SEO Security Audits - Is Your Site at Risk? - Amsterdam Affiliate Conference

@irishwonder Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, 2013
Is Your Site at Risk?

@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

  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

  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

  Indexable (empty) search results
  Use of insecure plugins
  Site structure causing duplicate onsite
content
  Bad redirects
  Incorrect or absent robots.txt
  Etc.

  Bingo – your site is now about Viagra!
(Example typical for Wordpress but many other platforms have similar issues)

And it will get indexed…
…because…

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

  Add this to your Wordpress site’s robots.txt:
◦  Disallow: /search/
◦  Disallow: /*?s=

  …to some extent
… if you know what to plug and how to do it

  They all have security issues!

Source: http://www.cvedetails.com

  Sites get hacked
  According to Stop Badware, the three most
common types of badware affecting sites are:
◦  Malicious scripts
◦  .htaccess redirects
◦  Hidden iframes

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/

  Look for something that should not be there

  Warning in Google Webmaster Tools
  However, this does not always mean incorrect
robots.txt

Test here:

  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

  Davi
David Naylor’s original post ranking below sites that scraped/aggregated it

  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

  Tool: ScreamingFrog

  Who are your neighbours?

  BEFORE you get any emails from Google!

  A few words about Negative SEO

  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”

  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)

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/

  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/

Again, this is a niche specific criterion
Result? Penalty due to a negative SEO campaign

  Example: BrightonSEO website

  A spike of interest in link removal caused by
Penguin

  Ever got one of these?

Do you see an opportunity for negative SEO here?

  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?

  How obvious are they?

  Do they look like an artificial, planned
linkbuilding effort?

What’s spammier?
vs

What’s spammier?
vs
A comment spammer in local SERPs Interflora

  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?)

  Google Suggest

  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

  Example: BBC.co.uk
How do you hijack this link profile?

  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

•  info@irishwonder.com
•  Twitter: @irishwonder
•  Facebook:  
http://www.facebook.com/irishwonder
•  LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/irishwonder
Who is this IrishWonder:
•  Independent SEO consultant at
irishwonder.com
•  CMO of ContentMango.com
•  Chief SEO Scientist at SearchWorks.eu

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SEO Security Audits - Is Your Site at Risk? - Amsterdam Affiliate Conference