Your website plays a crucial role in paving the way for your business’ long term success. Today, amid the online ecosystem, if your small business is not investing in keeping your website healthy, you are already losing to your competitors online. This said SEO plays a vital role to ensure that your website stays healthy, in line with the search engine guidelines, and appealing to the eyes of your potential customers.
On an average, a small business spends an average of $500 per month taking SEO services from a professional SEO agency to improve the website’s search rankings, keep the website free of any technical glitches, and keep it visible in the search results.
However, just like your business, your competitors are also indulging in SEO. Sometimes, to keep your website from ranking higher in the search, your competitors might undertake malicious SEO attacks (also known as SEO spams) to sink your rankings by filling your sites with malicious and spammy backlinks and keywords.
5 Ways To Strengthen SEO Security Of Your Website
In this article, we will see five significant ways that you can adopt to prevent any kind of negative SEO or spam attacks on your website –
1. Updating software and plugins
2. Optimize input fields
3. Use a CAPTCHA
4. Integrate a web application firewall (WAF)
5. Track your backlink sources
Let’s discuss each of the points below –
1. Updating software and plugins
This is the primary step that you must never skip. Always keep all the plugins and software on your website updated because old or discarded plugins can create vulnerabilities for cyber hackers to exploit. This said, always keep your content management systems updated and current. Perform a routine check of all your software now and then to make sure that all the security patches are complete. You can also use Akismet Anti-Spam plugin to secure your wordpress websites from spam.
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2. Optimize input fields
As a best practice, make sure all the input fields on your website are prevented from inserting any other modified query. Always predefine what you want your users to enter into the input field. For example, a phone number field should only receive numbers, hyphens, and parentheses. If you don’t predefine the fields, it can lead to a security issue or data breaches easily.
3. Use a CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA is the variety of images that you need to select before logging into your accounts or accessing a website. Using CAPTCHA is the best way for computers to differentiate humans from internet bots. You can add the CAPTCHA field to your website’s sign-ups, login, checkout page on your eCommerce website to stop hackers and cybercriminals from attacking your website with multiple SEO spams.
4. Integrate a web application firewall (WAF)
By installing a firewall to your website, you can prevent spammers and bad bots from deploying spammy links and comments to your website, which can have a drastic negative effect on your website. There are many WAF solutions to choose from. Make sure that the firewall you opt for has an in-built CAPTCHA as an added security layer.
5. Track your backlink sources
Always avoid building links on low-quality and low authority websites. Also, you probably must be aware of redirections to low-quality web pages – we all have experienced it. Building low-quality redirects and links are typical of cybercriminals to initiate negative SEO attacks. As a best practice, you must always monitor the sources from where your website is receiving backlinks and keywords, and block the ones which seem fishy to you. Remember to prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to forming backlinks.
Wrapping Up
There are a hundred different ways in which your website is prone to suffering major cyber attacks, security breaches, and the plight of spammy and fishy comments. To make sure that your website stays healthy at all times is well-protected and secure, you must execute the above-mentioned steps.
