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Duplicate links? Very confused!

by rossi303
3 replies
Hi all,

I started my website less than 2 months ago. I'm using WP as a CMS and was using a free template. (I changed the template last week b/c I found out it the company that made it buried spam links into the footer.)

Almost immediately after changing the template I started taking hits on my ranking. Ranking on my keywords went from 3-->10, 81-->129, 47-->218, and 10-->35.

I used Website Auditor for the first time today and saw that all of my links are duplicated. Is this normal, or is this why my rankings dropped? Are the links duplicated b/c I'm using a new template?? (I don't see why that would do it, but....I'm obviously a newbie!)


Is this normal? Did I screw something up? :confused:


Thanks for any insight anyone can throw my way!
#confused #duplicate #links
  • Profile picture of the author tweakr
    It's hard to say without knowing more details/seeing the site but sometimes it is normal to see a little drop if the underlying HTML is a lot different than what you had before.

    Also I'm not sure where you are getting your themes from, if you're not getting them from the WordPress directory or another reputable source (which it sounds like you aren't?) it's best to check them for spam links or any other malicious code that code be within them.
    Another problem with some of the themes that are found from various websites is that they might not be up to quality, having some sort of issue that could effect the quality of your site. This may not be on purpose either, just an oversight or some new "developer" that doesn't quite know or understand what they are doing yet.
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    • Profile picture of the author rossi303
      How do you check it for malicious code, is there an app or website somewhere to submit it to? I didn't get either template from the directory.

      I'm more confused about why I have duplicate links when I used website auditor. I'm assuming that would cause a big hit on my ranking...would that be a correct assumption?
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  • Profile picture of the author tweakr
    To check for malicious code or anything else you would need to look through the themes code, you could also use the theme check plugin that might help give you a clue to problems but it's not a magic bullet.

    Yeah it's possible that the search engines think your site is spammy if it has multiple or duplicate links to the same pages all over.
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