SEO is the strategy of convincing Google your website is reputable.
When your website is poisoned with Pharma or blackhat SEO spam, all your efforts are lost.
Blackhat SEO and Pharma spam has been around for years and will likely be around for many more. It’s purpose is to promote non-reputable internet pharmacies that sell unlicensed drugs and calling them Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Ambien or some other patented drug name. The internet pharmacy through illegal methods places malicious code on your website that redirects to their site. One of the primary reason for hackers to take this action are these spammy links look appear to be an endorsement from your reputable website to their spam website and can influence the Google search algorithm.
The United States government takes down these counterfeit sites when they can.
Trafficking in counterfeit drugs over the internet is illegal. As far as I know, innocent websites which have been hacked by bad actors have not been seized by law enforcement but when you website has been hacked, it is possible your website visitor could see the noticed I have placed above if they click on a spammed link.
The Google search engine knows your website has been compromised and will sink your website in the search results.
Google views hacked websites with disdain which will have a disastrous effect on your traffic and your business. Can you blame them? Why would a dentist or a preschool promote erectile dysfunction drugs? Unfortunately the pharma hack is quite insidious and most businesses will not even know their website has been poisoned by bad actors. My company makes an effort to contact website owners and inform them of the situation and recommends a plan to recover.
First Step in SEO Recovery – Clean the Hack
To recover your SEO rankings you must clean all vestiges of the hack. This includes any mention of pharma products, redirects or urls to spam pages. Leaving any part of this process undone will likely result in re-infection. The process is laborious and is best done by a professional but can be done by an individual with a knowledge of WordPress file structures, FTP protocols and malware detecting tools. After you are certain that hack has been removed, you can go to the second step.
Second Step: Have the Google Bot re-index your site:
Through the Google search console re-index your site and it would be wise to re-submit your site map. Also check you backlinks in Search console and see if any spam sites are linking to your website. If so, you will need to get familiar with Google’s Disavow procedures
Third Step: Pour on the beneficial SEO:
Now would be a good time to pour on beneficial SEO, such as: technical improvements to your website, adding additional high quality contact and sourcing reputable backlinks from trusted sites. Your SEO recovery will be faster and more permanent when you ca prove your website is a secure, high quality website providing useful answers to search queries.
