With the advent of the digital age, search engine optimization (SEO) drives traffic to your website. This is also pivotal in winning prospective clients to your website and boosting the growth of your brand online. In addition to that, SEO involves content, keywords, real-time protection and website backlinks. 

However, these aren’t all-encompassing; the security levels of the website come into play too.

Among these security measures, there is one that significantly affects your SEO performance. That is real-time protection.

Here, we will discuss how real-time protection can help boost your website’s SEO performance, keep you ranking, and keep your site and visitors safer.

What is Real-time Protection?

Real-time protection is an active security tool that scans your website for potential threats, such as malware, hacking attempts, phishing, and all types of cybercrime.

Continuous Background Scanning runs in the background, scanning your website’s files and traffic for signs of compromise in each data stream. Once threat entries are detected, real-time security immediately neutralizes them to ensure site functionality and safety.

Real-time protection is different from traditional security because it does not wait for scheduled scans or routine updates to be available. Instead, real-time protection runs 24/7, scanning and protecting your website in real-time – a significant benefit in fast-paced digital times.

How are SEO and Real-time Protection connected?

SEO and website security are completely different problems, however they are more interrelated than one might think. Google, in turn, prioritizes user experience and safety. An unsafe website can be penalized, reducing its rank and this would lead the visitors to lose trust.

For instance, Google may tag your website as “unsafe” or blacklist it altogether from search results if your website has been compromised.

Matters get worse when visitors flag your site as dangerous or encounter malware. In either case, they’ll never come back, another huge blow to both traffic and authority.

The answer here lies in real-time protection.

How Real-time Protection Improves SEO

Blocks Google Penalties and Blocklists

Protection from penalties and blocklisting is how real-time protection shields your website from search giants like Google. This is the most impressive among its excellent SEO benefits.

Google lowers a site’s rating or sometimes warns users when it determines that the site is harmful to users or that it contains malware. Some cases ultimately allow exclusion from search altogether.

Real-time protection is preventive, which would not allow hackers to enter your website with malware, ransomware, and prevent any other harmful attack.

This way, you can ensure security on your end for your website and keep it free from vulnerabilities, which would also help avoid penalties and keep the SEO performance intact.

Ensures the Loading Speed of Your Website

In SEO, yet another ranking factor, is speed. Slow loading sites get penalized by search engines due to the poor experience of the end users. There are various hacks, such as a DDoS attack, which could slow down your website by crowding your site with too much data to the server.

Also, malware on your website might utilize computer resources, slowing it down.

Such attacks may be stopped by real-time security before they can affect your website. Securing your site and making it fast enhances search engine rankings. Safe and fast sites boost SEO alongside user experience, reducing bounce rate and increasing the time on each page.

Protects User Data and Gains Trust

Building trust between your users and your site is integral to optimize for SEO. People who believe in your site will likely spend more time there, read more of your material, and use your services. 

Users would lose their trust in your website if they realize that their personal information has been stolen and divulged. In which case, you will likely lose all credibility and go down on search engine optimization metrics such as bounce rate, dwell time, and repeat visits.

Real-time protection ensures that your website has no vulnerabilities and threats compromising user data, such as credit card numbers, personal information, or login passwords. It will reassure visitors that the site is safe and secure, increasing confidence and a better performance in SEO with real-time protection.

Reduces Downtime

Search engines prefer websites that are always up and available. When your website is down owing to hijacking or malware, you can lose precious SEO rankings and potential customers.  

If your website experiences frequent downtime, search engines will see it as less dependable, which may result in poor outcomes.

Real-time protection ensures less chances of facing downtime as threats are identified and acted upon in time, so they might not be able to cause damage which would result in dropping your site from search results.

It allows search bots and users to have no issues accessing your site, thus ensuring a higher likelihood of keeping high ranks in SEO.

Detects and Eliminates Malicious Backlinks

Backlinks are important for SEO, but not all backlinks are good. Hackers or other evil people targeting your website may add spammy or harmful backlinks without your knowledge. These backlinks can hurt your SEO, getting you into serious trouble with the search engines.

With real-time defense, you will discover and remove bad backlinks before they damage your SEO. Security continuously scans your site for abnormal activities to ensure that your backlink profile keeps clean and free of harmful links that can degrade your rankings.

Protects Your Website Forms From Spam

If you want people to sign up for a newsletter or contact you, you’ll likely want them to have an opportunity to input forms. Unfortunately, spammers and malicious bots also scour for these forms.

If your forms are overwhelmed with spam or other malicious submissions, then user experience, search engine optimization, and server resources get dinged.

Real time protection blocks bots and suspicious activity in real-time, preventing spam and malicious submissions. It will boost your overall website performance, reduce exit rates, and improve the user experience, which will improve your SEO.

Maintains compliance requirements of Google’s SSL

Google marks non-SSL sites as “Not Secure”. An SSL certificate encrypts all information between your website and its users. That is to say, it protects your site users’ private data. For example, if your website does not have an SSL certificate, Google will punish it resulting in fewer results and fewer visits.

SSL monitoring and administration are often part of real-time protection. They ensure that your website complies with Google’s SSL requirements to protect user information and improves SEO performance by evading penalties associated with non-secure websites. 

Best Practices for Implementing Real-time Protection

To take full advantage of real-time protection on your website’s SEO, here are the best practices that you may adhere to –

• Choose Trusted Security Solution

Your real-time security solution must scan for malware, vulnerabilities, with firewall protection, and SSL monitoring.

• Update Software and Plugins

Most hacked applications and plugins are outdated. Updating website applications and plugins lowers attack susceptibility.

• Scan for Regular Security Reports

Many real-time protection solutions provide extensive security reports. Scan such reports occasionally to keep abreast of the trending threats and vulnerabilities.

• Use a CDN

 A CDN improves a website’s speed and security, aiding its SEO. Often, CDNs have real-time protection set up to work with additional protection frameworks.

Final Thoughts on Real-time Protection

In modern SEO directions, website security is much more important because it saves and enhances favorable positioning in search results. 

Real-time protection for your website is the first line of defense against possible cyber-attacks; simultaneously, it supports other crucial elements of SEO: speed, trustworthiness, uptime, and compliance.

Moreover, real-time protection is about safeguarding your website and users and improving SEO performance. It will help you to stay one step ahead of the curve and give visitors a secure, high-quality experience.

AUTHOR

Jennysis Lajom has been a content writer for years. Her passion for digital marketing led her to a career in content writing, graphic design, editing, and social media marketing. She is also one of the resident SEO writers from Softvire, a leading IT distributor. Follow her at the Softvire software store now!