How hackers use SEO spam to hijack ranking positions
@briandordevicBrian Dordevich
A 10-year strategic plan for web app search engine marketing and technical leads.
Are you receiving a lot of messages and comments from a suspicious domain on your website, or are you aware of a traffic problem and aren’t sure what that really means? This particular guide describes how hackers can implement links on their websites to steal traffic and ranking positions, and how to successfully and permanently overcome these threats.
Ranking on Google’s first page has become more complex and difficult over the last few years, and strategies have changed in many ways. As experienced SEO marketer strategies evolved, hacker strategies developed and generated so-called negative SEO by applying techniques and threatening ranking positions.
If you’re determined to build a reputable and credible online presence for your business brand, understanding the principles of SEO SPAM and negative SEO should definitely be taken care of and from malicious hacker attacks. An engine that protects your website and ensures a solid ranking position in search.
Understand how SEO spam works for ranking positions
The day a hacker implements a link on your website or blog, SEO spam begins to occur. They (hackers) inserted website links, added spam comments to posts and pages, established bots on login pages that attempted to break account passwords and usernames, and were completely copied. You can do that by creating content. website.
The main target for those pervasive links is your best-positioned page on search engines. And the main purpose of these unethical practices and techniques is to redirect visitors to third-party websites that are unrelated to the host website.
Most users think that the main victims of SEO spam are websites that are ranked only on the first page of search engines, but the reality is quite different.
One of the most important hacker’s goals is to redirect traffic from a particular website, so most commonly you don’t pay much attention to the security of your website and it’s considered a small target. Select a website or blog.
5 types of SEO spam attacks and their impact on websites
Hackers do a lot when it comes to attacking a particular website. SEO spam tactical weapons are often combined with other practices to achieve the hacker’s goals. However, there are five most common types of SEO spam attacks, and their impact on websites is as follows:
1) Spam keyword injection
For example, a hacker wants to sell a particular cosmetic product online. The first step a hacker takes is to list the highest ranked pages in a search engine. The second step is to implement the spammy keyword. Buy cosmetics online On those pages.
Hackers have injected the required keywords into your website, so this website will start their ranking on behalf of your keywords.
Whenever a user searches for this type of cosmetics, the website may appear on the search page, even if the content created primarily is not relevant to this product at all. This is caused by keywords implemented through the code, and in most cases website owners don’t even notice that this harmful trick has been applied to their website. Besides, you may soon experience a decrease in sales or a loss of income.
Other harmful practices that spammers carry out are:
Keyword Abuse (Frequent Repeated Useless Keywords Throughout Copy, Punished by Google)
And
Keyword masking. This prevents website owners from detecting support for these harmful keywords on their website.
2) Spam link injection
Hiding spam links under regular links is another SEO spam technique that undermines your website’s ranking position in SERP. In most cases, these spam links direct visitors to websites that sell illegal substances.
Your brand identity, reputation, and credibility may be compromised when your visitors are redirected to a website where they may pay for a product they never receive.
This constitutes a bad user experience, so your website may be blacklisted for this visitor who will not click the link on the web page next time.
3) Spam mail
Spam email is a form of SEO spam that can have the most negative impact on your business’s ranking position and overall business. In this case, the hacker targets the customer’s email address and database. As a result of this SEO spamming technique, customers may start receiving spam emails from their accounts, which can result in emails being blocked or labeled as spammers.
4) Hijacking banners and ads
If you place an advertising banner on your website, this is a great opportunity for hackers to switch the banner to their own and place malicious links that lead visitors and potential customers to other websites and links. ..
5) Duplicate content and create new pages
One of the most common hacker practices for websites with many pages is to create new pages and duplicate content. These duplicated pages are used to insert keyword links that point to third-party websites, allowing you to rank these spam pages and easily overtake their SERP ranking position.
Copyscape.com It can be a great solution if you want to see if your content is duplicated and published on other websites without permission.
Code abuse: how SEO spam actually works
When a hacker inserts an unwanted link or keyword into a web page, it does it through the code and undoes it to hide the source of the malicious code. This means that the owner of a particular website cannot find the source of the code.
