Interview: Fighting Malware with Anirban Banerjee
2012 continues to be a year of great excitement for 123-reg. We are thrilled to announce the release of Site Scanner, powered by Stop the Hacker. For those not in the know, Site Scanner is a SaaS based malware monitoring tool that scrutinises a user’s website, notifying the customer when malicious code/viruses are found via email and in the 123-reg control panel. Furthermore, the software provides the user information on where the damaging code is located (the line of code it starts and ends on) and provides steps on how to eradicate it. Protecting your online business against malicious code couldn’t be more important in 2012. This year has seen the issue of internet security rise to the front pages of the national newspapers. Whilst events such as the Linkedin security breach are unfortunate, they are helpful in educating the market. 123-reg spoke to Anirban Banerjee, Co-Founder of StopTheHacker Inc., in a bid to help inform website owners of the growing threat of malware and detail how purchasing Site Scanner can give you peace of mind. A blacklisted website can have serious implications for any online business in terms of lost revenue, potential customers and credibility. We asked Banerjee about the threats to 123-reg customers who run websites with little or no malware detection service. ‘Malicious hackers are targeting websites in order to compromise them. If your website gets compromised and is misused to distribute malware to innocent visitors, the infected website is put on a blacklist by Google and other search engines.’ The potentially spiralling affects could be disastrous for your online business as Banerjee explains. ‘If your website is blacklisted, users will be blocked from coming to your website. This could lead to a loss of revenue. Moreover, this could result in an irreparable loss to the reputation of your website and business.’ The threat of being blacklisted by Google is one that is not only very real but one that every website owner needs to protect against. Once malware infects a website, it harms both the company and its customers. Website owners typically have no idea they have been infected, and many do believe that anti-virus protection software is enough. However, it is not. ‘9,500 websites get added to the Google blacklist every single day. Given the UK market is quite big; this represents a substantial number of UK businesses. It takes 7-10 days for a blacklisted website to clean up its act, on average, this process can cost thousands of pounds in lost revenue before even considering the potential revenue lost from your brands’ reputation being tarnished.’ Prevention is better than cure, but having said that, Site Scanner also acts as a quick reaction, something users can take heart from. If malicious code is found on the user’s website at any time, they are sent an email detailing exactly where the code is, and just as importantly, how to delete it. ‘Site Scanner incorporates the best of breed technology when it comes to malware detection, Antivirus engines, signature databases and reputation monitoring. It will help 123-reg customers by providing them with peace of mind. Together, we will help fight the battle for them!’ Central to seeking a partnership, 123-reg looked-for a provider with a real passion for the online security industry. What 123-reg customers should also take from the partnership is Banerjee’s passion for helping people secure their websites as well as the quality of product that his company provides. ‘Our goal is to make website security ubiquitous. Having a secure website and not worrying about hackers installing malware on your site and getting blacklisted shouldn’t be a luxury, everyone should have access to a high quality, reliable and accurate malware detection prevention like Site Scanner.’ Releasing a product like Site Scanner highlights 123-reg’s commitment to helping its customers secure their websites. 123-reg is working with everyone involved with Site Scanner to bring website security to millions of users. Remember, you don’t have to be a high traffic website to be targeted. Even if you see yourself as a small site, you are attractive to hackers because your site will have more vulnerable openings for hackers.
6 tips on lowering bounce
If you are not up on the lingo, bounce-rate refers to the percentage of visitors that leave a site directly from a specific page. It may sound complicated, but with a simple free analytics tool and following these 6 tips you can soon be understanding it and addressing any high bounce-rate pages with success. 1. Don’t cheat on Keywords You might think it is clever to use high-traffic keywords but if the traffic you drive to your site has no relation to what they were searching for, what’s the point. You will only serve to frustrate and see those visitors leave straight away. 2. Get your design right When people click through to your site they want to know 1) they can trust you 2) that they will find what they were looking for 3) that they will enjoy their visit. If your site looks disorganised or is in garish colours your first impression will be all wrong and the click through will be wasted – more importantly if they arrive via a PPC campaign, your investment will have been wasted. 3. Optimize your page load Just as the look of your design is important, so is the back end of that page. If your page is cluttered with code and tracking links that take ages to load, you may lose your visitor before they even have a chance to read what you have to say. 4. Get the content right The written word is a powerful tool if used correctly. Not only can it grab the attention of your visitors when they first open up the page but you should also make sure you are using the headers and tags correctly so that the correct text is being displayed in search engines after their robots have trawled and listed your page. 5. Get link-building In the era of social networking there is no excuse not to have a wide-range of good links pointing to your pages. Link them to specific anchor txt and you can lure in targetted traffic too, which is much less likely to bounce once on your site. 6. Use analytics to improve your pages Google Analytics is one of thousands of website tools that allows you to examine bounce-rates. Make sure you have an account ser-up and relevant code on every page. Highlight what pages in your site have the highest bounce rate and then analyse why. Google Analytics for example allows to you rank per average time on the site, the other pages visitors viewed and also how they arrived at your site / page. Patterns are usually easy to spot. Perhaps an old listing on a well-used web forum, or maybe a coding issue on a specific page. A few tweaks and you could soon be lowering your bounce rate.