Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What Tools Should I Use To Investigate Damage to my website
-
I would like to know what tools I should use and how to investigate damage to my website in2town.co.uk I hired a person to do some work to my website but they damaged it. That person was on a freelance platform and was removed because of all the complaints made about them. They also put in backdoors on websites including mine and added content.
I also had a second problem where my content was being stolen.
My site always did well and had lots of keywords in the top five and ten, but now they are not even in the top 200. This happened in January and feb.
When I write unique articles, they are not showing in Google and need to find what the problem is and how to fix it. Can anyone please help
-
Repairing website damage requires a structured approach. Start by assessing any issues caused by the freelancer using tools like Wordfence for WordPress to detect backdoors or malicious changes. It’s possible Google penalized you for whatever work the freelancer did. You might need to disavow toxic links they built, for example, or address other issues. Tools such as Google Alerts can help identify content duplicates for action.
For future reference, regular monitoring helps prevent unauthorized changes and stay informed about industry trends. If you monitor a web page for changes, you will ensure no unauthorized adjustments are made on your site. There are several ways to approach this, and several tools you can use; some will notify you when your webpage changes. Monitoring competitors for content trends can also guide your strategy and reveal potential areas for improvement.
-
use google search console and screaming frog
-
The best tool that i used to diagnose problems in my office interior designs service based website is the Google search console GSC. You can also use screaming frog or also use moz to analyze and solve issues
-
Page Freezer: Instantly preserve web pages and social media profiles to capture evidence of website damage
-
To investigate damage to your website, you should consider using tools like Google Search Console for monitoring search performance and detecting issues, website security scanners like Word fence to check for malware or vulnerabilities, and website auditing tools such as SEMrush or Screaming Frog for comprehensive analysis of technical SEO issues and website health.
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
-
Google not listing website correctly
have a domain that was unused for a while and displayed the "parked by Gandi" domain message. Recently, I decided to set up a fully working website on that domain, but I'm struggling to get it to rank correctly on Google. Google isn't updating the http://domain.com to the correct https://www.domain.com, and I have tried everything. The http://domain.com redirects to https://www.domain.com if you click on it. I managed to get the correct version, https://www.domain.com, to show up, but after a couple of days, it reverted to the old version and has stayed that way. This has been going on for a few weeks now. Additionally, I had an old version of the site using .com, and I forwarded that to the .co.uk, but the old .com will not be removed from Google. it was just one page without much content. At the moment, Google's search results look very messy and out of date. I have submitted the URL in the Google Search Console using the URL inspection tool and requested indexing and reindexing. I have also submitted sitemaps, but nothing is really working. Any ideas?
SEO Tactics | | Roycd0 -
Spam Score Of Site Increased from 1 to 31% overnight
Hello There,
Technical SEO | | rohit.c
Few days back, Spam Score of two of my sites drastically increased from 1% to 31% for one site and from 1% to 36% for another site overnight. Here are the two websites https://simpalm.com/ ducknowl.com Site background for 2-3 months ABC link exchange campaign was started for both the sites. Links where built on high quality sites with DA40 above and most of them are Saas sites No reciprocal link exchange was done Same new pages are created on the site for on page SEO Both the sites are hosted on GoDaddy Can someone please tell me what is the reason of this Sudden increase in spam score of both the sites and at same time?1 -
Best SEO Structure For E-Commerce With Products Using Multiple Categories
Hi all, I am in the process of re-structuring my e-commerce website for better SEO and user experience. I have done some keyword research and would like some advice on how best to structure my site around those keywords. For example, my site (All Things Nature) sells a brand of wooden sculptures (Woodsculp) and I would like to rank for keywords related to that brand, the brand by animal, the brand by collection and the brand by release date.