In addition, more skilled hackers can even prevent code detection and make PHP look good with inverse functions. In this way, hackers inject and harm your headlines, metatitles, and other content. Malicious code can also be placed in HTML, JavaScript, or other files on your website.
Use the ranking position in this way to observe this situation as a parasite. In this situation, the website and content act as hosts, whereas malicious websites act as parasites and are more damaging.
A fatal flaw on your website that hackers use to hijack your ranking position
Hackers can use many flaws on their websites to hijack traffic and visitors and redirect them to third-party websites, but five fatal flaws are essential to this process.
- Loose website security
- Certain plugins or plugin library components that are old and exposed to hackers
- Old WordPress version
- Untested website theme
- Weak password
How to know if your website is infected with SEO spam
Knowing that your website is subject to SEO spam is the first step in ending and overcoming this problem.
There are so-called spam scanners, advanced tools that help you revise all databases, folders, and libraries of SEO spam viruses.
Of course, again, Google services are your best friend when trying to identify unwanted practices on your website.
Perform checkthrough Google search console (Security and Manual Actions-Security Issues) All data related to your website, such as which specific keywords drive traffic to your website, a list of backlinks to your website, 404 pages, site health, server errors, etc. It is displayed.
How do you know if something is wrong? Now, if you notice that the traffic is coming from an unspecified keyword, this is one of the surest signs that your website has been hijacked.
When you register your website in the Google Search Console, you will receive an email with detailed notifications each time Google detects malware on your website. The Google Search Console notifies you that your site has been blacklisted due to the presence of malware and supports you with information such as locations and specific files that can cause problems and negatively affect your site’s reputation. In this warning message, Google will send you specific information, including a link to the hacked content, so that you can respond immediately.
Remember the problem of duplicate content?Don’t forget to inspect your website through Google Transparency Directory This allows you to know if your website is blacklisted as a result of violating your copyright or DMCA claims.
Google Safe Browsing Site Status It scans your website and offers another option to raise awareness when your website is at risk. Google Safe Browsing supports you as well as your users and displays warnings and notifications to visitors trying to access your website.
Web host provider In addition, if malware is detected on the website, we will notify you of the outage. If you are using a shared server, the suspension will occur because you have exceeded your allocated server resources or compromised another website.
How to get rid of SEO spam altogether?
Seo spam can be removed manually or with support for trusted plugin installation.
Manual database scanning and cleaning can be a bit complicated process as you only need to make sure that you remove malicious features. It’s important to note that removing non-malicious features can jeopardize your operation on your website and there is always something you can miss.
Manual scanning and cleaning are performed in several steps.
- Enter the hosting dashboard cPanel> phpMyAdmin.
- Find the database in the list on the left and Write out.
- Leave the default settings Quick export And SQL format..
- Download the database, .txt file With notepad.
Next, let’s look at the most common PHP functions used by hackers (such as: base64decode, gzinflate, eval, or shellExecutive, And Remove these features Edit the malicious text or delete the record. After cleaning up your database, be sure to do the following: Re-import it into your website using phpMyAdmin.
Reliable security plugins, on the other hand, can help you detect and resolve multiple issues. Better yet, it can detect all malicious code, identify hacks and provide efficient removal of SEO spam.
If you want to ensure a high degree of protection for your website and prevent further SEO spam, you should check for SEO spam removal on some of these three services.
Sukuri We strive to protect your website from SEO spam and similar future attacks, providing DDoS protection, malware detection and removal, and blacklist removal. It works on sites built with WordPress, Joomla, Magento, PHP, etc.
Astra Security Is a well-known tool for website security and protection. It provides solutions for websites and e-commerce stores built on CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Opencart and Drupal. AstraSecurity provides an Astra firewall that can protect your website from hackers, bad bots, spam, and over 110 other threats. Machine learning malware scanners can automatically scan and remove spam, and security audits can look at your code to find potential threats.
If you run a very demanding website or blog on your WordPress platform, MalCare It will be the perfect solution for you. MalCare provides malware scanning and removal (even from WordPress base), WordPress firewall, login protection and more.
Websites are one of the most valuable assets of your business, so don’t be another easy target. Don’t forget to protect your website well. Maintain your ranking position in SERP and build your online brand’s reputation in the way you’ve built up over the years.