Hacked Website? This Is How Your SEO Is Damaged

Curiosity is an innate quality of human beings. In the Information Era, curiosity is also the reason which explains the forty thousand searches on Google. These searches which deliver results and everybody wants to appear on those results.

Being at the top of Google’s result or not, may bring success or failure to a website, and in some cases, to a company. That is why people who work in the digital environment know that SEO is important. However, there is a question which is relevant, and it will be more so as time goes by:

What would happen if, after investing money and resources in SEO, creating quality content, and spending on all kinds of tools, hackers attack your website?

This issue is not trivial.

What Happens If Hackers Attack Your Website? This Is What Google Says

Recently, Google announced good and bad news.

The bad news is about hacking and positioning in Google. The guys from Mountain View published a report which says that hacked websites have grown 32% in 2016 compared to the previous year. This number shows us that protecting a website or an e-commerce isn’t optional.

2017 won’t be a bad year for hackers. Everything suggests that this trend will increase, as has happened in recent years.

In fact, attacks are occurring right now…

Some people say that there is a war and the Internet is the battlefield. This statement may appear exaggerated and not easy to prove, but this won’t surprise you when you know that hackers earned 445 billion dollars last year. This amount comes from all the attacks they address to individuals, but mostly, to small and medium sized businesses.

Google says in their report that a hacking attack can damage the SEO of a website, so it could lose rank while the victims are trying to solve the problem. This is something we already knew, that is why hackers design attacks which go unnoticed. Then, if a webmaster doesn’t know that their website has been infected, they will lose money and clients until the site is back to normal.

However, here is the good news. By knowing the problem, we found solutions, so hereafter, you will know how to solve the attacks that penalise your ranking in Google.

These Kind of Attacks Penalise Your SEO

Most of the cyberattacks are well known, and some of them are considered very dangerous for users and companies, like the Ransomware virus. However, the computer area grows very fast, and if you think that cybersecurity is a challenge, tomorrow may be worse.

In other words, the hackers do not rest, and they will find lots of ways to hit businesses. To deal with this situation, Google tells us about the three most common attacks which infect websites, and also take advantage of their rank.

If you suspect that your website is infected, you need to act now! Go to the last point: The Ultimate Way To Avoid Another Attack.

Gibberish Hack

The hackers attack a website by creating pages, links and content which make no sense. The goal of the hackers is to appear in Google’s results, so when users try to visit the infected website, they will be redirected to another site, it might be a porno website. Here you can find out how to clean your site from this attack.

Japanese Keywords Hack

It seems to be very clear when a website has been attacked by this method. On the screen, you will see a lot of Japanese symbols. The keywords and links will not mean anything, but they win money with this attack because they put affiliate links on those pages.

According to Google, the hackers can take the ownership of the websites they have attacked because they appear on the Search Console as the owners. On this page, you will find the solution for this attack.

Cloaked Keywords Hack

The hackers will also create pages, links, images and many kinds of content that make no sense, but in this case, the template is the same as the original website. So, the infected pages will look similar to the rest of the site, and the webmaster may not notice anything until they read the content attentively.

Inside the pages they have created, you will find affiliate links, this is the way these hackers win money. It’s not easy to solve this attack, but it’s possible.

The Famous Google’s Blacklist

Being hit by these attacks may mean loss of rank, but also loss of clients, name and money. If this was not enough, you need to be aware of another problem: Google can blacklist your website.

This means that your website won’t appear in Google’s results. So, you need to clean it from the attack and request Google to analyse it afterwards.

The biggest search engine in the world analyses millions of links daily, Ten thousand of those websites quarantined every day, which it is the same as blacklisting.

There are online tools like ismywebsitepenalized.com to know if your website has been penalised. However, the best tool to manage a website is The Search Console by Google, previously called Google Webmaster Tool.

Once you have cleaned your website the tasks aren’t finished. In the last step, you need to send a request to Google because they have to check the site to take it off the blacklist. You will find the guidelines for this on Google’s official site. Just be sure that there is not any trace of malware on your website when you send your petition. Then, if your website is already clean, then it will back to normal in 72 hours.

Ways To Protect Your Website From Attacks

A business website can lose clients and money if its system is down and the site does not work. Appearing in Google’s results with keywords and content which don’t have any relation with your business activity, can damage your company, too.

Also, there are attacks which take your website off the search results because Google blacklisted it. Commonly, you can see if there is something wrong by checking the visits of your site. Start to be worried if the visits to your site have fallen drastically.

A good habit is to check the visits of your site regularly, and it is vital to know how it appears in Google’s results. It is not useful typing your domain name into the search bar, so you need to use the Search Console by Google.

Search Console, a must for every webmaster

It is highly recommended to register all websites and e-commerce sites on the Search Console. This tool notifies you when your site is infected, and it is great to know the latest status on your website.

According to Google, 61% of webmasters didn’t receive any notification when their websites were infected. So, this means that a hacked site can keep this status without the knowledge of its owner. Here is the importance of using the Search Console.

A new mantra: first backup and then update

There is a habit among Internet users: delay the updates of their devices and operating systems. It is very common to think that you are not at risk if you wait until the right moment to update all your technical stuff, and it may be true, but the problem is not this.

The problem comes when you ignore your updates for weeks. Hackers will have all this time to find the vulnerabilities of your systems, and when they do, they will enter into it. So, you need to update as soon as possible in the most secure way. All users should learn this mantra: first backup your system and then update your device.

If you have a WordPress site, you can back it up by using some plugins like BackupGuard. This one will also let you save the backup file into local.

 

You can also use your server to perform backups of your site, and also to set up when it is going to be the next one. Once you have performed the backup, you can click on the “update” bottom without the fear of having data loss.

You need to know that updates can resolve security problems, but not all of them improve these. In other words, the last update of an application may bring security breaches, and they can be discovered after some time.

These 4 Things Put Your Site At Risk

• Shared server: sharing your server may compromise the security of your website. Someone can upload a malicious file, or open access to the hackers accidentally.
• Insecure credentials: it is bad practice to keep the default usernames like “admin”. You need to change these default credentials to preserve your data security. Also, it is recommendable to change the access root of the administration panel of your website. Moreover, secure passwords should be unique and difficult. You will find tips to create a good one here.
• Sharing credentials in open sites: there are cases where some webmasters share their username and password in discussion forums or on a blog’s comments. They need someone to help them with an issue, that is why they do this. Logically, this practice can put at risk a website because they are giving free and easy access to everybody.
• Installing tools from untrusted sources: if you are a WordPress user, you probably install plugins for your website, but not all of them are secure. Developers create plugins, and they can leave behind security breaches. Also, there are plugins which contain malware, that is why you need to do a short search about the plugin you want to install and verify if it is secure. If you do not find any review, it is better to choose another one.

The Ultimate Way To Prevent The Next Attack

Businesses do not have good moments to be hit by a cyberattack. That is why prevention is the best weapon in cybersecurity. If the prevention steps were made especially for your company, then you will have double security.

How can you do this? Performing a penetration test on your website is the best answer. Computer analysts test your system’s security and find the vulnerabilities of it. They will get in as a hacker would do and write a report for you describing all the breaches so you can solve them before an attack.

There are businesses which have those last things about security on their sites, but they were infected because hackers found the way to attack them. For hackers, this is a challenge, so they use techniques like phishing or social engineering to get into businesses’ systems.

Finally, all these teach us that there are a lot of ways to hack a website and it affects its ranking on Google. Security is not optional anymore because ignoring cybersecurity is like playing Russian roulette.