Lately, a weird activity has been noticed by the web owners on their posts and websites. There are links on their blog posts, web pages that are unethical and out of courtesy. This surprised many bloggers, especially ones who are earning from online blogging only. 

Many popular and highly reachable content were targeted by these hackers. They inserted spam links on websites that are on top results of Google. Not only does it include inappropriate websites links but also websites links for selling guns and other ammunition. This is no less compared to a nightmare for these website owners and bloggers. 

Let’s understand what exactly happened and how to prevent spam link injection on websites.

What Is Spam Link Injection?

A spam link injection is a type of cyberattack that leads to SEO hijacking, malicious redirects, and even email spamming. Here, the hackers inject malicious codes or scripts into a target website.

The purpose of spam link injection is to infect your website’s top-rank pages. Through the links injected, it redirects your website’s users to their spam website and gains a higher ranking for tier websites/pages.

 

Some Of The Latest Incidents Are

Molly Stillman, a blogger who writes on lifestyle, was surprised to see what spam links are doing in her blog posts. She thought about updating some of her old blogs but all she found were inappropriate website links attached to her blog. After she went to a security company, she found that someone hacked her website running on the open-source version of WordPress. It has tweeted about 500 of 2000 blogs. 

Besides that, an award-winning Canadian urban magazine, Spacing – one of its websites is also injected with spam links. 

Further, the attack was not limited to adding links but get into the text of an article about drug policy from 2009. The text added unwanted information for rehab centers and vaporizer products. Later added to an online gun store link.

 

Who Is After The Spam Link Injection Activity?

As stated in Buzzfeed, a major source of link injection is Sape.ru, a leading Russian technology. Sape has a list of over 8,000 English-language websites. It covers everything from American political organizations to international children’s charities.

However, Sape’s spokesperson stated in their defense that they are working to stop the hacktivists. 

 

“Each time a hack is identified, Sape has no choice but to immediately assign a team to remedy the situation, providing support to hacked websites and refunding significant amounts to customers, who purchased links on sites, which turn out to be compromised by hackers.”

 

Although the practice of injecting spam is not new and has been in practice since 2000. This came to the forefront when an SEO-based consultant company posted a series of messages on BlackHatWorld in the Philippines. Similarly, a company that benefited the most was DFY whose founder Charles Floate was even found guilty in 2015. 

 

Someone paid for a niche edits link campaign. In their report was a link in a post on a different site they owned, added without permission. An incredible coincidence, and good reminder that some niche edit/link services use hacking to provide links. https://t.co/KUwBFlC6oU

— Colin McDermott (@ColinMcDermott) December 18, 2021

 

How Does It Affect SEO And Website Owners?

Google search engines aim to provide users with the best result of their queries. The website owners approach SEO services to comply with the search engines results and appear on the top results. These SEO services perform seo techniques and that includes website design, content strategy, ads marketing, etc. 

All these activities take time, effort, and money. For instance, if your google ad redirects users, not to you but to an unethical website. It will affect both your user and website and the benefit of click is credit in the spam website. 

 

How To Protect Websites From Spam Link Injection?

The spam link injection’s main target has been WordPress websites. Around 30% of the websites are built on WordPress due to its amazing themes and services. However, if you are not sure about a spam link, here is what you can do: 

 

• Scam your WordPress website with a reliable SEO spam detector tool.
• Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to check spammy keywords and eliminate them.
• Check your website status; it should not be Blacklisted by Google.
• Check if your hosting provider has suspended your account.

 

Being the website owner you have to stay updated with the latest techniques and hacking activity trends. For more information and suggestions, stay in touch with us.