HTTPS has been seen as a ranking property and the Chrome browser has been equipped with its updates. This is because HTTPS is seen to provide better cyber security in SEO. This does not mean that your website is secure from hackers.
Google has always suggested that in order to have a secure website you should move to HTTPS by getting an SSL certificate. The technology behind this is that data is encrypted while in transit which prevents hackers from acquiring private and sensitive data from the website. Even with the HTTPS certification, research indicates that most websites faces an average of 60 trial attacks per day. This is because 61% of internet traffic is automatic which means that website attacks do not occur depending on the website size or popularity. All the websites are prone to hackers as no site is insignificant or too small for hacking.
Unfortunately, website attacks are becoming hard to identify with commercial hackers chasing the potential billions of dollars of capital and the state hackers working to dominate the websites. Sadly there is nothing you can do in the effort of preventing hackers from trying to crack your websites password. Even locking it down cannot help as hackers will always try to access the website by all means which can be a big challenge to you. Sometimes your website is termed to be down or affected by malware which cost you some money that you had not planned for.
In 2014 Google announced that a secure website will have a higher ranking which will make it more competitive than other websites. It reported that getting an SSL certificate will be more beneficial and could be used as a bridge between two websites of the same quality. This has been seen in the Google search where the results on the first page are mostly of HTTPS sites. This does not guarantee a higher ranking when you acquire an SSL certification as it is not the ranking signal that is relied on by algorithm.
Even with the increased adoption of the new technological shift in the world most of the businesses have not familiarized with the benefits of ensuring that their digital assets are secure. Determining an on-site hacker has been seen to require a different skill that is different from SEO. When discussing long term digital plan website security is always neglected or given little weight which may be the source of the difference your website and other more competitive websites. Google is trying to increase website security by blacklisting the ones that have been affected by malware.
When you face an attack you are likely to experience heavy financial losses. On top of that, a compromised website can destroy SERPs which can lead to a series of manual penalties by Google. The search engines blacklist a fraction of the affected website leaving 90 percent of the cases untouched. This means that the website owner can be targeted continuously without his or her knowledge. The summing up of malware and spam increases the level of sanctions that are imposed. Even if the website is not blacklisted its ranking is affected which means that attacks have negative outcome only. Being blacklisted deactivates your website until it is cleaned up and the penalties dropped. Lack of warning when your site is under attack makes it more vulnerable to hackers and attracts stricter penalties. Prevention of these attacks is the only solution.
SEO spam is responsible for chasing away clients and also increases the possibility of being blacklisted. It is the best to hackers as it is easy to redirect the customers to other malicious sites. Bots represent an essential part of your website, especially in application traffic. It can be used by hackers for content deletion, vulnerability detection, and information theft. Even when the attackers are unsuccessful, a series of attacks can bar the Google bot from efficiently crawling into your site. Attackers’ bots use the same method and server properties just like a legitimate bot or authorized visitor would. If your server is accustomed to repetitive or automated tasks from several bots, It will begin to deter your website functioning. Your server can even stop serving some pages. The server will start showing strange errors such as error 404 occurred to pages that are on the web. This shows that Google tried accessing them but your server reported them to be missing.
Legitimate bots can also use resources at an unmanageable rate. This is common after adding a lot of content to your website which led to aggressive crawling when trying to index the information thus straining your server. As a result, the authorized bots can trigger an infinite loop. To prevent this, most websites are equipped with server-side caching which act as pre-built versions of the web rather than having to generate the same pages repetitively in every request. This has reduced the amount of load time that the real visitors use to access data and it is approved by Google. To optimize the efficiency of your server, you must recognize any threat that aims and attacking you or your customers’ business type. This is by building a system that helps in identifying a legitimate bot and an intruders bot traffic. It should be carefully done because if it is done poorly, it will tamper with the SEO functioning or even block the right visitors from accessing your pages completely.
Most websites are attacked for SEO spam reasons. This can be to deliberately lower the web functioning, make capital from more competitive websites or deface the website. Hackers aim at discouraging the real visitors by turning them to other link firms and bait them with malware or unrequested links. In most cases, the hackers use SQL injection to get administrative qualities. This type of attack is the worst as your customers are manipulated which damages your reputation to irreversible levels and the site is affected with spam which can cause blacklisting.
