Recovering Rankings After AI Page Penalty & Site Hacking
Sonja Marinkovic
The Problem
The general contractor website was thriving in rankings and traffic until a WordPress hack occurred. In an attempt to recover from thousands of spammy URLs, the owner published numerous low-quality AI-generated Point of Interest pages unrelated to their core business, resulting in over 100 such pages. This led to a significant decline in traffic for their key keywords.
Following the hack, the website's installation resulted in mixed-up permalinks, leading to unclear canonicals, page duplicates, and accidental removal of certain pages.
The Solution
After setting up the fresh installation, I conducted a technical SEO audit to identify errors, including broken internal links, duplicate pages, accidental page removals, Elementor page design issues, accidental no-indexing of pages, and mixed-up permalinks.
To address the penalty due to AI spammy pages, I opted to retain only a select few local service pages showcasing the client's expertise and past projects. I removed all Point of Interest pages to prevent dilution of topical authority.
The Result
After a few months, once Google reevaluated the website's quality and content, rankings returned to their pre-issue levels, and traffic regained its former levels.
Screenshots
SEMrush image representing keywords returning to their previous ranking:
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Posted Mar 22, 2024
Discover how I fixed a Phoenix contractor's website after a hack and AI spam, boosting rankings and traffic with SEO audit and content optimization.
