tolower:{url}}" >

My question is whether this rule will potentially harm SEO rankings?

If someone could help - that would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Duncan