Website targeted with negative SEO

[Aleksandar916]

Hello,

The website I manage is a highly reputable B2B magazine with a very specific niche. The website is 10 years old and has strong competition. A couple of months ago, the organic traffic plummeted and after checking the backlinks report in SEMRush I found huge number of backlinks to non-existing links on the website.

The keywords are related to weight loss, vapes, adult, very specific terms and some random stuff.

For example, anchor keyword was "black p***is" and it linked to an image file which does not exist on the website.

I have disavowed over 1500 domains on Google to stop this. What else should I do? How long until the website rank is cleared, what's the recommended course of action here? The DR now is 50 (SEMRush) and it went a bit down from 60+

I still find some links from time to time, not new ones but the ones that were missed by SEMRush or I missed them manually.

 

[SirLouen]

You have done it the right way, you cannot much more. Remember, you can also check backlinks in Search Console which are also of importance.
Did you receive any manual action?

 

[Aleksandar916]

you can also check backlinks in Search Console which are also of importance

Could you elaborate a bit more, please? Not sure what you mean.

Did you receive any manual action?

Nothing that I noticed so far. Any way to check for sure?

Thanks for replying!

 

[xtremehf]

Just try to Check your backlinks profile from multiple tools like Ahrefs, Semrush and at the same time Use Search Console of Google for referring domains and backlinks. Search Console in Webmasters will show immediately indexed domains but as far as I know it only shows 1000. Disavowing bad links is the most concrete step to avoid a penalty. My personal choice is to disavow bad backlinks but build good guest post links at the same time to avoid loss in organic search results.

 

[SirLouen]

Could you elaborate a bit more, please? Not sure what you mean.

 

[tidelow]

Interested to know how things went with the attack? Did you manage to sort it all out @Aleksandar916

 

[Aleksandar916]

Yeah, it's solved.
This was actually part of an elaborate attack and the links were just a follow up to different type of attack, but it's all handled now.

It was a nightmare at the time though.

 

[GenesisOne]

It's kind of strange that a 10 y.o. stablished site could suffer from this.
If it worked we could easily tank all our competition and it never happens.
mmmh ???

 

[Nut-Nights]

Negative links don't have that much impact nowadays. Happens to one of my sites but didn't lose any ranking, but you cant do much about this. Just keep removing those links.

 

[praetserge]

Negative links don't have that much impact nowadays. Happens to one of my sites but didn't lose any ranking, but you cant do much about this. Just keep removing those links.

how can I remove those links?
For example, if some links come from spammed forums then I'd need log-in details to remove those links.

 

[Aleksandar916]

It's kind of strange that a 10 y.o. stablished site could suffer from this.

Yes, links were just a follow up on a hacked content.

 

[Starblazer]

Yeah, it's solved.
This was actually part of an elaborate attack and the links were just a follow up to different type of attack, but it's all handled now.

It was a nightmare at the time though.

Glad you got rid of them. Google says they ignore spammy links but everyone knows that we can't trust them.

 

[rafark]

Yeah, it's solved.
This was actually part of an elaborate attack and the links were just a follow up to different type of attack, but it's all handled now.

It was a nightmare at the time though.

What happened? Who was attacking you? What did you do to sort it out?

 

[Machairodont]

I'm wondering, the attackers are using tools like GSA and XRumer to spam those links,

and the site owner then needs to use ahrefs or semrush to manually go through all the backlink list and sort the spammy ones out.

Kind of not cool. Automatic attack against manual defense. Any tools out there that makes the sorting out at least easier with a semi-automatic approach? (something like a spam rating of the backlinks that you then use to semi-automatic create a to-sort-out list?)

 

[Aleksandar916]

What happened? Who was attacking you? What did you do to sort it out?

No idea who or how. But it was a targeted script specifically for the website that got through.

Had to hire an security expert because both Wordfence and Succuri were uselless in removing it.

Kind of not cool. Automatic attack against manual defense. Any tools out there that makes the sorting out at least easier with a semi-automatic approach? (something like a spam rating of the backlinks that you then use to semi-automatic create a to-sort-out list?)

SEMRush actually ranks the bad links as toxic, that's how I first noticed. You still need to go through them to filter out a some good ones, but once you start you can easily find all the keywords they were using which makes he process much easier.

 

[sachinsadevra]

Hello,

The website I manage is a highly reputable B2B magazine with a very specific niche. The website is 10 years old and has strong competition. A couple of months ago, the organic traffic plummeted and after checking the backlinks report in SEMRush I found huge number of backlinks to non-existing links on the website.

The keywords are related to weight loss, vapes, adult, very specific terms and some random stuff.

For example, anchor keyword was "black p***is" and it linked to an image file which does not exist on the website.

I have disavowed over 1500 domains on Google to stop this. What else should I do? How long until the website rank is cleared, what's the recommended course of action here? The DR now is 50 (SEMRush) and it went a bit down from 60+

I still find some links from time to time, not new ones but the ones that were missed by SEMRush or I missed them manually.

Try finding some better SEO service firm for getting your work done!

 

[Aleksandar916]

Try finding some better SEO service firm for getting your work done!

No one was doing it at the time, it was just a standard publication, just publishing news and stories and not caring about SEO.