Was my site attacked by negative seo

My site is 2 yrs old and for a while the traffic has simply stopped. I checked for the details today and the website was ranking for 16 keywords last month but has only 2 keywords this month and not even in top 10.

I looked further and there's almost 500k backlinks. The thing is that they're showing to be 100% ******** with 232 referring domains.

I asked the person who does my seo and he said that directory submissions can sometimes show the same link submitted on every page and therefore make it seem like there's that many backlinks.

Should I be worried?

Does the person who does SEO for your site publish content regularly? That's one thing...

The second thing... why on Earth is he doing directory submissions?? I mean, do you even get traffic from those sites? Because they're useless for link power, they're only useful for getting traffic.... IF they bring you traffic. Do they, at least, bring you traffic?? If not, your SEO need to focus on links that matter... or you need to replace him with someone more knowledgeable...

He is right, though, that the huge number of links could come from those directories because of how these sites are structured....

Third thing, 1 month ago google have rolled out a new core update for their algorithms, so your site might have been the victim of that update because - from what you're saying - it looks like your site has been penalized at the EXACT time that the update has been rolled out.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to know what google have targeted with this update (other than affiliate sites, as usual) so that I can give you a clear answer. But if your SEO guy knows his stuff he should at least inform you of this update....

Those are site-wise links. Nothing to worry about technically.

Only worrying thing would be toxic source.

Are the anchors natural or heavy keyword based?

tazarbm said:

Does the person who does SEO for your site publish content regularly? That's one thing...

The second thing... why on Earth is he doing directory submissions?? I mean, do you even get traffic from those sites? Because they're useless for link power, they're only useful for getting traffic.... IF they bring you traffic. Do they, at least, bring you traffic?? If not, your SEO need to focus on links that matter... or you need to replace him with someone more knowledgeable...

He is right, though, that the huge number of links could come from those directories because of how these sites are structured....

Third thing, 1 month ago google have rolled out a new core update for their algorithms, so your site might have been the victim of that update because - from what you're saying - it looks like your site has been penalized at the EXACT time that the update has been rolled out.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to know what google have targeted with this update (other than affiliate sites, as usual) so that I can give you a clear answer. But if your SEO guy knows his stuff he should at least inform you of this update....

Click to expand...

It's a relief to know that the links could be from those sites.

The thing is this guy has worked for me for a long time and his work used to be really good. But last few months he's either slacking or something else is going on. I may end up firing him since he's focussed only on link building and all on page seo has fallen on me. Blog posting was almost not happening at all on the website and I've started it again just this week onwards.

I might hire some reliable multi tier link building service here rather than outsource it to these guys since they've not been giving any results lately.

Run a deeper analysis on your backlink profile.

See where the links are going. Are they pointing to legit pages? Or are they pointing to parasite pages/hacked pages? What is the anchor for these links? Visit the pages, see if they appear spammy or legit. Check when the link first occurred.

As @tazarbm pointed out, there was an updated in May end - which could have resulted in a ranking penalty. Take a look at your Google Analytics to pin point where your traffic first began dropping. How are the indexed pages doing in GSC?

Also, who tf does directory submissions anymore? That is a surefire way to get penalized.

Google released the Core update last month, It can affect you. So do a proper Audit first.

In my opinion, this type of link does not affect (Negatively/Positively). Still do in-depth research.

does anchors are changed to spammy keywords like korean or Russian ? If it then it might be effected !

delhigirl_blackhat said:

I asked the person who does my seo and he said

Click to expand...

Probably he did a sh!tty job, buying all the possible $10's craps from the internet.
If there is no viagra, porn or other strange words in japanese or chinese (or whatever), there is a small chance your site been attacked (almost none).

And yes, there was a hard G update last month, and your site may also been affected by that. Check my other response here. Asking yourself these questions may help.

Cheers!
R

BlogPro said:

Run a deeper analysis on your backlink profile.

