How to Keep Your Site from Being Hacked by SEO SPAM

SEO Spam is steadily becoming the leading cause for websites to get hacked resulting in tampering with your content and analytics. While you work hard to keep your website’s rankings intact, SEO Spam could wreak havoc on your SEO instantaneously, and will get worse the longer it remains on your site. 
 

What Exactly is SEO Spam? 

It’s a criminal or even a bad bot that finds a way to hack into your website in order to manipulate your SEO by inserting malicious code into your website files. The code is then reversed and stored so it remains hidden. Hackers can get in if you have a weak password or an outdated plugin on your site. Different types of SEO spam hacks can range from keyword insertion, link injection, and creating new pages, to spam emails, and displaying banner ads.

How to Determine if Your Site Has Been Hacked by SEO Spam

• Run your website url through Google’s transparency report. The report will tell you if your site is safe to browse or if it has harmful content.
• Check Google Search Console’s Security Issues. In Search Console, if you scroll down to where it says Security and Manual Actions, and click on Security Issues to see if you have any red flags.
• Search for your website in Google in an incognito window to see if you were hacked.
• Contact your web host.
• Use free malware scanning tools.

How to Remove the SEO Spam

Now that you’ve identified whether your site has been hacked or not: 

• Install the security plugin MalCare or another malware tool and use it to clean up your site, this will incur a fee.
• Update your password
• Update your wordpress to the latest version
• Delete any unwanted or outdated plugins or themes
• Apply wordpress website hardening

If you’re still struggling with SEO spam, contact us, we’ll help with all of your website and SEO needs.