We live in the age of data breach scandals, constant cybersecurity discussions, and GDPR-like countermeasures. Many fail to think about the security of their websites believing they are too low key to be hacked. Well, in today’s 411 Locals blog, we will debunk the false belief only traffic-rich sites are in danger, and we will also go through the three ways your SEO can suffer from a security breach. Keep reading!
HTTPS Is Not Enough
Yes, HTTPS certification is a ranking factor, but it is far from enough to keep your site safe. In fact, research shows that, on average, your website will experience around 58 attacks per day. Over 60% of internet traffic is automated which means these attacks don’t discriminate based on the popularity or size of your website. In other words, no website is too insignificant or small to be attacked.
Now, let’s look at the 3 ways:
1. Blacklisting
Financial loss is not the only concern you will have when your website is targeted for an attack. A compromised website can significantly distort SERPs, and manual penalties from Google can follow. What is more, according to GoDaddy’s recent report, over 90% of infected websites don’t get flagged at all. This means you can be continually targeted for attacks.
Even if you don’t get blacklisted, your ranking can still suffer from an attack because of the added spam or malware in the process.
2. Crawling Errors
Whether you like it or not, bots represent a significant portion of the traffic your website receives. And at least 19% of those bots will crawl your website for nefarious purposes, such as data theft, vulnerability detection, and content scraping. Even if they fail, their constant attempts coming from automated software can prevent Google bots from properly crawling your site.
If you notice odd 503 or 404 errors in the Search Console for pages that aren’t indeed missing, it is possible Google bots tried crawling them, but your server reported them as missing.
3. SEO Spam
The majority of sites today are still hacked for SEO spam purposes. It could either be the result of deliberate sabotage or an automated attempt to deface or scrape your website. The idea behind such attacks is to load your site with spam that will discourage legitimate visits. Naturally, such type of attack can be devastating as your site visitors will also suffer from phishing links or malware, or both. Your reputation will suffer, and it is something from which you might not be able to recover.
So, if site security is not something you know how to tackle, why not let our SEO company take care of it? With us, your SEO performance will be at an all-time high, and you will have zero worries about cybersecurity and representing your business online.
Stay tuned for our next topic!