Digital Marketing

SEO Poisoning is Like Halloween

Halloween always gives us chills. It’s when scary topics are awakened with frightening intents pertaining to ghosts and some evil creatures. In the field of online marketing, SEO is probably celebrating Halloween as well, but not in the manner of pumpkins, witches, and horror movies. The SEO goosebumps arose from the recent poison attacks.

What is SEO Poisoning?

SEO poisoning is popularly known as search poisoning, performed by cybercriminals. It is done by creating malicious websites and SEO tactics to prominently rank on search engines. These cybercriminals are using keywords most often searched on the engines like phrases included in holidays, news items and viral videos. As stated by the Websense Security Labs, up to a quarter of the first page of search results about trending topics are linked to malicious websites.

This might be one of the biggest problems for the SEO experts and e-commerce websites, but users are more affected by this. The real aim of the criminals is to infect visitors with viruses, such as Malware or fraudulently access sensitive information to be used for identity theft. Criminals can also install a Trojan horse to steal login information so the moment the user purchase online products using a credit card, the criminals can access their details.

The Victims

A good example taken from an article of Global Cyber Security Recruitment:

“For example, an attacker, ‘A,’ compromises a website, ‘W,’ and inserts links to his own site, ‘S,’ that he wants to improve the ranking. If the attacker manages to compromise many websites, Google will see hundreds of links back to site ‘S’ and rank it better for keywords.”

SEO Poisoning includes SEO spamming. A cybercriminal has a number of methods to attack a particular website, but generally, it involves taking advantage of vulnerabilities found in CMS (content management systems). Joomla and WordPress are both included. Attackers have with them an automation that allows them to scan the web for vulnerable websites to attack.

To simply understand it, businesses which utilize CMS have the greatest risk in an SEO poisoning. This is why it’s important to hire someone who has an excellent experience in content management system to decrease of being a victim of SEO spam.

Know How You  Are Infected

 

Site check
image source: sucuri.net

You might have noticed that you are losing your ranking on your strongest keywords. Looking on search engine result pages, you have found some non-recognizable words and links returning to your website. For example, your niche is about medical equipment, and then you suddenly rank on keywords about fashion. This is a prime example of a hacked or a poisoned website.

For those who are not used to dealing with infections, this could be pretty tricky as you might see things normal as you analyze the website’s source or inspecting its elements.

Read more about the other ways to defy this kind of SEO poisoning here.

Conclusion

In owning an online business, always look for reputable SEO experts like SEO Expert Page because such poisoning is not simple to deal with. It is like a Halloween, but way worse for you may end up losing your search engine ranking and profit as well.

Tags
Show More

Edna Webb

I am Edna Webb and I love technology. I have always been fascinated by anything that has to do with computers, gadgets, and software. This led me to study Computer Science in college and eventually become a full-stack developer and editor at GforGadget.com. I love to write about technology and share my thoughts with others. I also enjoy photography, eating different delicacies, and following tech closely.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

CommentLuv badge
Back to top button
Close
Close