Cheshire, United Kingdom (7th February 2013). Search marketing agency, SEO Consult®, have published the findings of new research they recently conducted into the reasons why some websites were able to achieve unexpectedly good ranking positions on search engine results pages. The tests they ran resulted in the discovery of some worrying ‘loopholes’ found with two popular content management systems (CMS) which seemed to allow a quick way to garner a large volume of links for a given website, resulting in search engines getting a ‘false’ impression of the importance and value of these sites and so quickly moving them up the results rankings for industry standard keyword searches.
What began as a routine keyword monitoring test by the team of SEO Programmers, as part of on-going SEO Consult® research and development, soon became a much more complex exercise when it was found that the UK Payday Loans industry had an incredibly high turnover of websites ranking at the top of search engine results for generic keyword searches. John Doyle, an SEO Consult® programmer, looked into some of these top ranking websites and discovered that two main methods, or ‘CMS loopholes’ were being utilised by many of these sites, some of which were using domain names just a few days old, but were already ranking at or near the top of search engine results, seemingly regardless of the quality or reliability of the companies in question.
Doyle has published his detailed findings in a comprehensive blog post, which includes an explanation of which CMS’ he discovered were vulnerable to being exploited and instructions for worried webmasters on what they can do to help ensure that their own sites are not hosting this malicious code or unwittingly linking to other websites and essentially giving credibility to these brand new sites in the eyes of search engines and helping them rank well.
“We were shocked to discover the widespread use of these hacks being used by a large number of the sites we investigated and I’m amazed by how successful they were, at least in the short term, in convincing search engines that these websites were worthy of top rankings in such a short space of time and in such a competitive industry”, said John Doyle, SEO Programmer at SEO Consult®. “The tricks we discovered these sites using boil down to a hidden link being places on many thousands of innocent websites. The result is that these sites are unwittingly helping all kinds of potentially unscrupulous websites manipulate their search engine ranking position and make buckets of cash. Thankfully, since I first started the investigation, it seems steps are being taken by some of the CMS’ involved to prevent this issue, and many of the site owners I contacted have also been able to remove the malicious code. My blog on the subject gives more information to anyone worried that their website could also be involved.”
For more information about this investigation or any of the services that the agency offers, visit the SEO Consult® website http://www.seoconsult.com or call 0845 205 0292.
About SEO Consult®:
Located in North West England, SEO Consult® is the dedicated search marketing division of UK leading company Click Consult. Founded in 2003, Click Consult offers internet marketing solutions to over 350 clients across the UK. With a highly skilled team of professionals, Click Consult has seen significant web design and development success amongst other achievements. Other services include social media marketing, reputation management and pay per click advertising.
Contact SEO Consult®:
Claire Davies
Click Consult®
Unit B1, Willow House
Oaklands Office Park
Hooton Road, Hooton
Cheshire, UK
Zip: CH66 7NZ
Tel: 0845 205 0292
Email: pr@clickconsult.com