1. @irishwonder SMX London 2013
Don’t Let Your Hard Work Go Down the Drain

2. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder

3. @irishwonder SMX London 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”

4. @irishwonder SMX London 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

5. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder

6. @irishwonder SMX London 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 SMX London 2013@irishwonder
 Bingo – your site is now about Viagra!
(Example typical for Wordpress but many other platforms have similar issues)

8. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
And it will get indexed…
…because…

9. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
Indexable search results
 http://www.domain.com/search/buy+viagra
 http://www.domain.com/?s=buy+viagra
◦ Result: duplicate content + site can be indexed for
any sketchy stuff

10. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
 Add this to your Wordpress site’s robots.txt:
◦ Disallow: /search/
◦ Disallow: /*?s=

11. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder

12. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder

13. @irishwonder SMX London 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

14. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder

15. @irishwonder SMX London 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/

16. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder

17. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
 Warning in Google Webmaster Tools
 However, this does not always mean incorrect
robots.txt

18. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder

19. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
Test here:

20. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
 Who are your neighbours?

21. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
 BEFORE you get any emails from Google!

22. @irishwonder SMX London 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?

23. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
vs

24. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder

25. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
 How obvious are they?

26. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
 Do they look like an artificial, planned
linkbuilding effort?

27. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder

28. @irishwonder SMX London 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: do you get traffic for unusual
keywords?)

29. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder

30. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
 No
 But you can close all the easily exploitable
holes
 And then a negative SEO campaign becomes
more difficult than they are willing to spend
the effort on

31. @irishwonder SMX London 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

32. @irishwonder SMX London 2013@irishwonder
• info@irishwonder.com
• Twitter: @irishwonder
• Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/irishwonder
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/irishwonder
Who am I:
• Independent SEO consultant at
irishwonder.com
• CMO of ContentMango.com
• Chief SEO Scientist at SearchWorks.eu