See where the links are going. Are they pointing to legit pages? Or are they pointing to parasite pages/hacked pages? What is the anchor for these links? Visit the pages, see if they appear spammy or legit. Check when the link first occurred.

As @tazarbm pointed out, there was an updated in May end - which could have resulted in a ranking penalty. Take a look at your Google Analytics to pin point where your traffic first began dropping. How are the indexed pages doing in GSC?

Also, who tf does directory submissions anymore? That is a surefire way to get penalized.

Click to expand...

My traffic has been falling since March or April but May was a terrible hit.

I didn't realise Google was penalizing for directory submissions. I've told them to stop the work they're doing on my site for now.

However, there's one blog post that has more than 60-700% of these links pointing to. Would it be wise to remove the said blog post altogether? I've been thinking of doing that all day but didn't want to risk anything further.

mrbossy said:

does anchors are changed to spammy keywords like korean or Russian ? If it then it might be effected !

Click to expand...

I think mr bossy point indicates , I had my pbns hit by this thing , I done all links disavowed and it fixed but took me too time !

Ricky.Montana said:

Probably he did a sh!tty job, buying all the possible $10's craps from the internet.
If there is no viagra, porn or other strange words in japanese or chinese (or whatever), there is a small chance your site been attacked (almost none).

And yes, there was a hard G update last month, and your site may also been affected by that. Check my other https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/2-month-old-site-12-impression-max.1417578/#post-15383962. Asking yourself these questions may help.

Cheers!
R

Click to expand...

I think he may have outsourced the work to some spammy link makers.

However, there's one blog post that has more than 60-700% of these links pointing to. Would it be wise to remove the said blog post altogether? I've been thinking of doing that all day but didn't want to risk anything further. Should I remove that post altogether?

Check Anchors
If you find any negative or irrelevant Anchors, Find from Which Backlinks the negative anchors or irrelevant anchors are there and diswaow them

"the website was ranking for 16 keywords last month" - you should worry about this.
16 keywords? LOL

delhigirl_blackhat said:

It's a relief to know that the links could be from those sites.

The thing is this guy has worked for me for a long time and his work used to be really good. But last few months he's either slacking or something else is going on. I may end up firing him since he's focussed only on link building and all on page seo has fallen on me. Blog posting was almost not happening at all on the website and I've started it again just this week onwards.

I might hire some reliable multi tier link building service here rather than outsource it to these guys since they've not been giving any results lately.

Click to expand...

it sounds to me like the guy doesn't care anymore.

Ask him for reports on the number and types of backlinks he's built, because if he did stop caring about your site, then you will probably see links from web 2.0s (blogger, weebly, tumblr, etc), article directories, wiki sites, bookmarking sites, auto-approve blog comments, and so on...

Actually, take a look at the RDs and see what kind of sites are linking to you because if your site was not affected by the last google update then the quality of the RDs could be the issue.

Also, like other people have already mentioned, the anchor texts could also be an issue. If your keywords stop ranking out of the blue it's pretty common that the pages that those keywords were targeting have backlinks pointing to them that have too many exact match anchors, which is one of the common indicators of SEOs not caring about their job anymore.

And for God's sake, start posting content regularly. Unfortunately, blogging has become a tedious chore and you have to post content regularly (few times a week at least) to keep the mobster google happy. Besides, without a lot of content you won't rank for many keywords anyway

Anyway, ask your SEO guy for reports on the work he's done... or at least talk to him in a friendly manner if you've been partners for so long and are close to each other, and see what his opinion is about your site losing rankings. He might actually be onto something and working on it

And if he's not helpful, take a look at the RDs your site has, and also check the backlinks and the anchor texts for spammy links, bad RDs, overoptimized anchors, etc... I can't give better advice cause I don't know your site (but don't bother making it public cause I'm not offering SEO consultations anyway), but with the few pointers I gave you should be able to identify the issues if you know your site inside out. If you can't identify the issue then most likely you've been hit by the May update

I saw some aged sites with small amount of backlinks which got huge GSA comments spam blast - with spam anchors.
After that rankings even improved.