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
-
Links>TopPages: Mostly image URLs: Good for SEO? Redirect obsolete ones??
Looking at my "Links > Top Pages" report shows the top fifteen being image URLs (jpg files). Weird or normal? Clicking the "View Links" icon for a few of the image URL's shows that the best links in the list have DA in the 30's and 40's, and some PA in the 20's. But the linking sites have names that SOUND pretty crappy (from sites with names that sound weird or spammy) QUESTION 1: Do links to image URLs... A) help the overall SEO of the site's HTML pages, B) only help the specific page the image appears on, C) or are they of no value to the regular pages? QUESTION 2: What to do with the obsolete images? (images still hosted on our site, but do not appear on any pages) If I remove the images, the links will be lost. Which is good if the links are hurting us, but it would be bad for our SEO if the links are helping (unless we 301 the obsolete images to current ones) Thanks!
Moz Pro | | GregB1230 -
API for On Page tool
I'm looking for a tool similar to On Page Grader (Moz) or Focus Keyword (Yoast) with API. We are building out or internal CRM system. Even though none of these tools can replace manual on page analysis, it will be used as a metric and to catch human mistakes.
Moz Pro | | OscarSE0 -
What is Linking C-Blocks
Currently i am using MOZ pro tool under moz analyticls >> Moz Competitive Link Metrics >> history having a graph "Linking C-Blocks" Please help me understanding Linking C-Blocks, what is, How to build, how to define ...
Moz Pro | | shankar3334 -
On-page grader question
Hi there, Getting to know the Pro tools and can't find an answer to this. Can someone explain for me please? Using on page grader, I found a couple pages with an F. I scrolled downWTO where it shows the keyword phrases and under each, the URL. Clicking on the first keyword "Building site alarms"it tells me off essentially for not optimising the page for that term. The URL is "construction site security systems" which are different to building site alarms which also have their own page. I don't understand why is Moz associating this keyword with this page? I certainly haven't told it to. Please he
Moz Pro | | DaddySmurf0 -
Changing the way SEOmoz Detects Duplicate Content
Hey everyone, I wanted to highlight today's blog post in case you missed it. In short, we're using a different algorithm to detect duplicate pages. http://moz.com/blog/visualizing-duplicate-web-pages If you see a change in your crawl results and you haven't done anything, this is probably why. Here's more information taken directly from the post: 1. Fewer duplicate page errors: a general decrease in the number of reported duplicate page errors. However, it bears pointing out that: **We may still miss some near-duplicates. **Like the current heuristic, only a subset of the near-duplicate pages is reported. **Completely identical pages will still be reported. **Two pages that are completely identical will have the same simhash value, and thus a difference of zero as measured by the simhash heuristic. So, all completely identical pages will still be reported. 2. Speed, speed, speed: The simhash heuristic detects duplicates and near-duplicates approximately 30 times faster than the legacy fingerprints code. This means that soon, no crawl will spend more than a day working its way through post-crawl processing, which will facilitate significantly faster delivery of results for large crawls.
Moz Pro | | KeriMorgret2 -
Pages Crawled: 0 ?
I've been with SEO Moz for over a month and a half. Why would this weeks crawl have Pages Crawled: 0? I've made no changes since the crawl last week that had 10k pages crawled...
Moz Pro | | mr_w1 -
Why would opensite explorer show a link from baidu result page with baidu as a linking root domain?
I found an old domain that has very high domain authority and one of its top linking root domains is baidu I clicked the link in ose and it took me to a baidu serp????? please explain...im happy to clarify if need be or give you the site in question just let me know what you think. I checked ose for the page authority of the serp page it was 50. would that page be helping the site in question to rank? or am I just dumb for asking this question One more thing I couldnt actually find a link to the page I was looking at in ose on the baidu result page.. thanks
Moz Pro | | duncan2740 -
Why would PA be 1 (0 links from 0 root domains) if it's linked to internally?
Question just about said it all: I've seen a number of pages on sites that have a PA of 1 (with the metrics being 0 links from 0 root domains) when I can see on the site that it is linked to internally - from the main nav (which is CSS, not Javascript) and also from the footer, if not other places. Why would this be? Update: upon looking further at the site, it appears that there's some kind of redirect going on, where the page linked to from the nav actually redirects to the real page. Would that eliminate PA, even if it's a 301? And additionally, is whatever is causing this lack of PA a reflection of how Google would relate to the page? Thanks, Aviva
Moz Pro | | debi_zyx0