My Website Was Hacked—Need Advice!
A few days ago, my website was compromised. The hackers inserted thousands of URLs that appear to manipulate dynamic links, and all of them redirect to a different site.
The URL format looks like this: mydomain<.>com/?t=xxxxx&filter=xxxxx&share_to_url=xxxx
They also altered the title tags on all my pages, which caused my website’s rankings to plummet—this is how I first realized something was off.
Now that I’ve regained control and secured the site, I’m unsure about the next steps. Google Search Console recognizes these URLs as pages, but they’re not legitimate ones. What should I do, especially since around 20% of them got indexed?
I’m also concerned about recovering the rankings of my original pages. Some had been ranking first for highly competitive keywords for months, but now they’re buried on the second page and beyond. Is there anything I can do to help improve their rankings again?
I would really appreciate any insights or advice!
2 responses to “Website got hacked (HELP)”
I’m sorry to hear about your website getting hacked; that can be a really stressful situation. Here are some steps you can take to address both the hacked URLs and your site’s rankings:
Block Access: Implement rules in your
.htaccessfile or through your CMS to prevent access to these URLs, ensuring that they can’t be accessed by users or crawlers.Clean Up Your Site:
Ensure that all plugins, themes, and CMS versions are up to date.
Reinstate Your Title Tags and Content:
Make sure to check for any duplicated content or other on-page SEO elements that might have been altered.
Submit a Reconsideration Request:
Once you’ve cleaned up everything and ensured that the site is secure, you can submit a reconsideration request through GSC. Explain the situation and the steps you took to resolve it.
Monitor Your Traffic and Rankings:
Consider creating high-quality content or resources to encourage backlinks and traffic to your site, which can help improve its authority again.
Regular Backups and Security Audits:
Going forward, ensure you have regular backups of your site and consider security plugins or services that can help protect your website from future attacks.
Seek Professional Help if Needed:
Remember, SEO recovery after a hack can take time, but with consistent effort and monitoring, you can get your site back to where it was. Good luck!
I’m sorry to hear about your website’s security breach; that can be a distressing experience. You’ve taken a great first step by securing your site again, but there are a few additional actions you can take to address the aftermath of the hack and improve your rankings.
1. **Remove Malicious URLs:** Start by removing the hacked URLs from your site. You can do this through Google Search Console by submitting a URL removal request. This will signal to Google that these pages are no longer part of your site.
2. **Check for Backdoors:** Ensure that there are no lingering security vulnerabilities. Hackers often leave behind backdoors that can allow them to regain access. Conduct a thorough security audit and consider using reputable security plugins to scan for any remaining malicious code.
3. **Resubmit Your Sitemap:** After cleaning up the compromised elements, update and resubmit your sitemap via Google Search Console. This will help Google re-index your legitimate pages and can speed up the recovery process.
4. **Optimize for Recovery:** For the pages that were affected, focus on improving their content quality and relevance. Update your title tags, meta descriptions, and ensure internal linking is optimized. High-quality, relevant content can help regain trust and authority in the eyes of search engines.
5. **Monitor Backlinks:** If you have strong backlinks pointing to your site, monitor those. You may want to reach out to webmasters of those sites and inform them of the hack, asking them to remove any links to the