Content Development | | nb2e4fg
Examples of keywords could be: Brand by Animal: Woodsculp Dogs, Woodsculp Cats, Woodsculp Elephants
Brand by Collection: Woodsculp Pets, Woodsculp Safari
Brand by Release Date: Woodsculp Christmas 2023, Woodsculp Summer 2022 I would create each of these keywords as a category so that they can be found by a search engine and by users. I would then structure as follows: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Elephants
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Collection -> Woodsculp Pets
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Collection -> Woodsculp Safari
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Release Date -> Woodsculp Christmas 2023
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Release Date -> Woodsculp Summer 2022 The only problem with this structure is it would take more than 3 clicks (4) for the user to reach a product. How critical is this for good SEO and user experience? Would I be better off getting rid of the ‘Woodsculp by Animal’, ‘Woodsculp by Collection’ and ‘Woodsculp by Release Date’ categories? Structure would look as follows: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Elephants
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Safari
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Christmas 2023 The only thing with this is there would be a lot of categories under the brand name which might make it more difficult for search engines and users to logically follow. Would I be better off getting rid of the brand category and replace them with the keyword categories? Structure would look as follows: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Elephants
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Collection -> Woodsculp Safari
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Release Date -> Woodsculp Christmas 2023 This would organise things more logically but I would then lose the brand category (and the potential of the brand keyword ranking?) Would I be better off choosing one main keyword to use as a category and then use tags for the other categories? Categories: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Elephants Tags: Woodsculp Safari
Woodsculp Christmas 2023 The next issue I have is that I have products which could fall under several different categories. A product called Elijah Elephant, for example could fall under Woodsculp Elephants, Woodsculp Safari and Woodsculp Summer 2022. In previous e-commerce sites I have never assigned multiple categories to one product (I instead have used tags). Is it good practice to organise products under multiple categories for an e-commerce site? Thanks in advance for any help and advice.0 -
How to get rid of bad backlinks
So I noticed my rankings going down and spam score going up. So under my spam score there are over 100 links for different websites but ALL redirect to semalt.com I researched it and it says they hijacked a bunched of backlinks but don't know much more. How can I get rid of all those backlinks? I was told I could use the disavow tool but apparently that can hurt my ranking as well. The semalt.com site has no backlink to me - it looks like the pages that have/had my backlinks, they've redirected to them. For instance this is one of the links http://www.oxvideos.xyz/indianantyphotoxxx 422005fb-9240-40a4-8b65-f5b1f5079dea-image.png
Link Building | | landlwoof40 -
Collections or blog posts for Shopify ecommerce seo?
Hi, hope you guys can help as I am going down a rabbit hole with this one! We have a solid-ranking sports nutrition site and are building a new SEO keyword strategy on our Shopify built store. We are using collections (categories) for much of the key product-based seo. This is because, as we understand it, Google prioritises collection/category pages over product pages. Should we then build additional collection pages to rank for secondary product search terms that could fit a collection page structure (eg 'vegan sports nutrition'), or should we use blog posts to do this? We have a quality blog with good unique content and reasonable domain authority so both options are open to us. But while the collection/category option may be best for SEO, too many collections/categories could upset our UX. We have a very small product range (10 products) so want to keep navigation fast and easy. Our 7 lead keyword collection pages do this already. More run the risk of upsetting ease/speed of site navigation. On the other hand, conversion rate from collection pages is historically much better than blog pages. We have made major technical upgrades to the blog to improve this but these are yet to be tested in anger. So at the heart of it all - do you guys recommend favouring blog posts or collection/category pages for secondary high sales intent keywords? All help gratefully received - thanks!
SEO Tactics | | WP332 -
My backlinks are not showing in webmaster tools? Why
Hi Experts, I have follow backlinks from a domain for 6 months, but its not apear in Links to Your Site tools (search console) that domain has 302k indexed pages in google! Could you please explain me why google not showing this type of backlinks?
Technical SEO | | denakalami7 -
Any SEO benefits of adding a Glossary to our website?
Hi all, I manage a website for a software company. Many terms can be quite tricky so it would be nice to add a Glossary page. Other than that, I have 2 questions: 1. What would be the SEO benefits? 2. How would you suggest to implement this glossary so we can get as much SEO benefit as possible (for example how would we link, where would we place the glossary in the terms of the sitemap, etc.). Any advice appreciated! Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska2 -
How to Remove a website from your Bing Webmaster Tools account
I have a site in Bing Webmaster Tools that I no longer work on. I can't seem to find where to delete this website from my webmaster tools account. Anyone know how (there doesn't seem to be anything obvious under Bing Help or on a Google Search).
Technical SEO | | TopFloor0