Have you ever entertained the thought that website security could affect your SEO rankings? What about implementing security into your current SEO strategy? Hopefully, you’re already aware that not properly securing your website leaves you vulnerable to attacks from hackers and malicious bots, and you’ve taken the necessary steps to prevent such occurrences. However, if you haven’t given much thought to website security, consider that apart from the obvious risks associated with lax site security, you’re also risking potential manual ranking penalties from search engines like Google – de-indexing your site and ruining all the hard work you’ve put in.
Don’t leave your site vulnerable. Any site can fall victim to an attack at any time, so if you haven’t already implemented a security plan – it’s high time you did so.
Bot Attacks
Some bots are good and some are bad. Just like search engine bots (good) crawl your site and look for new content that can be indexed, malicious bots (bad) can also crawl your site and look for security vulnerabilities – or even steal that awesome bit of content you’ve worked so hard on! It’s safe to assume that no average website owner wants to have their site attacked, and thankfully there exist a couple of quick and effective ways to combat bot attacks.
Monitor Your Backend
One of the simplest ways to find out whether your site has fallen victim to a cyber attack is to check each and every one of your site’s backlinks. If you find out that your content has been stolen and used without your permission, then chances are that malicious bots have exploited a security vulnerability to get their hands on it. Any stolen content issues can easily be resolved by filing DMCA complaints, but as the old saying goes – prevention is better than cure. Experienced webmasters can also use (and are hopefully already using!) specialized tools to actively monitor a site’s bot access logs, identify any malicious bots, and effectively block any future access.
Update Those Plugins!
Nowadays plenty of sites are built using WordPress CMS. If you’ve used this platform before you’ll definitely have noticed the amount of platform and plugin updates released. While constantly updating the platform and plugins might seem like a chore, consider that one of the reasons so many updates are released is to address any newly discovered security issues. It’s a given that after it’s been patched, a past security vulnerability becomes better known to the public – meaning that hackers and bots are always on the lookout for outdated plugins they can exploit. If you want your site to be safe and maintain its SEO rankings, then you need to stay one step ahead of the game and apply any WordPress and plugin updates as soon as they’re released.
Monitoring backlinks, bot access, and updating plugins are just a few ways you can help keep your site secure and less likely to be deindexed by search engines. Get in touch today if you’d like to find out more about how website security can affect SEO.
