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CyberSecurity in SEO: How Website Security Affects SEO Performances

Updated on: March 7, 2024

CyberSecurity in SEO: How Website Security Affects SEO Performances

Article Summary

Everyone knows the saying- “Who owns the information, owns the world”. Progress has made companies depend on information systems. Consequently, it made them vulnerable to hacker attacks, computer viruses, human and government errors. Many business owners no longer feet safe. In this article, we will talk about the importance of cybersecurity in SEO and how a good security structure affects your website’s online performance.

Everyone knows the saying- “Who owns the information, owns the world”. Progress has made companies depend on information systems. Consequently, it made them vulnerable to hacker attacks, computer viruses, human and government errors. Many business owners no longer feet safe. In this article, we will talk about the importance of cybersecurity in SEO and how a good security structure affects your website’s online performance.

Generally SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) work as two wings of a bird – they perform different tasks but work in tandem for a better result. SMO (Social Media Optimization) is a promotion, optimization of a site for social media.

SMM is the promotion of a resource on search engines. SEO helps in creating a site that appeals to real users. Combining SMM and SMO in order to increase site traffic, the optimizer affects the change in behavioral factors and the quality of the target audience of the resource.

What is information security and why its security systems are so important?

Security is understood as the safety of information and the entire company from deliberate or accidental actions, resulting in damage to its owners or users. Information defenses should be aimed primarily at preventing risks, and not at eliminating their consequences. The correct approach to data safety is made of precautionary measures, not post-mortem improvements.

Balancing risk and SEO is essential for the success of any business. There are many risks to SEO. Some worthy of attention because they can give favorable business results. Google always is on the side of honest users and hosts if they are trying to maintain a good website.

While an effective SEO strategy takes many months to give positive results, security tactics may significantly improve the effectiveness of online advertising and increase company profits.

What are the benefits of network security?

The spread of digital technology has changed our world, our lifestyle, work, entertainment, and learning. Every company that seeks to provide clients and employees with the services they need is obliged to ensure the protection of its network infrastructure. Chalk W., in an article about SEO Security, mentioned that Web Application Firewall (WAF) might help a lot when filtering, monitoring, and blocking traffic. Minimizing data exfiltration protects the reputation of your company.

Benefits of network and content security

  • Access control
  • Antivirus and anti-malware software
  • Application security
  • Behavior analysis
  • Data loss prevention
  • Email Security
  • Firewalls
  • Intrusion Prevention Systems
  • Mobile Security.

What are the security criteria for SEO websites?

If you ask a potential customer about the criteria for choosing a site management system, they will probably name security. In most cases, this criterion will not be in the first, however. This is understandable: they are not able to rewrite the CMS used by online platforms. It remains to rely on the infrastructure of the CMS of your service.

Today, most of the vulnerabilities are in the hosting sites’ software, which is basically the result of an untimely update of the OS, web server and database server. The biggest headache is poorly tuned shared-hosting. The only thing that can be said here is: listen to the recommendations of the CMS developers on the choice of hosting.

Let’s start with a simple case. Suppose that a potential customer has focused not the functionality, convenience or system requirements, but the security of the site. At the same time, he decided to assess for himself the level of security provided by each of the CMS. The first thing he can do is browse through the official websites of content management systems.

Blacklists

Source: https://www.ispsystem.com/news/blacklist

The results of checking the site with security problems in the service VirusTotal

Reputation domains are tracked by search engines, browsers, and antiviruses to warn their users when accessing a suspicious site. They gather information from blacklists — databases of dangerous domains and IP addresses. The logic is this: if the site is in the blacklist, then it contains a threat. These resources have spread viruses or malicious code, place phishing pages, redirect visitors to dangerous pages, etc.

Spam activity on sites

For unscrupulous SEO optimizers (the so-called “black” optimizers), the availability of a commenting form or a guest book on any website is a great chance to publish a spam link to their resource and thereby attract the attention of search engines. In 2019, Chalk reported that about 19% of bots that crawl websites are used for serious purposes like content validation, vulnerability identification, or data theft. Often, such links are of inferior quality: they do not correspond to the subject of the site, and can also lead to pages with low-quality content. It harms the reputation of the website.

Number of bots’ clients

Source: https://www.ispsystem.com/news/blacklist

The above chart shows a drop in traffic after hitting a domain under the sanctions of the search engine. Large sites with thousands of pages and online stores with a wide range of products often face the problem of a sudden high server load.

The reason, is seldom DDoS attacks, viruses or hackers. But ordinary robots of little-known search engines or various services cause an increase in processing power and exceed the limit allowed on by the host. If your site consists of 100-500 pages or less, even the average hosting will cope with such a sudden load without any problems.

How you can implement cybersecurity in SEO?

Optimization and promotion of sites in search engines is a struggle. Djukanovich N. mentioned that if one should choose secure hosting and mind the safety of the IP. The higher the position of the site in the search, the more intense the traffic and, accordingly, the greater the income. For successful promotion, traditional methods are no longer sufficient. It is necessary to cover all aspects of internet marketing.

The modern SEO specialist should know the legislation on information security, the principles of operation of networks and means of cryptographic protection, modern software, and hardware information protection tools, as well as information security technology. Also, there is always a need for proofreading the website, and liquidating the rookie mistakes, hence an SEO specialist may rely on quick writing services.

Search engine optimization and security optimization solve the problem, which is to bring the site to the top on specific requests and to attract targeted traffic. Among the more detailed objectives and goals of promotion are:

  • Increase sales;
  • Informing customers;
  • Promotion of a new product;
  • Image enhancement;
  • Profit growth.

If a specialist focuses on getting a quick effect and does not care about the future of the site, then the return on his work will be minimal. If you plan to develop your company on the Internet, you need to choose the qualified promotion.

How Astra Security Suite can help you?

Astra Website Security is one efficient and comprehensive security solution for a website. It offers complete and comprehensive real-time security for websites with its Web Application Firewall. Astra WAF (Web Application Firewall) is tailored to stop XSS, SQLi, Bad bots and 100+ other coming attacks.

Astra’s Malware Scanner is a highly coveted one in the market. It completes the first scan on a website in 10-15 minutes and takes less than 3 minutes for the subsequent scans. Get an Astra demo now or drop us a message here, and we will be really happy to help you out.

Jilian Woods

Jilian Woods is a freelance journalist and a contributing writer with more than 4 years of writing experience. Being an essay writer at Grademiners, she sees her purpose in producing and sharing relevant content with people who are willing to expand their knowledge base and learn something new.
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