Hackers never sleep, it seems. Just when you thought you had them figured out, they come up with new and exciting ways to be annoying. Apparently they have gone from hijacking your site, locking you out, and putting your site through a visual blender to stuffing your site with backlinks. Scott Hansen from freearticlespinner.com first turned me on to this. They go in and stuff the back end of your site with pharmaceutical links (normally) and you are none the wiser. But Google views this as spamming and they will ban your site! So here are some simple steps to ensure that this has not and will not happen to you:
- From your browser, navigate to www.Google.com.
- In the search bar - search for your site. (do not type in the whole URL, you want to find your site in the search results.
- Once you find your site, click the “Cached” link. (This is a visual snapshot of your site as Google last saw it)
- Navigate to the top toolbar – click “View.” Scroll down to “Page Source” and click it.
- A screen will pop up – this is the code for your site.
- Scan the code for any URL’s that do not belong.(It should be obvious as hackers will stuff hundreds of links)
- The spam links are usually at the very top or bottom of your page.
Once you have made sure you have/have not been hacked, follow these steps:
- If you have been hacked, get your website administrator to get in and delete them all. It is probably a good idea to review security protocols so that it does not happen again.
- If you have/have not been hacked, go to Google Alerts and set up some automatic alerts. Google will tell you if someone has posted your URL with the keywords of your choice. Simply type in www.yourwebsite.com [insert your favorite pharmaceutical word here] and set the other settings to your preference, and click “create alert.” It is that easy – Google will alert you that someone has posted it. Your reaction time will be much faster.
There’s to a hacker free 2011 – enjoy!
