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In the dynamic world of digital marketing, a well-structured, secure, and engaging website forms the bedrock of your business’s online presence. As a leading digital marketing agency, BeKonstructive Marketing understands this better than anyone.

Our team not only specialises in offering content marketing strategies, but also provides vital guidance on ensuring your WordPress website’s security. In today’s interconnected digital landscape, a secure website not only protects your business but also builds trust with your customers, further strengthening your digital marketing efforts.

In this article, we’ll delve into the essentials of WordPress website security, providing you with a ‘101 guide’ that offers practical steps to safeguard your digital presence.

4 Quick Steps for securing Your Website Against Attacks

The best thing about the WordPress platform is the fact that it is open-source – this means that it is not only free to use, but that a community of hundreds of thousands of people around the world are constantly developing new tools, functionalities, and plugins that can be easily installed onto a website (often for free) with a click of the mouse. However, this means WordPress is at a higher risk of security threats and attacks – because the source code is readily available, those who are inclined to do so, can download it and look for holes or soft-spots through which they can enter your business’ website.

But never fear! There are some simple steps that you can take as a website owner that can drastically reduce the chances of your website getting infiltrated and increase your WordPress website security.

Why do websites get hacked?

There are few different reasons why websites get hacked – sometimes it is just for the fun of it but often it is to exploit the website’s resources. E-commerce websites along with websites that have large databases of users and sites that generate large quantities of traffic are more at threat of being hacked. This is because the attacker wants to steal your user database or redirect your large quantities of website traffic to their own websites.

Why Should I Keep on Top of My Website Security?

There are number of reasons to keep on top of your website security. The first one is so that your site doesn’t get stolen – recovering it can be quite costly, especially if you have to rebuild the site from the ground up.

The second really important reason is your SEO. Having a hacked website can damage your site health, and if it is being used to send out spam or malware, then Google will block it from appearing in the search results. And even if you do recover your site, if it was left hacked for too long, then Google may have blacklisted your domain name completely – making it very difficult (and very expensive) to regain the previous rankings and positions you held in Google.

What can I do to stop the attacks?

You cannot stop the attacks. The best you can do is protect yourself against the attacks and make it harder for them to penetrate your site. I have outlined my top 4 steps for protecting your WordPress website against security attacks below:

  1. Secure Username and Password – One of the most fundamental but frequently ignored principles of digital security is creating both a secure username and password. If your username is ‘admin’, the title of your business, or your personal name, then you’re already exposing yourself to potential threats. As part of the broader Brisbane digital marketing landscape, we encourage you to modify it immediately, reinforcing your first line of defence.
  2. Update Your Plugins Regularly – When working with WordPress, you’ve probably noticed a small orange circle with a numeral, indicating updates next to ‘plugins’ or ‘updates’ tab in the left sidebar. This signifies that there are plugins on your site that require an update. Software developers consistently patch vulnerabilities, offering updated versions of plugins. As a leading digital marketing agency, we suggest updating your plugins promptly upon their release to minimise weaknesses in your website security.
  3. Backup Your Website Frequently – A sound strategy that we adopt in our Brisbane SEO services is to backup your website every time you make significant updates. If your website gets compromised, the fastest and simplest way to recover is by deleting the compromised site entirely and reloading your off-site stored backup. This only works if the backup was created before the infiltration. We endorse Backup Buddy, a convenient plugin, but you can also perform a full backup through your cPanel, FTP or by liaising with your hosting provider
  4. Leverage Security Plugins – The market offers a broad range of security plugins with varying capabilities. Some can modify your login URL, moving it away from the default ‘/wp-admin’ to something unique only you’re aware of. Others can block IP addresses or halt failed login attempts, securing your site from brute-force attacks. Installing these plugins is particularly advisable if you’ve experienced similar attacks in the past.

Maintaining your website’s security should be an integral part of your digital strategy. By following these steps, you can ensure the security of your site and your online presence, proving to your customers that you are a reliable, professional digital marketing agency or provider of Brisbane SEO services.

Contact BeKonstructive Marketing

BeKonstructive Marketing provides a range of digital marketing services for businesses of all shapes and sizes. If you would like to make use of our services, or if you have any questions, contact us today!

Bek

12 Comments

  • Jasa SEO says:

    Keep on writing, great job!

  • radioheadtshirts says:

    Whats up this is somewhat of off topic but I was wondering if blogs use
    WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML.
    I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding experience so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience.
    Any help would be greatly appreciated!

    • Bek says:

      Hi Radioheadshirts,

      Depends on which platform you are using, but most CMS or blog programs will incorporate a WYSIWYG editor. WordPress, which is the platform that I’ve built my own website on and which is my preferred platform, has a WYSIWYG editor that also allows you to view the html code view – so you can build the page on WYSIWYG and then if you need to look ‘under the hood’ to fix any minor errors you can. There are also a tonne of great free plugins that add extra features like shortcodes and sliders to your WYSIWYG editor in available on the WordPress platform.

  • Melva Barrera says:

    Nice post. I learn something new and challenging on websites I stumble upon on a
    daily basis. It’s always exciting to read articles from other writers and use
    something from other sites.

  • Kologi Bygges says:

    Hey very nice blog!

  • IssacJMeloan says:

    I couldn’t resist commenting. Well written!

  • Desmond Latham says:

    I adore it when people come together and share views, great blog, keep
    it up.

  • Gary A Lackett says:

    Hi there! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with Search Engine Optimization? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good results. If you know of any please share. Appreciate it!

    • Bek says:

      Hi Gary!

      Yes, there are heapppppps! My personal favourite is called SEO Yoast – it does all of the standard stuff like allows you to add in your meta data, plus it has a red/amber/green colour system that indicates how well your pages ‘may’ perform in Google. It also gives you tips and hints like adding more words to a page or improving its readability annnnnnnd it also allows you to add a separate set of metadata especially for social platforms.

  • Hammertoe says:

    With having so much written content do you ever run into any issues of plagiarism or copyright
    infringement? My website has a lot of completely unique content I’ve either authored myself or outsourced but it appears a lot of it is popping it up all over the internet without my agreement. Do you know any methods to help stop content from being stolen? I’d certainly appreciate it.

    • Bek says:

      Hi Hammertoe,

      Plagiarism and copyright on the internet are big problems – if someone wants to take your content and re-use it, there is not a lot that you can do to stop it to be honest. That being said, Google identifies this as being a big issue as well and does it’s best to identify the original author of content – if your content is time stamped and is three months older than someone who has copied or stolen your content then you are going to rank and the copycat version will not rank. Furthermore, if a website is made up of almost entirely stolen content then they will eventually find themselves onto Google’s blacklist, meaning that they will no longer rank in Google’s search engine results pages at all.

      When you do find your content being re-purposed, I would recommend reaching out to the website owner and letting them know that you are the original author and asking them to either reference you or to remove the content. A lot of the time, you may find that the website owner has employed someone else to create and load the website onto their website and has no idea that it is not original content – they have been lied to by a staff member or contractor who has told them that they wrote something original when really they cheated and pulled someone else’s content from the net. If you let them know it is yours, they will be happy to remove or at the least state you as being the original author.