Case study: from hacked website to Google leader in 60 days
A business with a hacked website, zero organic visits and vanished from Google. In 60 days: new site with 100/100 PageSpeed, 47 SEO articles and first-page rankings. This is their story.
Key points
This is the real story of one of serpixel’s first clients. For confidentiality reasons, we do not use the actual business name, but all numbers and results are real and verifiable.
The starting point
A family business in Catalonia, active for over 20 years. They had a WordPress website built by a local agency in 2019. It worked acceptably for a few years. Until one day they received an email from Google Search Console: “Spam content has been detected on your site.”
The website was hacked. Someone had injected thousands of pharmaceutical spam pages into the WordPress structure. The client had no idea: the site looked normal to them, but Google saw an illegal pharmacy.
The consequences
- Disappeared from Google: from first positions to not appearing in any search
- Manual Google penalty for spam content
- Zero organic visits for 3 months
- Damaged reputation: potential customers found a “dangerous website” warning
- Agency vanished: the agency that built the site stopped responding
The hacked website numbers
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| PageSpeed (mobile) | 23/100 |
| Injected spam pages | 2,400+ |
| Monthly organic visits | 0 |
| First page positions | 0 |
| WordPress plugins | 34 |
| Last WordPress update | 14 months ago |
| SSL | Expired |
The decision
After a free audit, we presented two options: repair the WordPress (800-1,200 EUR, high reinfection risk) or build a new website with serpixel (monthly plan, no upfront cost, definitive solution). The client chose the second option.
Weeks 1-2: Design and structure
Within 5 days we had a complete preview.html approved by the client. Within 14 days, a full Astro website with 12 pages in 3 languages, Schema.org, contact form and 100/100 PageSpeed.
Weeks 3-8: Massive SEO content
47 articles in 60 days, each with optimized title, unique meta description, structured data, FAQ, optimized image, internal links and versions in Catalan, Spanish and English.
The results
Day 30: first positions
8 keywords on the first page, 23 in the top 3 pages, 150 organic visits/month and 3 form enquiries.
Day 60: sector leader
| Metric | Before | After (60d) |
|---|---|---|
| PageSpeed (mobile) | 23/100 | 100/100 |
| Indexed pages | 0 | 156 |
| First page keywords | 0 | 14 |
| Organic visits/month | 0 | 420 |
| Form enquiries/month | 0 | 8 |
| Languages | 1 | 3 |
Why it worked so fast
Three factors: clean technology (Astro with zero vulnerabilities, 100/100 PageSpeed), massive and precise content (47 articles targeting real keywords), and the power of Catalan (10-50 times less competition for local searches).
Want similar results?
If your website has been hacked, is slow or does not appear on Google, serpixel (Clever European Business, S.L.) can help. Shall we talk?
