you’re on your way to bed now then you suddenly received a frantic call from your client saying
that his/her website was hacked.
Not only does it smear up your reputation as an SEO expert, but also fixing the website will be a tedious task. Traditionally, website security and SEO were completely two independent entities with the exception of some basic responsibilities of SEO experts like not associating with malicious websites.
Now that the lines between the different aspects of the internet and business are blurring, SEO experts can no longer put website security on the backburner.
Why concern yourself with it?
Take, for instance, your website or your client’s website was given an unpleasant warning from
Google, alongside the search result. Normally, this scenario happens when Google’s bots think
that your website contains malicious code that could probably infest malware on the computers
of your visitors.
This is just one of the many potential security-related warnings that Google could impose on your website alongside your search results. No one won’t ever risk their computer’s security by visiting a flagged website.
With that kind of website, you will find all your SEO efforts gone to waste.
The best thing to do here is to be in complete control of each element of the site security that is closely related to SEO.
A secure website starts with an HTTPS
Undoubtedly, Google considers websites carrying the HTTPS title a lot more secure than those
who do not. Thanks to the HTTPS protocol, web info exchange are now secure than it ever was
before.
Ever since Chrome browser has treated the non-HTTPS sites unsecured, it has become
even more a necessity for SEO experts to highly encourage their clients in shifting to the HTTPS
ecosystem.
Content security policy
Webmasters are faced with a lot of challenges in order to secure a website against possible
attacks especially when a content is being repurposed.
Two of the most common form of attacks that we have today are data injection attacks and Cross Site Scripting attacks.
This is where Content Security Policy comes sweeping in to save the day. It acts as an additional security layer to help avoid or report that kind of attacks. As an SEO specialist, it is your job to check whether your client’s website has enabled the CSP.
Remember that CSP is implemented via an HTTP header, which consists of the rules for all kinds of data assets.
Preventing a site from being hacked
While it is true that it is not your main responsibility as an SEO expert to keep hackers away
from your clients’ websites, you can’t avoid the times when your clients will seek your help
when that happens.
Think of the silver lining instead.
If you help your clients’ websites from being hacked, then this will paint your business in a good light.
When worst comes to worst and your client’s website was truly hacked, your response as an SEO
expert should depend on the nature of the security problem, which you can determine through the
warming message given by Google.
To look into the details, log in to your Search Console. Go to the Security Issues section and check the details of the URLs that appear to be compromised, along with the specifics of the kind of security flaw for every URL.
In this case, you will need to let your clients understand the gravity of the prole so that they will know when will they need to ask the help of web developers and programmers to solve the security problems of their website.
