Website Security For SEO: Red Flags and Practices

An important element of a successful website functioning is website security. Not only does it shield your site from hackers but also affects your SEO standing. It is crucial to look at why website security is important to SEO and how to ensure you apply the best security measures to improve the rankings and gain the trust of the users.

What is Website Security?

Website security can be defined as the services used in the protection of websites from various threats. Statista stated that about 3 out of 4 American companies were vulnerable to a material cyber threat, evidence that cyber threats are real. In the protection of data, continuity of service, and users’ confidence, a secure website provides the best user experience and high search engine optimization.

Website security directly affects the position on search engines. Ones including Google will rank safe sites, those that don’t have outdated software, HTTPS, and data exposures. These common mishaps will cause the site to suffer the consequences, including the site being banned or blacklisted.

Regarding proper SEO, review and optimize the site’s security measures on a periodic basis — update software, enforce strict password policies, supervise the site, and prepare for incidents.

The Positive Impact of Website Security on SEO

Google, having officially announced that HTTPS is a ranking signal, prefers SSL-encrypted websites over ones lacking them and gives them a higher ranking. HTTPS SEO impact is huge; search engines rank sites with SSL certificates higher because they offer a safer connection, which increases users’ trust. The secure versions of websites also have smaller bounce rates and longer time spent on the site, which is good for SEO.

Also, website security can greatly influence the perception of the user. It has been indicated that 39% of users will stop engaging with a website if images take too long to load or won't load at all. Using HTTPS and making sure that the website is fast can improve site speed and UX, thus reducing bounce rates.

Another important practice is to look for HTTPS links and ensure websites are safe. Since the use of SEO tools such as SE Ranking is possible, one can be sure your site is as secure as it can be and fully optimized. Their Website Audit Tool can detect the level of security risks and vulnerabilities your website has, suggest ways to fix them, and show you how your website is doing. Another tool you can use is Screaming Frog, which discovers insecure pages and forms, missing security headers, etc.

Although site security focuses on data protection, it also ensures the website runs without a hitch. Such incidents can adversely affect the site’s availability and may yield a major financial loss. This is why it becomes important to have a reliable shield when using the World Wide Web.

Website Security Red Flags in SEO

If your website has poor security, you are at risk of getting your site hacked and getting into phishing scams, spam, and DDoS attacks, which are dangerous for SEO. Preventing these threats is crucial to keeping your site secure. Common issues include:

Malware Injections

Sucuri found that out of 43,374 websites they cleaned from security issues, malware was the top cause of the problems. Regarding SEO, malware can result in search engines penalizing your site and demoting it from their search results. Blacklisting will negatively affect your site and its traffic greatly.

Phishing Attacks

Low-security websites are exposed to phishing page creation, which causes blacklisting and loss of users’ confidence. Zscaler ThreatLabz found the rates of phishing attacks rose by 47% in 2023. If search engines discover your site is involved in phishing scams, they will blacklist it, resulting in a drastic reduction in traffic.

SEO Spam

Poor security can cause such issues as unauthorized links, hidden text, and other tricks. Practices like this can get search engines to penalize the site and hurt your rankings. Google revealed that, in 2021, they took action against 200,000 sites for using manipulative SEO, like hiding text and link schemes. Such consequences can affect the ranking and traffic in search engines.

DDoS Attacks

These attacks lead to a lot of downtime that may hinder access to your site, hence a poor rank in the search engines. StormWall found a 63% escalation of DDoS attacks in 2023. Consequently, a long period of downtime is to the disadvantage of a site because search engines rank available sites higher.

Key Website Security Practices for SEO

Threats are huge, and the need to combat them is undeniable. To ensure that the website is secured with strong measures, take the following checklist of best practices:

HTTPS and SSL Certificates

Being a ranking signal, HTTPS and SSL certificates ensure data encryption and secure connections. Users are more likely to trust and engage with secure sites as well. Studies say more than half of them usually leave a website if they encounter a non-secure website warning. That’s why SSL in SEO plays more than a formal role.

Enable HTTP/3 and Upgrade to TLS 1.3

These protocols offer faster and more secure connections. HTTP/3 enhances the speed and cuts the time it takes to load web pages, while TLS 1.3 offers more security features. Limiting the usage of HTTP connections that are not encrypted is beneficial for users’ information and website performance.

Protection Against Downtime

Keep your site live so the search engine can crawl and rank your site. It is necessary to keep an eye on the main SEO metrics to notice any changes and, therefore, ensure the user’s satisfaction – by comparing keyword ranking, the traffic that is being generated organically, and the performance of the entire website.

When altering the website, especially when redesigning, ensure the URL does not change. Alterations in SEO concerning the URL structure are not favorable because other websites have linked to your previous URLs.

Regular Updates and Patches

Update your website's software and plugins periodically to reduce susceptibilities. Sucuri found that 36% of all low-security websites had at least one vulnerable plugin or theme at the point of remediation. By updating your software, you minimize the chances of a breach while tightening your site’s security.

Secure Hosting

The concept of secure web hosting services means the website is always up and running for the public. Reliable web hosting can easily handle the increase in traffic and enhance the web server’s capacity. A good host will have several measures of protection to keep the files from being accessed by unauthorized persons and to protect them and some of them include Secure File Transfer Protocol Encryption.

Secure web hosts incorporate other software measures on protected websites safe from hackers, malware, and other related security threats. Choosing a hosting provider that has measures in place for protection, such as backups and distributed denial of service protection, is crucial.

Firewalls and Security Plugins

Use firewalls and security plugins to block malicious traffic and web security threats that harm the system. A firewall can prevent unusual access, while security plugins may include features like website scanning malware and intrusion prevention.

Use a comprehensive website security platform that includes a firewall, malware scanning, and DDoS protection for that purpose. Cloudflare’s case study showed that adopting measures such as CDN and DDoS protection boosted site speed by 60% and slashed downtime.

Backup and Recovery

Back up your site often and have a restoration plan in case of a security breach. Research by ESET showed that 21% of companies failed to have a backup and retrieval plan for their data. Don’t follow the trend — when you implement regular backups, you can easily restore your site and reduce the time that the site will be down.

CDNs can also be used to improve the website’s performance and fortify it against possible DDoS attacks.

Hackers use weak passwords to gain unauthorized access and attack more than 80% of business entities. They focus on the aspect of password protection in a bid to prevent access to the company’s networks by unauthorized persons.

Image by freepik