Malware, or malicious software, refers to software that is used to leverage a website’s weaknesses to perform harmful activities. Malware in WordPress affects a website’s performance on every single level, from the server to the user experience, and even the site’s SEO performance. So, if there is malware on your site now, you could lose your site completely before you even realize there is a problem.
If you want to build a secure WordPress site, you should make sure to keep track of your website’s performance and make improvements when necessary. You should also get a trusted web hosting provider like Hosted WP to ensure your security.
You may be wondering if you need to be wary of malware. Well, after you experience a malware attack, one or more of the following things happen:
Malware may cause your server resources to overload and the site to become inaccessible. If the site is slowed down by malicious code, you may experience the following issues:
The site’s browser performance can be negatively affected because of malicious code and your users may experience problems. For one, site users may have to wait too long for certain browser processes to be completed.
Because the site takes longer to load, your Google rankings may drop. Your ranking will depend on the type of content on your site, your users’ behavior, and the sites that are competing against your site. If the site takes too long to load or is down all the time, your site visitors may go to a different site and your site’s rankings will drop.
Additionally, if your site loads too slowly, crawlers will not be able to index your content, which means your SEO performance will drop. Google’s crawlers will not be able to tell whether your site is a legitimate website with good content or a hacked site with malware.
Search engines will not send good traffic to hacked websites either. It is difficult to track which malicious links are sending traffic to your site, so your site will be flagged as hacked.
If your site is hacked and you want to fix the issue, you will want to clean up the backlinks on your site. Your site may have been created as part of a WordPress network or as a subdomain on a network that you do not control. If you do not have direct access to the domain, you will need to contact the person who does.
If spamming malware is installed on your site, there is a high chance that your site will be used to host spammy websites. These spammy websites can be forums, blogs, or other types of web pages. Anything you can think of can be filled with spam.
More important than your website’s performance is the personal information of the site visitors. Malware on your site can be dangerous to your website’s visitors because the malware can steal your users’ personal information and send it to a malicious hacker.
So, as you can see, even a small malware issue on your website can quickly escalate into a terrible issue affecting your site, server, and your users. You don’t need to go through all these issues, though. You need reliable WP hosting in Australia that can ensure your site’s security.
Hosted WP is one of the trusted names for WP hosting in Australia that can give you the peace of mind that you need knowing your business website is safe. Contact us today to know more about our services!