We all know the potential for the web to reach everyone who is connected to it ( currently around 50% of the world has a connection ) and no less than Mark Zuckerberg realises after gathering over 1 billion monthly users on Facebook he wants to expand the net to try and acquire the next 5 billion using a program he has launched called internet.org. But with the advent of more and more people going online, it doesn’t mean that this is particularly a good thing, not everyone has good intentions and there are countries you are likely to never do business with but want to find a way of hacking your business website or profiting from your misfortune through scam emails or injected code. So the question arises…why let people from these countries on to your website in the first place? In this blog post, I am going to share with you two ways to block specific countries from accessing WordPress based websites.
Block countries from accessing your WordPress site WordPress using IQ Block Country Plugin
A lot of people these days use WordPress as a CMS for their website and for good reason. It has so much support for plugins and themes and with easy to understand backend interface it is a good choice for most small businesses. The problem comes when, as previously mentioned, those with naughty intent for their own ill-gotten gains learn how to hack the CMS of choice.
Those who tend to do this, I regret to say, do tend to come from particular countries and one reason I looked into is how to stop these countries that I am never likely to do business with from accessing my site. It was regrettable to do this as I want to share my knowledge and findings with everyone for free who is interested but unfortunately, I put the security of my website and my visitor’s interests first.
To find out more about IQ Block Country please click here
Block countries from accessing your WordPress site using Cloud Flare CDN
Cloud Flare is a specific CDN that works to share your content in data centres around the world making it easier to gather static resources closer to the user’s browser speeding up your websites load time but Cloud Flare has an extra feature, you can actively block specific countries from accessing your content and also block known offenders of spam comments and other malicious activity. Below is a short video about the software and here is a link to CloudFlare website.
Why block particular countries from accessing your WordPress site?
If you are s small business that will only ever do business with your country then why do you need to allow people from another country to access your website? The simple answer is, you don’t! It may increase your traffic but not all traffic is good traffic and that is a fact! Website and business owners get obsessed with traffic as though it’s the magic answer for generating sales but the truth of the matter is the only good traffic is the traffic that will convert to sales.
A website that gains 100 visits a day but converts 10 of those visits to a sale compared to a website that gains 1000 visits a day but also only converts 10 of those visits into sales is a website that is actually more successful than that successive example.
Bounce rate will drop
As you stop certain countries visiting your website you will probably notice your bounce rate improve as people who arrive on your site are genuinely interested in your content and/or service/product.
When you wouldn’t block a website
If you make money from advertising through Google or other advertising channels then lots of traffic does equal lots of money but it’s the click-throughs that really bring in the money so although you may gain more revenue through traffic is it worth allowing anyone to visit your site?
Conclusion
Even though you may now have blocked certain countries from accessing your website if someone desperately wants to get into your website and is knowledgeable enough they will in the end, without hesitation or doubt but you can make it as difficult for those people as possible. Blocking specific countries from accessing your website makes sense as another lock on your fortified website door. In a future post, I will be sharing other security measures you can put in place to help prevent the nasty pasties of the world from trying to damage you and your business online.
Hope you find this blog post useful, please leave any tips or thoughts in the comment box below or if you need help securing your website or improving your current one please feel free to contact us and I am sure we will be able to help.