We live in a world where millions of people rely on the Internet to perform plenty of daily tasks, from shopping to banking and document storage.
In this setting, safety on the web has long inevitably become a matter of the utmost importance. And this puts certain responsibility on businesses.
But does your website have the same level of guard as, let’s say, your physical store or office?
With so many online threats out there, protecting your site is pivotal not only for keeping your assets and users safe, but also for maintaining your reputation and even your rankings in search engines.
In this guide, we’ll explore the basics of website security, common threats, the impact it all can have on your business, and the ways to prevent this.
What Is Website Security?
Website security is an umbrella term. It stands for a number of practices and tools that create a unified defense mechanism on your site. The goal is to protect you from a diversity of threats.
Why Is Security a Ranking Factor?
Although web safety stands for the process of safeguarding your site, it is also directly linked to your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. How? Because it’s one of the direct and highly important ranking factors.
There is one big reason why SEO security matters so much–all search engines prioritize creating a safe and trustworthy experience for their users. To ensure this, Google, in particular, has implemented its Safe Browsing feature.
It performs real-time checks of sites and shows warnings to prevent people from accessing potentially dangerous domains or downloading harmful files.
Since safety directly impacts user experience, search engines have long learned to reward safeguarded sites with higher rankings.
Respectively, search engines penalize websites that violate their security standards. In particular, Google may show them lower in search engine result pages (SERPs) or even remove them from results completely.
The Link Between a User’s Trust and Security
The number of online threats and attacks is high. Thus, modern users are now more conscious of their safety.
In the eyes of users, a website’s security is a major trust signal. It shows them that you are committed to creating a safe and positive user experience for them.
Hence, sites with a good level of protection tend to have higher engagement and conversion rates. Furthermore, companies that operate them tend to have a stronger reputation.
Conversely, if you don’t provide decent protection, it can result in a loss of user trust. When they don’t feel like their privacy and data are protected, they will not likely come back to your website.
Common Threats to the Security of Website
Okay, it’s clear why website security is important for reputation and business image, but who would even want to break into your site?
Cyber attacks are incredibly common today. According to the data from a popular vulnerability scanner, an average of 30,000 sites are hacked every day around the world.
You may think that most of the attacks target governments, banks, or large corporations. But the truth is that as many as 43% of them target small businesses.
So, no industry or business size is completely immune. And being aware of common threats can keep you safe.
So, what are the most common issues to know about? Let’s look at them:
Malware and Hacking
Hackers can inject malicious code (malware) into your site, exploiting system vulnerabilities. This code might be used to disrupt your operations or steal data.
The harm can span both customer and corporate/employee information, as happened in the case of Intel, the attack on which led to the leak of the entire employee database.
For a business, this could mean downtime that leads to financial loss and reputational damage. Sometimes, hacker attacks can also result in legal responsibility.
Fake Pages and Phishing
Malicious actors can mimic certain pages from your site to get sensitive information from your clients. In particular, they may use login or payment pages to steal credentials or financial data.
As a result, such attacks may cause loss of trust and liability for your company.
Hijacking
Sometimes, cybercriminals may inject malicious code not into your entire site, but into an online form you use for collecting customer data. In this case, they may receive access to personal and even financial information.
This can potentially threaten you with credibility loss, financial losses, and even liability for compliance violations.
Insecure Themes and Plugins
Sometimes, you can welcome bad actors by installing poor or outdated plugins or themes onto your website. These can create a loophole for hackers to perform data breaches and site defacements.
The outcomes can include increased maintenance costs, loss of trust, and more.
How SEO Can Be Harmed By Security Issues
As you now see, the threats are real. And ignoring website security maintenance can cost you a lot. However, downtime, loss of trust, and even legal liability aren’t the only outcomes of attacks and breaches.
Apart from these, you can face a significant decline in your SEO, which means a loss of a lot of time and effort you’ve put into making your site rank well.
In terms of SEO, a lack of safety on your pages can result in:
- Decreased traffic.
- Poorer user engagement and higher bounce rate.
- Lower rankings in SERPs.
- Full removal from the results in the case of significant penalties.
Key Security Measures to Take
Yes, cyber attacks aren’t uncommon. They may target businesses of all sizes and across all sectors, creating financial and reputational loss. Luckily, this doesn’t mean that you can’t act for yourself.
Here are some tips on how to improve website security and maintain user trust in the long run:
Enable SSL Certificates and HTTPS
HTTPS is a more safeguarded version of the traditional HTTP protocol. It adds an extra layer of protection via an SSL or TLS certificate, which stands for data encryption.
Enabling HTTPS will help you protect valuable data with encryption. Users will see this in the address bar because of an extra letter “S” added to your address, which will make you look more trustworthy to them. Besides, Google favors sites with an HTTPS protocol, which is good for your rankings.
Conduct Regular Security Audits
A website security audit helps you detect vulnerabilities in the system early and prevent potential attacks. You can perform them with the help of specialized SEO platforms that evaluate safety as a part of their comprehensive technical audits.
All you need is to find the best SEO platform for you and make it a habit to perform a website security check every once in a while.
Keep Everything Updated
Different solutions you use on your website may add loopholes for malicious actors to harm you. However, when there are vulnerabilities, developers typically solve them and roll out an update. That’s why you must keep all your tech solutions updated.
This applies to anything your site uses to operate, such as plugins, themes, CMS, and other things. But be cautious of fake updates that may damage your site.
Enable Web Application Firewalls
A web application firewall (WAF) is a solution designed to track and block malicious traffic. By implementing WAF, you can predict potential attacks and prevent them before they cause any harm.
Access Management and Use Secure Password
Your admin access credentials can be a significant vulnerability. If bad actors access or guess them, they can gain full control over your site, which can lead to plenty of consequences.
This happened to a 158-year-old transport company that was recently destroyed by a ransomware attack caused by a weak password.
Thus, keeping your passwords unique, complex, and secure, as well as strict management of admin access, is a must.
Implement Recovery Plans and Backup
Even if you do a website security audit regularly and implement rigorous safety features, the sad truth is that you may still be targeted and attacked by cybercriminals.
No one is immune. But what you can do is implement regular system backups and develop a detailed recovery plan to be ready for possible threats. This will help you minimize downtime and losses.
Summary
Site safety is important in many ways. It has an impact on user experience, business reputation, and your rankings. Unfortunately, we are living in a world where anyone can become the next target. Luckily, there are quite a few things that you can do about it.
After reading this article, you have a list of time-tested SEO security tips that should help you add a layer of safety to your site, prevent potential damage, and recover faster in the case of an attack. Implement these tips now to maintain your customer trust and SEO in the long run!
