The things involved with good search engine optimization are not just about search rankings and conversions, though those are important. Good SEO is also about security.
The security a good SEO plan can bring comes in several areas.
- By having a good content creation and link building strategy, you can be secure that your website is moving forwards.
- By using search engine approved SEO strategies, you can be secure that your traffic won’t suddenly disappear because Google/Bing penalized your website.
- By monitoring your website, you can be sure that your website stays optimized and that your site isn’t being hacked or having unwanted content added.
Meet Tim and Diana:
Tim and Diana Journy learned first hand about how important this security is a few months ago. Before we get into that story, I’d like to introduce you to Tim and Diana, founders of the Christian marriage coaching ministry, “The Journey Through”. I’ll let them tell you a bit about themselves and The Journey Through.
What do we do at The Journey Through? We inspire others, especially married couples, to find peace, joy, fulfillment and purpose. We partner alongside with care and compassion so that others may be strengthened and find hope on their own journey of life.
Tim and Diana Journy, the founders of The Journey Through, have been married for over 36 years. In 2007, Tim disclosed that he had been unfaithful in their marriage. Any betrayal in a marriage is devastating. This is when they began their journey of healing. They learned, grew, and began to rely on each other, but most importantly they began to rely on the Lord.
God Brings Forth Ministry:
Healing their marriage was hard work. It is because of this hard work, and the understanding gained through their journey that they are led to help others as wounded healers. On their journey, they found strength from Scripture, giving them a foundation to heal. And through Scripture they discovered the foundation of the ministry they have been called to serve.“So take a new grip with your tired hands, stand firm on your shaky legs, and mark out a straight, smooth path for your feet so that those who follow you, though weak and lame, will not fall and hurt themselves, but become strong.” – Hebrews 12:12
There is Hope:
By sharing this part of their journey they are offering others hope. While a marriage may have been rocked by infidelity, there is hope for healing as a couple; while one may have felt alone in a marriage, there is hope that the marriage can be rebuilt together, and while the divorce may be final; there is hope that one can continue on and become strong.At The Journey Through, we know the importance of strong marriages and offer a seminar hosted at churches called Building an Intentional Marriage. For those marriages in distress, we offer a seminar called Recreating Your Marriage Legacy. We also offer intense marriage workshops and personalized coaching programs.
Reaching People Online:
The passion Tim and Diana have for helping others, especially with their marriages, led them to found The Journey Through and eventually reach out to people online through their website, TheJourne
yThrough.com. They quickly learned that just having a website didn’t bring anyone to them. They had to go where the people are…searching for help in the search engines.
In the spring of 2012, we created our web site www.thejourneythrough.com. We felt sure that the day we went live would cause a black out up the east coast due to surge in internet activity. But nothing happened, that day, or the next or the next. While we have a knack for relationships, we discovered our ability in the area of attracting potential clients using our internet site was limited.
That is when we met up with our friends at Our Church.com. We needed help in an area where we did not have skill. The team at Our Church.com helped us to be more focused in our marketing plan and internet attraction. Our site activity continues to grow and we continue to have discussions with the team at Our Church.com to tweak our keywords. Our goal is to help couples and Our Church.com has helped us to do that by being more visible.
Website Hacked!
As part of the search engine optimization service OurChurch.Com offers, we regularly monitor all our marketing partner’s websites. This allows us to know when websites are changed so we can make sure those changes don’t hurt the optimization of the site. Usually, these changes are made by the owner of the site…but not always.
In addition to marketing, the team at Our Church.com also provided us protection. In early 2013, the team at Our Church.com detected that our site had been compromised by an unknown source and that certain code had been unknowingly placed within the site which could cause havoc for us and others. The team alerted us immediately and walked us through the steps to remove the unwanted code. Working with the team at Our Church.com has given us peace of mind.
Someone had accessed the admin of their website and inserted spammy content on every page with links to pay day loan sites. They also used a certain script which hid all of that content from being visible on the site. So, by looking at the site, no one would have known anything was amiss. In the code, however, the spammy content was quite visible. The intent was to make the search engines think TheJourneyThrough.com was about pay day loans and that they were linking to a certain pay day loan website. The idea being that it would increase the search rankings for that pay day loan website.
This was extremely dangerous to The Jouney Through. Hidden content like this is a violation of Google and Bing’s guidelines. Spammy, keyword stuffed content, which this was, is also a violation of Google and Bing guidelines. Linking to spammy sites can also hurt search rankings. So, there was a very real possibility that this spammy, hidden content would hurt the rankings of TheJourneyThrough.com or even get the site penalized or banned and Tim and Diana would never have known why.
Their Website Is Secured:
Thankfully, by monitoring the site, we were able to quickly remove the hidden content and deal with the security issue.
So, good SEO doesn’t just get you good rankings, it can provide security from all kinds of bad things.
Visit The Journey Through:
I hope you will check out TheJourneyThrough.com. If you know someone whose marriage is in trouble, please let them know there is help like The Journey Through available. If your marriage is feeling strained, don’t wait until things get worse. Tim and Diana can help you and your spouse work through your difficulties helping you build or rebuild a strong, secure marriage.
Take the Next Step With Your Website:
I also encourage you to take the steps towards the security you can have from a good SEO strategy. We’d love to help you with that as well. To get started, you can request a free SEO consultation today: https://marketing.ourchurch.com/christian-search-marketing.php
Share Your Thoughts:
- Have you had to deal with malicious content on your website?
- Do you even know if there is malicious content on your site right now?
- What do you think is the best way to secure your site?