Search engines and other digital platforms are a reliable source of information for users whenever they are looking for any businesses or different products and services. As a result, brands are focusing on making a strong online presence through different digital marketing services. Among all these techniques, a website plays a vital role in developing brand recognition and promoting your products and services. At the same time, it is crucial to make your website secured. A web development agency in Charleston can also help you in terms of the security of your website. In this article, we will share with you some useful tips to improve your website security.
Irrespective of small businesses or bigger enterprises, users prefer a safe online experience whenever they visit a website. Some websites may require user’s personal information for subscribing to newsletters. In other cases, especially for an eCommerce website, it involves the process of collecting sensitive information such as credit card details, etc. To protect your website and the users’ details from possible cyber attacks, you must take the matters of website security seriously.
SEO Risks Associated With Website Security
Lack of website security can not only put your website at the risk of different types of cybercrimes but also harm your search rankings. Search engines such as Google stated they would prioritize secured websites while ranking them. Websites that are not secured may come with a warning sign ‘Not Secure’ whenever there is a visitor. Let us discuss some of the negative effects your website may experience as a result of ignoring website security. Any SEO company in South Carolina will also advise you to improve website security to protect your site from possible cyber attacks.
Getting Blacklisted
Ignoring your website’s security can cause search engines to blacklist your website if it contains any malicious links. As a result, your website will not appear on SERPs, wasting all your SEO efforts. Search engines such as Google may charge heavy penalties on your website as well. Search engines usually do not use the term ‘blacklist’ directly; instead, they warn the audience from visiting your website. If your website gets hacked and blacklisted, you need to clean it up before presenting them to your audience again. It will affect your brand reputation, and restoring the same can be time-consuming.
Lose the Trust of the Audience
Having your websites secured means you are providing a safe web experience to your users. It means that even if they share any sensitive information with your site, it is safe and protected. In our previous point, we mentioned that Google will provide a warning to your audience if your website is not secured. It will lead to a higher bounce rate as your audience will leave your site immediately on viewing such a display. As a result, it will decrease your chances of meeting potential customers and improve business conversion. To gain the trust of your audiences you need to make your website secure. You can consult any digital marketing agency in South Carolina to understand the negative effects of not securing your website.
Crawling Errors
Search engine bots crawl website for data theft, vulnerability scanning, etc. Persistent automated software attacks might prevent Google bots from crawling the website because malicious bots share the same bandwidth and server resources.
SEO Spam
Once hackers gain access to your website, they might place spam keywords and hyperlinks to your highest performing pages. To sabotage your brand reputations or use your authority to promote their products, hackers might resort to such steps. Hence, to prevent your website from becoming a victim of cybercrime, improve website security at the earliest.
Tips for Improving Website Security
To protect your website from the above-mentioned possible risks, it is high time that you take the matter of website security seriously. You can take the help of a digital marketing agency in South Carolina that offers website security services in this regard. The following are some of the useful tips that would help to improve your website security.
Keeping Software and Plug-in Updated
It is vital to keep all the installed scripts and platforms updated to maintain website security. Hackers can detect the flaws in web software and use the same to gain entry on your website. However, keeping software programs updated reduces the risk of cybercrime.
Use a Strong Password
Hackers often use improved software to crack passwords. Therefore, to protect your website set up complex passwords of at least ten characters. It should contain letters (uppercase or lowercase), special characters, numeric, etc. Also, try to change your passwords regularly for better protection.
Install SSL Certificates on Your Website
Installing a Secure Sockets Layer or SSL certificate in your server ensures a secure connection between your browser and the server. It allows transmission of login data and other sensitive information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. securely. Information that is entered on a page is encrypted. It implies that any third-party who might try to intercept it, couldn’t decode the same. It protects your data from hackers. A web development agency in Charleston can also help in installing an SSL certificate on your website.
Use a Secure Host
Selecting a secured and trusted web hosting company is critical for your website security. They will not only help in keeping your website protected against a possible cyber threat but also keep a back up of your data to a remote server. As a result, even if your site is hacked, it would be easier to restore them with back up data. Also, while choosing a hosting company, ensure that they provide ongoing technical support whenever you need them.
Keep your Website Clean
Different applications, database, or plug-ins in your website is a possible entry for hackers. Therefore, you should delete any file, database, or applications on your website that are no longer used. Also, organize your file structure to monitor the changes, so that you can delete old files whenever required.
Back-up your Data
We have mentioned earlier that keeping a backup of your site data will help in restoring your website easily if it gets hacked. You may choose a hosting company that can carry it out on your behalf, or you can take care of it on your own. Some content management system comes with plug-ins or extensions that can help in keeping a backup of your site automatically. Otherwise, you can even back up databases and content manually.
Scanning Website for Vulnerabilities
We recommend you to regularly scan your website and server for vulnerabilities. Maintain a schedule of website security scans or whenever you made some changes or addition to different components on your website. You can even use free tools available in the market to measure the security of your website. However, they might not detect every possible security flaws in your site. Take the help of digital marketing agency Charleston, SC, that performs website security services in this regard.
Simple Brands Media offers digital marketing services in Charleston, SC. We understand how crucial website security can be in terms of protecting your site as well as your users. For this reason, we offer website security services for your business. We can perform regular scanning to detect the vulnerabilities, website security audits, track any form of malicious activities, and fix them accordingly. For any concerns in terms of website security, feel free to contact us.