SEO fallout from WordPress Hacking Event

It’s amazing what a trickle down effect this whole hacking and emergency upgrade with the resulting posts lost has had. I tell you that I have learned my lesson. I will keep my wordpress installation up to date! Of course, if wordpress had been created with more security in mind in the first place I wouldn’t have this mess to clean up.

My SERPS have plummeted for a lot of my best keyphrases off this. I know they’ll eventually come back if I work my butt off, but sheesh, if I had kept my installation up to date I wouldn’t have to go through this nonsense, though, come to think of it, some people went through it even with an up to date installation. But yes, I did increase my odds of getting hacked by not keeping after things. This has definitely been a learning experience. Luckily, or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, I have more work than I can handle right now anyway. So if there aren’t new people coming in because of it, that’s sort of okay. But it also means I have much less time to handle this crap. When I’m snowed under the last thing I want to be doing is restoring my own dang site.

I also have some issues with the lost posts 404ing, which will be fixed in a day or so, but until then google webmaster tools is reporting lots of stuff that’s problematical. Understandably. Two or three of my most linked to posts were in that 2 and a half month stretch that disappeared. Luckily I did have an old database backup that for sure has those posts in it, and my php guy, who is a DB whiz, is going to help me restore them. Hopefully tomorrow.

Moral of the story is that keeping your wordpress installation up to date is part of your Search Engine Optimization simply because a hacked site isn’t doing you any favors. It is guaranteed to cause you some sort of havoc in your Search Engine returns.

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