Top-quality cybersecurity and hacking prevention practices are an absolute must in order to not interrupt a website’s performance on search engine results pages.

Website security is an integral part of digital marketing to prevent unauthorized users from gaining access to sensitive or private information or being redirected to another website.

What are some common tools used by hackers?

Google, Bing, and other major search engines have algorithms that allow them to automatically recognize websites that have become infected with dangerous software. The two most common types of hacking our website spamming and malware.

Spam

Website spamming is deliberate and meant to unethically increase one’s relevance on search engine results webpages by adding hypertext to a webpage that users click on. They are then sent to a different website. Spammers leech traffic away from your website and send them off to illegitimate ones, which results in fewer organic visitors to your website. This can eventually affect your bottom line when you have fewer customers going to your website or wanting to stay.

Malware

Malicious software, shorted as malware, is used in data breaches to disable the network while the hackers gather customer information, credit card information, and other private and valuable data.

Consequences of Hacking On Your Website’s SEO

Once users know that your website has been vulnerable to attacks and their data may have been stolen, they may be less likely to visit your website if they know it has security issues. This will affect your website traffic and your sales.

During an attack, it’s very common for links to be added to a website that is very low in quality. Google ranks websites based on their authority. Government, university, and some private websites have very high authority.

If a doctor’s blog is linked to new research conducted by a major research university, then that independent practice can rank higher and get more local business by using the university’s link. Companies of all sizes are also evaluated based on whether they use high-quality links because they do not want their rankings to plummet.

That is why all website owners, regardless of the size of the company, need to think about website security. If your website is flooded with broken backlinks from low-quality sources, then Google will have less trust in your website, which will lower your rankings.

How To Protect Your Website

There are a few things that you can do regularly to prevent your website from being attacked by hackers, malware, or spam. By being proactive you can prevent interruptions to your website traffic and SEO. The best things to do are:

• Install updates regularly: Websites running on outdated software are easy targets.
• Monitor website activity: Keep a close eye on website traffic and suspicious activity, and always repair problems before they become bigger.
• Create backups: Especially if you are using plug-ins or WordPress, backing up your website and files is easy with cloud-based storage services.

Choosing The Right SEO Agency

If your website has already been hacked, and you have confirmed that it is a hack and not some other problem, then it’s best to clean your website and fix the security gap that caused hackers to gain access.

If you have access to your backups, then you can recover your hacked website and restore it to the most recent version it was before the hack.

But if you are building a website from scratch then it is best to choose an Atlanta SEO Company that also specializes in building websites.

The web developers will be able to work with your marketing team and create a stunning website that is safe, engaging, and drives up sales.