The importance of cybersecurity in your website for the SEO

Are cybersecurity and SEO related? How can cybersecurity help SEO? If you're an SEO or marketing specialist, you should know that the security of a website can impact its search engine ranking, as well as your reputation and brand image, either positively or negatively.

Reasons why cybersecurity it's important for the SEO

Loss of data = loss of traffic

In the event of a cyberattack involving the theft of data from customers, suppliers, collaborators, etc., the company's marketing and communication department is responsible for managing how the incident will be communicated to those affected.

However, alerting users that there has been a cybersecurity issue in the company and that it has been cyberattacked results in a loss of trust from both existing and potential customers, directly impacting the company's traffic. Why? Because the trust of users will have been lost, and they will refrain from revisiting the website out of fear that their information may be compromised again.

Cyberattack = negative positioning in search engines 

Those of us who work in marketing know how easy it is to lose brand image and how difficult it is to recover it.

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, losing the trust of users means losing traffic, and the loss of traffic leads to a decline in search engine rankings. When users stop visiting our website, it loses relevance to search engines like Google, Firefox, or Safari.

Security problems = bad experience for the user

A bad user experience can negatively impact brand positioning, as it signifies having dissatisfied customers or potential customers who will not return or become loyal clients.

Examples of security issues that can generate a poor user experience include pop-ups randomly appearing in the window, altered or different content than expected (such as entering a clothing website and finding strange medications), strange posts on social networks, etc.

Lack of security = Negative SEO

Some cyberattacks are specifically designed to harm the SEO of a website. For instance, cybercriminals might engage in negative SEO practices, such as mass creation of spam links, which could lead to the website being penalized by search engines.

Poor cybersecurity = poor website availability

Search engines value the availability and loading speed of a website for its ranking. For example, denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) can negatively affect the site's availability, leading to a decrease in SEO performance.

Not having HTTPS security = poor SEO positioning

Search engines prioritize secure websites that use the HTTPS protocol. Implementing an SSL certificate to ensure a secure connection is not only essential for data security but also can improve SEO positioning.

As you can see, cybersecurity does indeed affect a website's SEO. That's why it's important that when designing a cybersecurity strategy, the marketing department is involved to explain its needs and requirements to avoid a reputation crisis due to a cybersecurity failure.