3. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Everybody can run an online business
It only takes a few minutes to create a site
Low costs: domain + hosting
Easy to monetise
4. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Popular CMS’s are not perfect
Not every site owner is technically advanced
Other people tampering with your site can get
it in trouble
You can unknowingly help them
You can get yourself in trouble
5. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
SEO security audits cover a wider spectrum of
issues than just links
Some sites’ problems have little to nothing to
do with links and can be caused by onsite
issues
Site architecture causing problems is often
overlooked
But link audits are an integral part of SEO
security audits
6. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Indexable (empty) search results
Use of insecure plugins
Site structure causing duplicate onsite
content
Bad redirects
Incorrect or absent robots.txt
Etc.
7. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Bingo – your site is now about Viagra!
(Example typical for Wordpress but many other platforms have similar issues)
20. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Sites get hacked
According to Stop Badware, the three most
common types of badware affecting sites are:
◦ Malicious scripts
◦ .htaccess redirects
◦ Hidden iframes
22. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
My post on how to get rid of malware on a site: http://www.irishwonder.com/blog/
2012/07/20/site-infected-by-malware-heres-what-you-should-do/
27. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Warning in Google Webmaster Tools
However, this does not always mean incorrect
robots.txt
30. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Historically: issue with content attribution
(e.g. scrapers outranking scraped sites)
Panda’s promise: fix the issue
Reality: Google is no better with the duplicate
content attribution today than it used to be
ages ago
31. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Davi
David Naylor’s original post ranking below sites that scraped/aggregated it
33. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
High profile example: in April 2012 SEER
Interactive got deindexed for 12 hours
because, in Wil Reynolds’ words:
We relaunched our site and spiked our 404′s but since we were
ranking for our brand and a lot of our blog posts, I said who
cares, but as my friends dug through my site they found a LOT
of architectural issues, lazy crap I never thought would impact
us (and still don’t) but it is sloppy.
”
“
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/7-lessons-i-learned-while-being-banned
-in-google-for-12-hours
42. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Other people’s malicious activities can get
your site in trouble
May 2012, http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?
hl=en&answer=34449
But so can your own actions (or lack of
action)!
“There's almost nothing a
competitor can do to harm
your ranking“
“Google works hard to prevent
other webmasters from being able
to harm your ranking”
44. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Negative SEO is real
But so is people’s stupidity and laziness
With that in mind, let’s look at the links
(Although negative SEO is not always about
links – hence everything we looked at above)
45. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Bonus: How to spot a possible negative SEO campaign using MajesticSEO:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-use-majesticseo-to-identify-a-possible
-negative-seo-campaign-by-irish-wonder/56921/
46. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
A niche-specific criterion
Spammy links not stopping sites from ranking – multiple cases
(Complete case study: http://www.irishwonder.syndk8.co.uk/2013
/02/27/how-does-the-casino-bonus-spam-work/
47. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Again, this is a niche specific criterion
Result? Penalty due to a negative SEO campaign
52. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
A weak link profile makes negative SEO
against a site much easier
Are you sticking to one type of links?
How consistent is your link building?
What else are you doing to hurt yourself?
58. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Do your links suddenly disappear?
Do you get more links all of sudden?
Do you get spammier links than usual?
Do you get unusual anchor texts?
(Faster method: do you get traffic for unusual
keywords?)
62. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
You cannot make your site 100% secure
If it’s not economically viable to run a
negative campaign against a site, it will likely
not happen
64. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
Onsite checks:
◦ Duplicate content
◦ Indexable search results
◦ Incorrect or absent robots.txt
◦ Insecure plugins
◦ Already existing malware
Offsite checks:
◦ Bad neighbourhood on the server
◦ Weak link profile
◦ Obvious paid links
◦ Overuse of anchor texts
◦ Obvious network setup
65. @irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013@irishwonder
• info@irishwonder.com
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Who is this IrishWonder:
• Independent SEO consultant at
irishwonder.com
• CMO of ContentMango.com
• Chief SEO Scientist at SearchWorks.eu