WordPress Security Is Part of Your SEO Strategy

Protect the traffic your business has earned with routine maintenance, earlier detection, and a recovery plan that includes search visibility

By Borislav Donchev, Founder & CEO of Back2Rank

A WordPress security incident can damage your organic traffic even while your website still looks normal. Protecting that traffic means controlling who can change the site, detecting unauthorized changes, and knowing what to check after an attack.

My own agency website, maxdigital.bg, was hacked. The agency is now called Back2Rank, but I still bring that experience to the advice I give about prevention. Working in SEO didn’t make us immune. I keep that in mind when advising other businesses about how a hack can affect their search traffic.

For a business that relies on Google for inquiries or orders, security belongs in the maintenance budget alongside the work that attracts those customers. You need to know that the pages bringing in those customers are still under your control.

Borislav Donchev is Founder & CEO of Back2Rank, formerly MAX Digital. His work covers SEO recovery after website compromises, traffic drops, and failed migrations. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of National and World Economy and lectured at SoftUni Digital from 2019 to 2022. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

1. Understand what an attack can change in search

A compromised website can serve content its owner never approved. Attackers may add spam pages or insert links into existing content. A malicious redirect, which sends someone to another address, can take a potential customer away from your business.

Some attacks show different content depending on who visits or how they arrive. You might open your homepage and see nothing unusual while a visitor arriving through search encounters something else. Google describes these behaviors, along with possible search and browser warnings, in its Security Issues documentation.

That’s why I wouldn’t judge a website’s health by its homepage alone. I’d also check whether the pages customers find in search still show the right content and take visitors where they intended to go.

2. Make updates and access someone’s responsibility

Someone needs to take responsibility for WordPress maintenance after launch. For a website built around a theme, I’d start by listing the active theme, the plugins it requires, and any extra extensions. Record who maintains each one and how its updates reach the site.

Use trusted sources for themes and plugins, keep installed software updated, and remove components you no longer need after checking what depends on them. Give people individual accounts with only the permissions their work requires. Use strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication, which adds another verification step to a login. WordPress covers these principles in its hardening guidance.

As a business owner, ask more than whether automatic updates are switched on. Ask who receives vulnerability notices, who can approve urgent work, and who checks the site afterward. Having a developer build your website doesn’t mean you’ve agreed that they’ll maintain it afterward.

I’d also review access whenever you change suppliers. Review WordPress, hosting, domain management, and Search Console separately. People who no longer work on the website shouldn’t keep access they no longer need.

If you need to test an update for compatibility, use a protected test copy of the site and agree how you’ll handle urgent security fixes. Once the update is live, check the pages that generate inquiries or sales. Check their content and forms, and make sure search engines can still reach them. An update notification confirms that the update finished. You still need to check that the website works.

3. Check that security controls still let Google reach your pages

Security controls need to be tested to make sure search engines can still reach your pages. A firewall filters requests before they reach the website, and a rule that blocks too much traffic can also stop legitimate crawling. Crawling is how search engines retrieve pages to process their content.

After changing firewall rules or automated-traffic restrictions, ask the person responsible to check server logs and test important pages in Search Console. Look for access errors affecting legitimate Google requests. Google explains how unsuccessful server responses affect crawling in its HTTP status code guidance.

Don’t solve the problem by trusting every request that calls itself Googlebot. That name can be copied. Your hosting provider or developer can use Google’s request-verification methods to distinguish genuine Google traffic.

The robots.txt file gives crawlers instructions about which URLs they may request. It does not secure private content, and blocking a URL there does not necessarily remove it from search. Google explains these robots.txt limitations. Ask your developer to review unexpected changes to that file, especially during incident cleanup.

4. Monitor changes before customers report them

Monitoring should cover the website and its search presence. I recommend keeping Search Console connected to an account somebody actively checks. That person should know who to contact when a security notification arrives. The Security Issues report is useful, but an empty report shouldn’t end an investigation if other evidence points to a problem.

Set aside time to check for changes you can’t explain. Have unfamiliar URLs appeared? Are search queries suddenly unrelated to your business? Does a product page now redirect somewhere unexpected? Have new administrator accounts appeared without approval? Ask your technical team which changes to files and accounts they keep a record of.

Check what else was happening on the site before drawing conclusions. A new batch of URLs might come from a planned website change, and traffic can fall for reasons unrelated to security. I’d compare the timing with the site’s change history before deciding what happened.

Keep a dated record of releases, access changes, and major configuration updates. When something looks wrong, that record gives the people investigating a place to start. Without it, even a straightforward question about who changed a setting can take time to answer.

As the owner, you also need to know who receives alerts. A notification sitting in a former supplier’s inbox does little for your business. Assign someone to read it, assess it, and contact the person who can investigate.

5. Prepare for recovery before you need a backup

Your backup plan should say what you’re saving, where the copies are stored, and how you test that they can be restored. WordPress needs both its files and its database for a full restoration, as its backup documentation explains.

I’d ask for older backup versions to be kept, with a copy protected separately from the live site. The newest backup may already contain the hack. Test that you can restore the site in an isolated environment, and agree how you’d preserve recent orders or inquiries if you had to restore an older version.

After an attack, developers and security professionals need to remove the infection and fix the weakness that allowed access. Alongside that cleanup, the SEO work checks how the attack affected the site in search. Restoring files alone doesn’t tell you whether unwanted URLs still appear in search or whether legitimate pages can be reached again.

The recovery checks should cover important pages, unauthorized redirects, unwanted indexed URLs, and any security warnings. If Google has reported a security issue, request the relevant review once the problem is fixed. Google’s review instructions explain the process. Finishing the website cleanup doesn’t mean Google’s review is complete.

Security measures reduce risk, and recovery planning reduces uncertainty. Neither can guarantee where your website will rank. Before the next maintenance meeting, ask your team to answer these questions in writing:

• Who owns updates and urgent security fixes?
• Who reviews account access and receives alerts?
• Who checks that security changes still allow legitimate crawling?
• When was a complete backup last restored successfully?
• Who checks search visibility after an incident?

Put a name beside every answer and agree who will cover any gaps. You’ll have a clear starting point for protecting the traffic your business has already earned.