In 2021, cybercrime is one of the crucial issues both on the global and local levels. Most aspects of our lives are at risk – from personal data and savings to national elections. Moreover, if you host a website and do not invest enough in cybersecurity, you can also be at cybercriminals’ and hackers’ gunpoint.
We are here to warn about risks you face and help you protect yourself and the security search engine performance of your website in 2021. Read on to learn about how cybercrime can affect your SEO and what you can do to not get caught in cyber traps.
Why You Should Care About SEO Security
The importance of SEO for Google rankings is a common topic among promotion specialists. They can tell you plenty of tips and tricks for successful, fast, and effective search engine optimization. Unfortunately, you can hardly find a line about the connection between SEO and cybersecurity.
The most common detrimental effects of cybercrimes on SEO imply the following issues:
- Massive errors on your website.
- Virus codes that can infect your visitors.
- Endangered personal data and credit cards of your customers.
- The questionable reputation of your website leads to Google penalties. And it comes as no surprise, as security search engines care about positive user experience the most.
- Malicious bots prevent search engines from crawling your website. As a result, your page does not even have a chance for a higher rank.
As a result of these factors, your Google rankings plummet, and all your SEO effort fade into oblivion. However, some tips can minimize the chance of hacker attacks destroying your website.
How to Protect Your SEO Performance
1. Know Early Warning Signs
Among other SEO cybersecurity tips, this one always gets listed first. Like in the case of any disease, you need to learn early symptoms of this to react in time and avoid further negative consequences for your website.
If you care about SEO security, do not ignore Google alert notifications, pop-ups, and error messages, as they may be a signal of a dangerous failure on your web page. Another warning sign is a failing login process. If you are 100% sure you entered the right data but still cannot log in, you may face the results of a cyberattack, where hackers have changed your credentials.
Lastly, check the code of your website. Weird JavaScript codes may be traces of cybercriminals’ activity, and you may want to get rid of them as soon as possible. Otherwise, it can become too late to save your visitors’ data or the functions of your website.
2. Scan Your Website for Vulnerabilities
Even if you do not notice any errors or other signs of a cyberattack, check your website regularly. In 2021, SEO security requires such an audit as an integral part of any SEO campaign.
The best way to keep an eye on website security is to hire an IT or cybersecurity specialist. However, you can always try to control it yourself by using tools and utilities for vulnerability scanning.
3. Quality Provides Safety
You can find tons of information about SEO methods and tips. That makes people more confident about optimizing their websites and content without a specialist. Obviously, no one wants to pay for services if you have all the information freely available.
However, this sword has two edges. By managing SEO on your own, you are taking risk of missing important details that can lead to security failures. The initial quality of your content and such tools as backlinks provide basic safety for your website. In this case, by paying prices for backlinks you can avoid possible security troubles and financial losses in the future.
4. Harden the Security of Your Site
When we are talking about quality SEO, we do not only mean backlinks’ impact on the site security, although you should not underestimate it. What also matters, however, is how you protect the website in any other way behind SEO.
VPN encrypts important data and protects your service from malicious software. Another way to make Google trust your website is to get an SSL certificate. It provides security to the users of your site, their personal data, credit cards, etc., and allows Google to rank you higher.
Wrapping Up
Compromised websites can lose their rankings, reputation, customer base, and profit in no time. It is crucial not to skimp on security measures and do everything to protect your website and your customers’ data from malicious bots, hacker attacks, and cybercriminals’ activity. Investing in cybersecurity means enjoying all the benefits of running and optimizing a website with less failure rist.
