The Importance of Cybersecurity to SEO

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SEO Is More Than Keyword Searches

SEO is a system of different manipulations that make your website perform better for search engines. The task of SEO is to bring as much organic traffic as possible to get the website to the top and stay there as long as possible. This includes copywriting, link building, and general optimization of the site. The scope of SEO includes the following elements:

• Auditing

This refers to both auditing of the existing website and the website made from scratch, as well as auditing and analyzing the competitors in the field, identifying and using examples of their success to the website, to be optimized and promoted in SERP.

• Bug fixing

Typically the errors found during the audit, have a direct impact on the low reputation or ranking of the website, and the task of an SEO expert is to fix them.

• Ensuring the right structure of the website

A clear and logical structure, that will affect the user’s behavior, is also the responsibility of the SEO master, in addition to the work of a designer. Tools like Netpeak Spider can be used to remove incorrect elements so that search engines can thoroughly scan the site.

• Getting proper content

Quality content, optimized for user queries, with high download speeds has become a necessity for promotion.

• Marketing

Creating the right marketing strategy requires close cooperation with SEO.

• Link building

Website optimization is based on constant external link building. However, it should be done competently, because there is a risk to build up “trash” links, to get under the threat of filters and anchor spam.

A good SEO specialist not only knows how to write articles for the blog but should have at least a basic knowledge of HTML, JS, PHP to troubleshoot and cope with cyber attacks.

One would think, what threats may SEO be exposed to? At first glance, the promotion of websites has absolutely nothing to do with the security of the website. However, there are many correlations between certain areas of SEO and security breaches.

In fact, there are many Internet threats to SEO, and they have many consequences, both for the website owners and for customers and users.

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HTTPS As The First Step Of Cybersecurity Enhancements And A Focus For SEOs

Today, too much vital information about a person is contained on data carriers. Bank account numbers, ID cards, passwords, and personal data – all of this can often be accessed online. That’s why it’s so important for every user to make sure that every location visited online is safe to engage in.

We often tend to click on the first ten links in Google search, because if they are there, it means that they are relevant and safe. Top positions are the merit of the joint work of SEO professionals and search engine algorithms.

The introduction of electronic payments and rapidly developing retail to web development have forced users to enter their data or credit card details to perform certain operations on the website. Therefore, since 2017, one of the largest search engines in the world, Google has introduced a secure HTTPS protocol. Now, just having these characters in the bootstrap of a website indicates that it is secure. This protocol is the first step in protecting user data. Of course, the need to comply with the requirements of HTTPS protocol has made the work of SEO promotion much more difficult.

Nevertheless, the encryption of user data gives a head start in promoting via Google search because it is counted as a full-fledged ranking factor.

Why Outdated Software Can Hurt Security, And What’s SEO Got To Do With It

Outdated software is becoming a weak link in the cybersecurity chain. As you know, it’s torn where it’s thin. Outdated software can result in:

Hacker attacks

Hacker attacks seem like the most malicious threats to any website. Criminals can deliberately redirect your traffic to third-party sites, generate 404 and 50X errors, infect visitors’ systems, trigger information leaks, and much more.

In the context of the consequences that a website may face as a result of a hacker attack, we can consider both the leakage of user data and the drawdown in search engine rankings. SEO specialists will have to spend a lot of time restoring the positions and reputation of compromised sites.

A study by Wordfence reveals that Google actually flags less than half of all hacked sites, indicating that it is not worth relying on the service. Therefore, SEOs need to act as quickly as possible to get out of the situation with the least amount of loss. Google flagging leads to the fact that natural traffic drops significantly, so it is necessary to fix bugs before the search engine sees a hack and makes the mark.

Penalties and blacklisting

Penalties and blacklisting can be considered a consequence of a hacker attack. If a site has been hacked, the search engine will see it sooner or later. To avoid severe damage, from which the website may not recover even over time, it is necessary to take explicit SEO actions. First of all, the site should be completely cleaned of malware and bugs, and then being added to Serch Console. This is the only way to see what state each URL is in. The good news is that urgent measures allow the site to recover within 24 hours of being hacked with minor negative impacts.

Negative feedbacks

What possible connection can have reviews, cybersecurity, and SEO? You’d be surprised, but there is a connection, though not exactly a straight one.

A hacked website faces a lot of trouble, and if the company’s SEOs don’t respond immediately, the information gradually reaches users thanks to Google’s built-in security software. At best, they will simply stop visiting the resource, but if customers and in particular their finances suffer due to hackers, they will not keep silent.

A lot of negative responses about the compromised website may appear on the web, and they cannot be simply deleted. Testimonials are also known to be a significant part of a website’s ranking.

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Top Warning Signals For SEO To Recognize A Website Hack

Unnatural website traffic

The first thing that will catch the eye is unnatural traffic, its huge increase or decrease, which is not caused by anything. This occurs by bots, browsing your website in search of vulnerabilities.

Regarding the sharp drop in traffic, this is often a consequence of redirecting the flow to other sites. Roughly speaking, black SEOs steal visits from you and increase it on their sites.

Alien scripts

If a SEO specialist suspects something, he should check the code of the site. The presence of alien scripts, errors in the language requires immediate removal. It is through the Java language that hackers get information about credit cards and user passwords.

Login malfunctions

Any malfunctions when trying to log in or enter a password should raise doubts about the possibility of a hack.

Spamming on your behalf

Attackers can hijack traffic from well-ranked resources to promote their low-quality content. Of course, the negative reaction of users and search engines will not keep you waiting. The owner’s business reputation suffers, traffic drops, and the website might be blacklisted.

How SEO Can Protect A Website From Cyberattack

Absolutely any website, even one as powerful as Forbes, can suffer from a cybercrime attack. However, there are certain measures that SEO managers can periodically undertake to protect their work from being hacked.

1. As we have already mentioned, outdated software can become a weakness, so you should always keep track of software updates and plugins. This process should be elevated to a routine to leave no room for villains to exploit. Plus, it will cost a lot less than recovering losses.
2. No matter how annoying captcha may be in some places, especially when you have to enter it dozens of times a day, it still retains its ability to really protect the resource from Internet bots, so do not ignore its necessity, especially on websites where personal information is often entered.
3. One of the duties of a SEO wizard is to build a linking system to get citations and therefore a high trust rating for the site. A white SEO specialist will always study the sites where he places links, use analysis and tracking tools to identify malicious redirects in time.
4. To avoid spam, it is necessary to use filtering software.

Conclusions

Everyone with a PC or a smartphone performs hundreds of interactions with various resources and platforms online throughout the day. These interactions often require data entry, so users are always concerned about how trustworthy each resource is.

Hacking is dangerous for site owners and visitors as well.

As we can see, there is an indirect connection between security and SEO, this connection is strong. Specialists in these two fields must work side by side to protect the resource from criminals.