After the attack, your website won’t serve the purpose that you created it for. It won’t answer the queries that are asked by your real visitors for some time. This is because the hacker gets access to it and puts in a rogue process that works out of your hosting directory. The attackers could also have backdoor access to your site even after the cleanup. This can help them run and store unlimited files that may contain pirated data. Your server may only be used to deriver this data. This will highly reduce your server speed and lower your ranking. There are other SEO spam techniques which include; using bots to get duplicated content, email addresses, and other personal information. This would make your website to face some penalties for having duplicate content.
There is no server that can be fully protected from hackers. If you want about 90 percent of security you can bury your server under fort Knox and guard it with the US Army corps. Through this, any determined attacker will have to use the necessary resources to pass through the tight security. Even if you restrict your server in such a way that you are the only one who will have access to it, you will still be exposed to attackers that go past your Network Operations centers or NOC, protocols, and firewalls.
How to prevent hacking through SEO
Website plugins
Some businesses SEO has been designed to buy word press plugins from the real plugin author. This enables the attacker to use the code in making plugin which makes it possible to add hidden links to a website by a hacker. Before using a plugin, do some research on it and find out whether it has a past of being attacked. This is by searching the same of the specific plugin plus its hacker and bugs.
You should not use Google as your antivirus
Very few businesses use a monitoring system to promote security on their websites. If it is a word press site the common security plugins are sucuri security or word fence. They monitor the web and scan for any hacking process. Their firewall qualities block attackers temporarily or permanently. They can also block the IP address of any visitor who seems to be illegitimate. There are other monitoring services that monitor any content that finds its way into your website for SEO purposes but also serves the purpose of protecting your site. It notifies you if a plugin starts working against what it should work for. The monitoring software will also alert you when a hacker is adding some links to your site.
One of the monitoring software is the content which audits the SEO and tracks any content in the site. It is very reliable as it is always very keen all the time. It alerts its users in case of a sudden increase in website size. This prevents the website from suffering from the outcome of web hacking. It helps in maintaining the website ranking and helps in retaining customers.
Use Longer passwords
In the present world, passwords are cracked on a daily basis. This is because the numbers of hackers have increased and they have to do their attacking business through all the ways possible. It is very easy to crack any password. Obscuring passwords are of less help as they are also cracked. Complex passwords are also not offering any help when it comes to web protection. This is because most people save their passwords in their emails or personal accounts which the hackers can easily access. When logging in the web you just copy and paste the password which is riskier.
Creating a long password helps as it is not that complex but it is hard to predict. You should not use a password generator to get your password as they are very predictable. The hackers may also use the password generator to get some password that they can try to use in hacking a site. You should also salt your password by adding some characters and symbols on your password. When the hacker downloads the password file and tries to use them, he will always have the wrong passwords. He or she will see long passwords and have a hard time identifying the right one. You should not use the recommended method as any hacker can download and use it. Use other parameters if you can.
Every SEO should work at ensuring that the clients are receiving the best services. You should not leave them to be subjected to malware, spam links, and unreal botnets. Protecting your handwork should be one of your main objectives and you should always avoid being trapped in an attacker’s minefield when you are in a client’s server. When your computer is attacked by malware, everything that you do on the internet is exposed to almost half the hackers in the world which is very risky. The attacked website uses some money for cleaning up and do not last long in the search results.
The search engines have their own ways of protecting their consumers. This includes removing sites that may pose some risks to the customers by temporarily or permanently blocking them. Every business aims at retaining its customers as well as attracting some more which are the same with the search engines. When your website is invisible to your visitors or takes a longer time to load, it discourages them and they may question your reliability. Your ranking is also lowered which lowers the quality of your website. If the attacker uploads duplicated content on your website you also face some charges which result in using a lot of capital in clearing it. The more the technology is developing in the world the more hackers are increasing as it’s a new business opportunity that some people may want to exploit. This raises the need for increasing your site security. You should always monitor your site as prevention is the best option as it is less costly and it will make your clients build some trust in you.