Is Your Website Being Hijacked?

Did you know that your search engine rankings may not be yours?

It's true, your website visitors could be stolen by others who are stealing your search engine rankings and you probably don't even know it?

Here's how it works…  

Your site is listed in the Google, Yahoo or MSN results in which case visitors click on your entry and are taken to your site, but in the case of a hijacked URL, your visitor is taken to a completely different web site.

This happens because hijackers can find the flaws within the software of the domain name servers (DNS) and they send incorrect information to these servers so that the server redirects the traffic to another site. 

But the real problem is that the DNS server does not validate that the information is coming from an authoritative source and allows visitors to go to the wrong pages. So, when someone enters your URL in the web browser or clicks on your site listing, they get sent to the hijackers site instead of yours. 

How can you protect your site from hackers?

First of all, get the scoop on choosing a web hosting provider that does not use open DNS server. For example I use Hostgator   …I will never have a problem.

But if you're not sure whether or not your hosting company uses an open DNS server or not you can go to
http://www.dnsreport.com and enter your website URL.  Look for 'PASS' on the Open DNS servers line.

If you fail, contact your hosting service right away.  If they can't fix it, find yourself a new web host.

Also know that a secure DNS server only makes sure that no-one hijacks your search engine rankings.  To get high search engine rankings, you must make sure that search engines can parse your web pages and that you have many inbound links that tell search engines that your web site is important.

Related posts:

1. Website Design Best Practices
2. 2 Essential Steps to Website Search Engine Optimization

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