Website safety and SEO are two critical elements of maintaining a successful online presence. Ensuring that your website is safe and secure for visitors is essential for building trust with your audience and protecting their personal information.
Both website safety and SEO are interconnected and should be considered together to create a well-rounded online strategy. In this article, we will discuss how to check website safety and implement SEO best practices.
What Is Website Safety and Its Importance In SEO?
Website safety refers to the measures taken to protect a website and its visitors from any safety threats such as hacking, malware, and phishing.
These measures include using SSL/TLS certificates to encrypt sensitive information, implementing anti-malware software to protect against malicious attacks, and using web application firewalls to block unauthorized access.
Ensuring that your website is safe and secure for visitors is essential for building trust with your audience, protecting their personal information, and keeping your website accessible.
In the SEO strategy, website security is important in maintaining both safety and visibility on the search engine. That is because Google prefers a secure website to rank high. Here are some benefits that can be taken from having website safety measured.
Improve users' trust and confidence
Increase engagement and conversion on the site
Get higher ranking
Protected from cybercrime
How to Check Website Safety
Checking website safety is an important activity and is urgently needed to improve site performance. To check website safety, you might need to check the below checklist. Whether your website has been implemented or not.
Use SSL/TLS Certificate
The first step how to check website safety is by checking your SSL.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) are protocols that provide secure communication on the internet. They are used to encrypt the data sent between a web server and a web browser, ensuring that the information cannot be intercepted or tampered with by malicious actors.
HTTPS (HTTP Secure) is a combination of the standard HTTP protocol and SSL/TLS encryption. When a website uses HTTPS, the "S" in the URL stands for "secure" and indicates that the connection between the user's browser and the website's server is encrypted.
The use of an SSL and TLS certificate is a crucial aspect of website safety and SEO. In this article, we will discuss what an SSL/TLS certificate is, how to check for one on your website, and the impact it has on SEO.
To check if your website has an SSL/TLS certificate, look for the padlock icon in the address bar of your web browser. If the padlock icon is present and the URL begins with "HTTPS", your website has an SSL/TLS certificate. It's also important to verify that the certificate is valid and has been issued by a trusted certificate authority.
SSL certificate also needs to be checked regularly to ensure their validity. To check it, you can use SSL Certificates Checker for free.
Now, let's discuss the impact of SSL/TLS on SEO. In 2014, Google announced that it would begin using HTTPS as a ranking signal in its search engine algorithm. This means that websites with SSL/TLS certificates may receive a small boost in search engine rankings.
Use Anti-Malware Software
Anti-malware software, also known as antivirus software, is a type of software that is designed to detect and remove malware from your computer or website. Malware is a type of malicious software that is designed to cause harm or steal sensitive information.
Examples of malware include viruses such as follow:
Trojan horses
Worms
Spyware.
Anti-malware software can detect and remove these types of malware, helping to protect your website and its visitors from malware that potentially brings any threats.
To check if your website has anti-malware software, you can contact your web hosting provider or website administrator. They should be able to confirm if anti-malware software is being used on your website. Additionally, you can use online tools such as Google Safe Browsing.
If your website is found to have malware, it may be flagged by search engines and receive a lower ranking. Besides, having malware on your website can lead to poor user experience, which can decrease engagement and ultimately drive visitors away.
So, using anti-malware software is one of the best ways to check website safety.
Use A Web Application Firewall
The next thing to check website safety is using WAF. A web application firewall (WAF) is a crucial tool for protecting your website from security threats. WAF is a security technology designed to protect web applications from malicious attacks.
It acts as a barrier between a web application and the internet, monitoring and blocking any suspicious or unauthorized traffic. A WAF can be used to protect against a wide range of threats such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and application-layer DDoS attacks.
Website Security Checklist in SEO
Since website security and SEO is important in achieving SEO goals, then webmasters should check whether the below checklist is fulfilled or not.
Regularly check for vulnerabilities: Regularly scan your website for vulnerabilities and patch any that are found.
Regularly update software: Keep your website's software updated to prevent the dullness of security.
Backups: Keep regular backups of your website to protect against data loss in case of a security incident.
Security monitoring: Monitor your website for security incidents and take appropriate action to prevent them.
That checklist will help your site have more sustainable security and avoid any threats. Implementing the above best practices will also enhance your SEO effort to the next level. Both security and visibility are important for business.
Final Thought
In conclusion, checking website security is a critical aspect of maintaining a successful online presence. Website safety and SEO are interconnected, and by considering both when creating and maintaining your online presence, you can create a good strategy that improves website security, user experience, and search engine rankings.
The last thing is, you can use Sequence Stats to track your keywords and see if there is any SEO Concern, including page security, detected. Here is an example of a Not Secure page detected on Sequence Stats.
Picture 1: Not Secure SEO concern.
If your page is detected as not secure, then you can assign your team to fix it through the Kanban Board feature. It is integrated into one SEO tool, so you do not need to subscribe to multiple tools.
To experience all Sequence Stats features, please register yourself and enjoy the free trial.