How to Secure Your Website from Hacking & Manual Actions
Security threats and search engine penalties are critical issues that can hurt your rankings and your bottom line. You need to avoid them from the outset.
To achieve great SEO results, you need to learn the basic steps you can take to ensure that your website is well-protected and properly optimized.
I had the pleasure of moderating a Best of SEJ Summit webinar on June 27, presented by Eric Kuan, Webmaster Relations Specialist at Google.
Kuan talked about website security and manual actions, and how webmasters and SEO professionals can avoid getting hacked and penalized.
Here is a recap of the webinar.
To achieve great SEO results, you need to learn the basic steps you can take to ensure that your website is well-protected and properly optimized.
I had the pleasure of moderating a Best of SEJ Summit webinar on June 27, presented by Eric Kuan, Webmaster Relations Specialist at Google.
Kuan talked about website security and manual actions, and how webmasters and SEO professionals can avoid getting hacked and penalized.
Here is a recap of the webinar.
How to Keep Your Website Secure
According to Google, the number of hacked sites increased by approximately 32 percent in 2016 compared to 2015.Thankfully, in 2017, the search engine was able to reduce webspam with over 80 percent of hacked sites removed from search results.
While Google is making significant progress in combating website hacking, you shouldn’t be complacent. Aggressive hackers prey on vulnerable websites, and if you don’t secure your outdated site now, you might be the next target of their attack.
Common Types of Website Compromises
Spam
Hacked spam is the most common type of website compromise. Spammers inject content into a legitimate website in order to drive traffic to a malicious or deceptive site.Hackers might redirect content to pharmaceutical, gambling, or pornographic websites that can cause real damage to your actual site. They are attempting to leverage the reputation of your site in order to get their bad content to rank.
Malware
Malware is any piece of software that was written with the intent of doing harm to data, devices, or people.Malware can directly affect your website users, which is why Google provides strict warnings.
Credit Card Skimming
Credit card skimming is a fairly new security threat that affects ecommerce platforms. This is one of the most dangerous compromises for consumers because credit card data is stolen.There’s a potential threat that malicious code was injected onto a site that skims credit cards so when users are typing in their credit card credentials, either they get moved to another page (i.e., a phishing page) or there’s some type of system that stores that credit card information and sends it to the person who hacked the site.
If you have an ecommerce site and you noticed anything unusual, look into your platform and check if there’s something going on.
Having your users’ credit card information stolen can hurt your reputation if you don’t address this immediately.
Crypto Mining
Recently, crypto mining instances have been on the rise.Crypto mining hackers inject one or two lines of JavaScript on to your site and start using your users’ resources in order to mine for cryptocurrencies.
This has reportedly caused a lot of issues with mobile phones and devices with limited processing power.
While there are legitimate ways of using crypto mining, a lot of times, hackers will inject it onto your site without you knowing. It’s going to negatively affect your users’ experience and your brand.
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