It’s been a very busy week in the online world. We are sharing some of the trending topics and questions you are asking.

As you know, search engine optimization is an ever-changing and evolving industry. It is so important for you to have a trustworthy, White Hat, SEO team on your side. Trustworthy and White Hat – are key. “On your side” describes an SEO team that connects with you regularly to review performance and opportunities.

Your SEO team should also be re-evaluating their strategy every 90-days to be sure it is still performing the way it was intended to perform.

Some of the questions we’ve received this week are worthy of sharing with everyone.

Should you optimize a website page for multiple keywords?

Yes. Yes. And… yes!

If you think about writing about a single topic on a single web page, you’ll immediately recognize that to create really good, detailed, comprehensive content, you are going to use multiple keywords.

There’s no sense in creating a web page for each keyword. This will result in content that takes up multiple pages and will likely result in lower page authority and search engine page ranking results (SERPs) because the content is thin.

According to Ahrefs, a single page can rank for hundreds of different relevant keywords.

How many keywords do the top 20 pages *also rank for?

Ahrefs.com picked 3 million random search queries and looked at the top-ranking pages to see how many other keywords they ranked for.

When they say, “also ranked for” they are measuring only those keywords that also ranked in the top 10. They also confirmed that if you aren’t ranking in the top 10, you are getting nearly zero traffic from it.

The results of their study concluded that the number-one ranking page will also rank in the top ten for as many as 1,000 other relevant keywords.

How do you create content that will rank for lots of relevant keywords?

Search Queries and H2 Tags

Moz.com suggests that you conduct relevant keyword search queries to identify the top SERPs. Use those high-performing search results as your H2 content headings.

People Also Ask

If you search “how to write great content,” you’ll see in the top results Google’s “People also ask” table. The questions in that table are an example of potentially good H2 content headings.

Keyword Research Tool

Click on those questions. It’s possible that the next SERPs returns another list of “People also ask” questions. Create a list of search queries that are relevant to your content. Then use your favorite keyword research tool to determine the best phrases to use.

Brute Force Attacks on WordPress Websites Doubles

This week the volume of brute force attacks on WordPress websites doubled. The chart below shows the spike and surge over a 24-hour period. Wordfence is a website security software firm that is dedicated to engineering and delivering excellent security to WordPress website owners.

A similar attack occurred last April. Wordfence wrote about the home router botnet that was being used to attack WordPress websites.

They also built a tool that will check to see if your router is vulnerable.

By May, this botnet had shut down.

According to Wordfence.com, the rise in attacks this week have the same attack pattern as the home router botnet from last year. Wordfence cannot say conclusively that it is the same attacker, but the data strongly suggests it is.

How do you protect your website from brute force attack?

Brute force attacks are a rapid and concerted attempt to break into the back end of your WordPress website. The hacker uses a very simple (beginner level) automated script to hack into your site’s admin area. Through trial and error and in rapid succession, the would-be attacker is using endless combinations of usernames and passwords.

Once they have access, they can do some really serious damage to your website. Oftentimes, the attackers have also written their scripts to automatically set your website up to easily distribute the hacking scripts.

The most powerful defense against a brute force attack is a very strong username and password. It should by no means be guessable. In the old days, we like to create passwords we could remember. This means that a savvy hacker can figure it out. Your passwords should not form words that are in any dictionary.

These tips should keep your website out of trouble:

• Create unique usernames
• Use a password generator to create long (15 characters or more), strong (not a known word), random passwords (not resembling a word or number sequence that is related to you or your business in any way) for your WordPress admin account
• Change or rotate passwords every 60 – 90 days
• Enable two-factor authentication on all WordPress user accounts
• Do not enable XMLRPC as attackers can bypass your 2-factor authentication
• Install a highly reputable security plugin on your website. Wordfence Security is one of our favorites.

If you want to take your website security to the next-level, we recommend hosting with a reputable firm that manages your security and WordPress maintenance for you. Our WordPress hosting and maintenance customers know their sites are safe with us.

We custom tailor high-speed, secure hosting and website maintenance solutions for each client.   Don’t lose sleep over website security.  We’ve got you covered.

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• Increase targeted traffic
• Increase targeted leads
• Close more customers

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