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

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

Thanks again!!!  We have just implemented a site footer with keyword targeting the relevant pages.  I thought this alone - along with the top navigation, copy (which is 265 words...) would give google enough guidance.  But its not!! External links we have just started to do - but I admit - really just started. I was trying in desperation to get the pages right first  Do you think more link would help?   We will try adding more copy...... The weird thing is - other pages on the site rank fine - including the homepage for the right keywords!!!

Thanks for the response!   The right pages are not showing for the targeted keywords.  The homepage is being ranked instead.  Yet the homepage doesn't have the keywords represented on it. Google is taking the Dmoz description of the homepage and is using that to rank (for the targeted keywords)???

The pages do show on Google site: search and they do have images on them.   Each page has six images on them.  We have ensured the size of the images are ok.  The copy on the page is at the bottom after the images - could this be an issue?

I have checked on Screaming Frog - nothing in particular stands out.

i know how we can stop google reading dmoz description which will be implemented....but I don't think this will resolve the issue....?

We have noticed - very strangely - the right page gets ranked - then google changes to the homepage????

Any suggestions... It's baffling me...

One of our web pages will not rank on Google.  The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem.   There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine.  There is no duplicate page content issue.  The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine.  We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine.  It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!!  The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages.  Can anyone help?  Know about this problem?