If you’re using WordPress to manage your website, your website is vulnerable to hackers. There are some simple things you can do on your own to make your site more secure–like make sure you always have the latest version of WordPress installed–and there are some more advanced things that you’ll want to turn to the professionals for. Think it won’t happen to you? In the last few weeks, I’ve had clients with gigantic sites and the latest WordPress version get hacked, and clients with tiny sites (with fewer than 500 visitors/month) get hacked. It’s not about how many visitors you get, it’s not about how popular your site is–it’s just about getting unlucky.

What’s more, if your website is hacked, you can immediately lose your Google rankings–and those rankings can be very difficult to get back. If your site is hacked, your website can become an “attack” site (and be labeled as such by Firefox and Internet Explorer–meaning people won’t be able to visit your website). And, what’s more, for visitors who don’t have appropriate virus protection, if your site is hacked, it can install viruses to your visitors’ computers. (Is that really what you want associated with your website?… Keep reading