The case of the attempted server hacking and it's effect on SEO
-
Since relaunch earlier this year, we've had patches where our site has failed to load. It's happened every so often, but, until I receive the server logs from the company who hosts the site, I won't know exactly when this issue has occurred. Until now, we've only noticed it when someone in the company has tried, and failed, to access the site.
Again, it happened today. After hassling our developers/hosting firm for a conclusive answer as to why, it emerged that their server (perhaps our site in particular because of the nature of our business) had been the target of an attempted hacking. We've now concluded that every time our site has messed around like this, it's because of a possible hack.
Would anyone in SEOmoz Land be able to tell me if this is going to have a negative impact for our SEO and site performance? Would search engines be able to tell if a potential hack is, or was, occurring? Would we then be penalised? Please feel free to elaborate on the hacking process in general, too, if you can because this is the first time I've encountered it.
Thanks
-
1stly Google might notice some hacked pages and flag them as potentially harmful. But your main problem is these:
- potental client will most likely not come back if they tried once and failed
- google might have tried to access a page and had looong loading times or a server error when trying to load a page
- when a client loads a page and the server is under a DoS or simular attack the server will slow down and the page load speed will do the same resulting in bad loading speeds.
All of the above and more that I probably forgot will harm your SEO efforts and end user experience, harming trust.
some of the above you should be able to see in GWT and GA. in particular the loadtimes and HTTP error codes, bounce rates ex.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
International SEO - Alternatives to Automatic IP re-direct
Hello, When doing international SEO I've read that it's not good practice to automatically re-direct users to the correct part of the website based on their IP address. But what alternatives are there to this? Let's say you're targeting the US and the UK through multiregional SEO. What can you do to ensure that users from the US go to the US sub-directory and that users from the UK go to the UK sub-directory? In Moz's international SEO guide it says that: "If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice. Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused. Pair this with a good XML sitemap and the user can have a great interaction. Plus, the search engines will be able to crawl and index all of your translated content." Can anyone explain this further? Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance
International SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Multilingual webshop SEO
Hi, I have a question concerning multilingual SEO for webshops. This is the case: the root domain is example.be, which has several subdomains. One of these subdomains is shop.example.be which is used for two webshops (Dutch and French), being shop.example.be/nl and shop.example.be/fr .
International SEO | | Mat_C
The other root domain is example.lu (for Luxemburg) which is only used for the subdomain for the Luxemburg webshop in French, being shop.example.lu/fr.
The content on the .lu/fr webshop is a small part of the content on the .be/fr webshop, and the product descriptions are the same and are both of course in French. The webshops will be redesigned and restructured, and the question is what to do with the .lu/fr webshop. There are two possibilities: Integrate this webshop for Luxemburg in the existing .be webshop, since most of the products are the same and the .lu webshop doesn't get a lot of visitors because of Luxemburg being a small country. The only thing to do then would be setting up a 301 from the .lu webshop to the .be/fr version to transfer link value.
People in Luxemburg already sometimes get pages from the .be/fr webshop in the SERP anyway because these already have a bigger authority than the .lu/fr pages. Keep the .lu/fr webshop and use hreflang tags so the correct pages with similar content are shown in the correct country. I know that when using different TLD's this normally isn't an issue anyway, so implementing hreflang tags even isn't really necessary. Please feel free to share your thoughts about what would be the best approach. Thanks!1 -
Is using JavaScript to render translations safe for International SEO?
Hello World! Background: I am evaluating a tool/service that a company wants to use for managing the translated versions of their international/multi-lingual websites: https://www.transifex.com/product/transifexlive/ Transifex is asking webmaster to "simply add a snippet of JavaScript" to their website(s); the approved translations are added by the business in the back-end; and the translated sites are made live with the click of a button (on/to the proper ccTLD, sub-domain, or sub-directory, which is specified). CONCERN: Even though I know Google reads JavaScript for crawling and ranking,
International SEO | | SixSpokeMedia64
I am concerned because I see the "English text" when I view the source-code on the "German site", and I wonder if this is really acceptable? QUESTION: Is a service like this (such as Transifex using JavaScript to render translations client-side) safe for indexing and ranking for my clients' international search engine visibility, especially via Google? Thank you!0 -
International SEO - Help Make Tuff Decisions
Hey Moz Friends, I need help making a tuff decision. I just finished watching Rands Video here: http://moz.com/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday My website is www.pti-world.com , I'm trying to rank for the term "walk through metal detectors" for other countries. I am currently on the 2nd page in many countries. So here is the big question: Lets say I work hard and get 20 links from U.K. Should I point them to my page that is currently on page 2 in the u.k. ? OR... will I see better rankings if I start a "new" website under a subdirectory and point those 20 links to that new page? We don't have a large budget for this. The companies that are currently ranking in the top positions are "NOT" geotargeting there website from what I can tell (they are using .com domains). What route would you recommend I take??
International SEO | | brandon070 -
Making a case for a carve-out rather than an absorption.
I've been tasked with helping the IT department of a large company make a case for keeping their regional website and simply re-branding over having their website absorbed into that of their parent company(located elsewhere in the world). The report I've written so far is for too long to ask everyone here to read, but I wanted to make sure that I'm not forgetting anything from an SEO standpoint. I'm also digging for numbers from a reputable source to back our claims. I was wondering if anyone knows of a reputable source that has researched/published statistics on the benefits of a regional website from a SEO or general marketing standpoint?
International SEO | | Bsalva0 -
Same domain with different google effect seo ?
I have a domain www.abc.com for US market. Now i want to sell same services in Australia. I am thinking to buy www.abc.com.au . Because i think i will get rank more faster for .au in Australia because of .au . What do you guys suggest ?
International SEO | | afycon0 -
How to overcome server and WHOIS location
What if we published an address in the UK as the contact/WHOIS details but wanted to target the USA market? The server resides in the UK, the domain WHOIS resides in the UK - but what are the best methods to target the US search market? The domain is a .com domain.
International SEO | | Peter2640 -
Is it worth to have a DNS manage service like easydns or ultradns in terms of seo ?
I have a HTML site hosted in Netherlands, i use Could Files from Rackspace and Cloudfront from Amazon as CDN. My target audience are in Portugal Is it worth to have a DNS Manage service in terms of seo? If so what are the benefits? Thank you Paulo
International SEO | | paulogoncalves0