Covering from link injection hack

[BradSJohnson]

About 3 months ago my site was hacked. Links were added to pages and pages were added. Whom ever did the hack made a bunch of scummy links back to my site. Now that the pages are gone off my site. Was wondering how I should deal with all the back links that are now getting 404s.

The two solutions I have thought of are 301 redirecting all the 404 to the homepage or disavowing all the backlinks.

Any advice would be awesome! Thanks!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Murdacki

Here's what I would do...

• Get a list of all your backlinks

• Majestic

• Moz Open Site Explorer

• Google Webmaster Tools

• Assess your backlinks

• What ones are obviously spam?

• What are your good backlinks?

• Do any of those good backlinks link to your old spam pages?

• You can use LinkRisk to assess your profile

• Reach out to websites with links you want to keep

• Have them correct the URL to a new relevant page

• Try removing links that are from spam sites

• Reach out and ask for the link to be removed

• Do NOT pay to have links removed

• Keep a spreadsheet of sites/pages you reached out to and those that removed links?

• Here's a good resource from Moz.

• Disavow backlinks that are obviously spam and could potentially penalize you

Do not blanket redirect backlinks to your homepage because you could have some bad backlinks that could backfire on you. This will take some research and work on your part, but will pay off in the end. You have to put a little effort into this, it won't be a one step solution.

Let me know if you have questions or comments. Hope this helps!

[shopperlocal_DM]

Disavowing would be a good option in this case.

You just need to tell Google that these links are of thin quality and don't want these to get associated with your website

[BradSJohnson]

Great thanks guys!