How Website Security Affects Your SEO?
You’ve had an impressive SEO ranking so far, but suddenly you’ve noticed a drop in SERP ranking. Well, there are several reasons for this, with the primary one that we’ll discuss here being website security directly affecting SEO. Among the most important ranking signals that Google introduced back in 2014 was HTTPS encryption.
But this is not all that is related to your website and the SEO ranking. With the average number of attacks on a website averaging 58 attacks daily, this is a severe threat to your website and SEO. Here we’ll talk about how hacks affect a website and what you can do to prevent such problems.
What Is SEO and How It Links to Website Security?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the essential factor for website ranking in the search engine result pages. SEO entails optimizing the entire content on the website, so the search engine will know what the website is about and, based on the searched keywords, know when to display it. All websites “fight” to rank among the top five (or top three) positions in the SERPs, as these websites are getting 90% of the organic traffic. In other words, the top search results
Now we come to how website security can affect your website’s SEO, and ultimately the ranking in the SERPs. The higher a website ranks on the results page, the more prone to attack it is. Hackers and hacking bots find the top-rated websites appealing to attack because once a website is infected with malware, it is easy to spread the infection to more and more people.
The main things that happen once a website is hacked are:
- Organic traffic gets redirected to third-party servers
- Internal server errors get displayed
- The 404 error – content not found
- Malicious code can spread to all visitors of the site
- Phishing attacks to steal usernames, passwords, and identities
All of these issues can cause downtime, lower your organic traffic, and even earn you a penalty from Google, so you should do everything in your power to prevent this and protect your website.
How Website Security Affects SEO?
The main thing that “protects” a website is HTTPS encryption. HTTPS stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure and combines the HTTP protocol with the SSL (Secure Socket Layer)/TLS (Transport Layer Security) security certificates. What HTTPS does is secure and encrypt the connection between your browser and the website, establishing a secure connection, and anything you send over is encrypted and protected.
In 2014, Google put the HTTPS protocol as one of the website ranking factors, which is now considered an essential part of cybersecurity. Any website without an HTTPS protocol will immediately be listed as “not secure” and will rank lower on the SERPs. The “not secure” notification next to the website’s URL is also a turn-off for visitors, as close to 90% of people leave a site that is not secure. It results in a drop in visits. The SSL certificate (HTTPS) on your website is beneficial for all websites; it does not matter if they have a login or a checkout page or require sharing sensitive personal information.
Still, having the HTTPS protocol does not mean that your website is immune. While the HTTPS protocol is essential for the legitimacy of a website and gaining the trust of your visitors, it will not protect your website against hacking attempts. Here are the main things that could happen to a website attacked by hackers.
Google Blacklisting Your Website
Each website is crawled (scanned by the Google bot), checking for malware, unwanted software, malicious code, phishing attempts, and any other suspicious behaviors. If Google finds a suspicious code on a website, it will blacklist it from appearing on the SERPs, and the website will lose all the organic traffic from Google. As a rule of thumb, Google blacklists about 10K websites per day, which is a colossal number showing the importance of having proper website security.
If Google blacklists a website, it can remove it from the SERPS until the issues are resolved, and the site is removed from the blacklist. Or the browser will show a warning message that prompts visitors not to visit the website.
As a site owner, you may not be aware that there is a problem with your website, but the one good thing about this is that Google will tell you what the problem is, and after you resolve it, you can ask for a review and have your site removed from the dreaded blacklist.
Website Downtime
All businesses aim for their website to run as fast and as smoothly as possible, as people don’t like to wait for a website to load and will most likely leave the site. But the slow loading speeds can also be a result of a cyber-attack resulting in website downtime. If a website is down for a prolonged period, Google recognizes it as a security breach, lowering the rank of the website in the SERPs.
Google does not instantly lower the rank, but the Google search bot will index your website multiple times to confirm the reason the website is down. It is how it recognizes if a site is down for technical or security reasons.
Content Theft
Content theft is a real threat to any website. In such cases, after the website is hacked, the hackers use tactics to modify the content, add outbound links, or add code to show different content to the search engine. It damages the site’s reputation, and the search engines (Google) recognized this and lowers the website’s rank in the search engine result pages.
Website Reviews
As we’ve mentioned in a previous post, online reviews have a significant role in ranking a website. Google prefers to boost websites with positive reviews and to downgrade sites with negative reviews. A hack attack can deter search engine bots from accessing the businesses’ websites, thus lowering the rank and causing the visits to plummet.
SEO Spam
SEO spam is a trick used by hackers to use your website to rank content that does not rank on Google. Via this black-hat SEO technique, the hackers can generate some revenue but spam your website and destroy your reputation. Once the hackers access a website, they can load it with spam links or turn it into a link farm and bait visitors with phishing or malware. If the Google bot recognizes the SEO spam attempt, it will blacklist the website until the issue is resolved. In the meantime, the website’s rank will be destroyed, and it will take a lot of work and time for the website to gain back its rank.
How to Improve Website Security to Avoid SEO Problems
It is better to prevent than to fix website security issues. There are several essential things you can do and increase the cybersecurity of your website:
Regularly Scan For Vulnerabilities
To protect your website, you should schedule a regular scan of your website for flaws that hackers can use. It involves scanning and identifying vulnerabilities and keeping track of all software, hardware, or firmware that could be used against you.
Regularly Update Themes and Software
The updates of the CMS (such as WordPress) usually mean that identified security problems were resolved. But many times, the users forget to regularly update the software, leaving their website exposed to security risks. Hackers take advantage of this and can very easily gain access to a website running on old software. To fix this, read the software update outlines, and be mindful of the updates containing a security upgrade.
If your website runs on WordPress and uses plugins, you should regularly update any third-party software and plugins you use. As a rule of thumb, avoid free plugins and themes, as these usually don’t get proper developer support. Hackers often add malicious code to the free versions of popular themes and plugins, and you can end up infecting your website by yourself.
Strengthen Website Security
To improve your website’s security and SEO, the first thing you need to do is install an SSL certificate if you don’t have one yet. The SSL certificate protects your website visitors, encrypting the data sent via your website. The other website security measure you need to take is to put a strong password in place with at least 14 characters, including upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special symbols. Of course, you need to change your passwords regularly and have a firewall in place. Make sure you have automated backups of your site in case something goes wrong.
Conclusion
SEO and website security are both sides of the same coin, even though we may not see it initially. Any company looking to build a credible online presence and build an impressive online reputation should not shy away from investing time and funds into proper website security measures that will positively affect the website’s ranking. As it is better to prevent it than curing it, your online SEO strategy should involve a proactive role in your website’s security.
