Last Updated on September 13, 2024
A website is the perfect platform for you to communicate your message online and to provide your audience with value through the content you publish. If done correctly, you can build a following, drive lots of traffic to your site, and generate sales in the process!
However, all that goodwill can be undone in an instant if you’re not careful. With online threats just around the corner, your website may be one of the unlucky casualties of a surge of unpredictable attacks. They can hack their way into your database to steal information or just wreak havoc on your site to render it useless.
Therefore, to prevent this from happening, you need to learn how to protect your website from these unwanted attacks online. Keep in mind that these threats come in different shapes and sizes and we will discuss the most prevalent ones in this post for your information.
How to protect your website and keep it safe
Protect your site immediately
This is a no-brainer. Setting up your website security adds the first line of defense against initial threats. It sets up essential protection such as malware detection and cleanup, web application firewall, and the occasional backups. There are also basic features like log-in notifications, email alerts for changes in the site, and others so you can stay on top of the changes on your site.
Among the website security tools available, Sucuri stands heads and shoulders above the rest. Not only does it provide the protection to keep your site from harm but it also recovers your site if it succumbs to online threat. Either way, Sucuri will help protect and recover your site like it’s brand new.
While Sucuri is a paid tool and I believe you shouldn’t skimp on your website protection, you could try WordFence out for size. It’s a free plugin that offers basic firewall protection to keep your site from hackers.
Prepare a backup from the start
Even if your site is new and have published little to no content at all yet, you still need to back your files up. Setting up security protocols on your site will keep it safe for the time being. But online data breaches take place left and right to the biggest and most well-protected websites in the world. Therefore, you shouldn’t depend on your website security to keep your site on the clear.
There are online services that backs up all your files and stores them in a safe place so you can recover them during the worst case scenarios. For WordPress users, they can’t go wrong with UpdraftPlus. There are free and paid versions of the tool so you can test out the free one before moving to the paid version if you’re comfortable using it. For non-WordPress users, CodeGuard works well on other website platforms. All paid plans include daily backup, malware detection, and email notifications for any changes that take place in your site.
Make your site lawsuit-proof
While you might think this scenario is far-fetched, you can’t be too sure with the numerous frivolous cases that took place against website owners and bloggers. It’s one thing to defame something or someone online by creating content that paints the accused in a negative light. However, even if you try to create a harmless and docile website, there’s a slim chance you may offend someone out there and cause them to sue you.
Therefore, you need to know your rights as a website owner or blogger. This post at BlogHerald tackles the basic rights you have so you can avoid lawsuits for as long as possible.
If you get tangled in these unfortunate circumstances, you need legal help from experienced professionals that don’t burn a hole in your protect. Taking the advice of LegalZoom in these cases would help you from spending hundreds and thousands of dollars from legal counsel.
Counter negative SEO
If you set up your site and produce content that your audience loves, then Google will reward your efforts by ranking your site pages for their respective keyword phrases. The pages will appear on search results, making your site visible for users so they can read your content.
However, in a competitive industry, you may see your rankings spiral out of place until you’re no longer visible from organic search.
A reason your site is failing is due to negative SEO. What happens here is people link to your web pages on bad sites using harmful SEO practices such as duplicate content and others. This type of attack will rob your site from thousands of daily site traffic. The drop in visitors lead to decreased earnings which is something you want to prevent from happening.
To prevent this from happening, you need to review your backlinks using a tool like Serpstat. It helps you with your SEO research to optimize your site’s structure and content. But to stop negative SEO on its tracks, you can review questionable links to your site and perform the steps to get rid of them. By cleaning up your backlinks, you avoid the backlash from Google and restore your site to its original high rankings.
Also, the best defense against negative SEO is an even better offence. Developing a solid white hat SEO strategy allows you to launch a comprehensive content and outreach campaign so you can attract links and hike up your traffic even further. With a well-executed SEO campaign, not even a surge of negative SEO will put your site down.
Do you now know how to protect your website?
Your website is your most prized possession online. Treat it as your extension to the online world. Once it gets besmirched by spam or a lawsuit, it also drags your name in the mud. By protecting your website following the tips above, you don’t have to worry so much about looking behind your back for online threats and focus on building a website that your audience loves and continue to make money from it!
