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<h2>What are bots and why are they viewing my site?</h2>
<p>If you’ve only just noticed bot traffic on your site – or if you’re new to the world of websites and analytics – you might be wondering what exactly bot traffic is. It’s a simple concept. Bots, or robots, are programs created by humans to do all the things that we don’t like doing. Mostly things like scraping the internet and collecting data that can be used for many (mostly useful) purposes.</p>
<h3>So … are bots bad?</h3>
<p>Short answer: it depends.</p>
<p>In some cases, bots provide helpful, essential services – like the crawling and indexing of your site done by Googlebot (Google’s web crawler). In other cases, they can be malicious, scraping your site for weakness.</p>
<h3>Does bot traffic affect SEO?</h3>
<p>Look. Bot traffic isn’t necessarily bad for SEO. But it can have side effects like slowing your site speed or causing website downtime that can harm your performance in the long run.</p>
<h3>So you should block all bots from browsing your site, right?</h3>
<p>Hold up, not so fast. Some bot traffic is incredibly important to your site’s <a href="https://wp.distl.com.au/seo/">SEO</a> performance. While there are bad bots out there, there are equally good bots that are essential. So, while having high amounts of bot traffic could indicate that your site is at higher risk of threats if not secure, having no bot traffic shows that search engines aren’t crawling and indexing your site. And that&#8217;s a recipe for tanked ratings.</p>
<h3>Am I blocking good bots?</h3>
<p>If you’ve just built a new site or web page and are struggling to get it ranking, make sure you’re not blocking search engine bots. You can check whether you’re blocking these bots by first <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/robots/create-robots-txt" target="_blank" rel="noopener">checking your robots.txt file for rules that are preventing search engine bots from entering your site.</a> Then, head to your homepage or new page and view the source code by typing Ctrl +U (Command + Option + U on Mac) and search (Ctrl + F on Windows or Command +F on Mac) for ‘noindex’. This is the tag that blocks search engines from indexing your site. If you find that you&#8217;re blocking bots and want to know how to allow them, here’s a helpful <a href="https://ahrefs.com/seo/glossary/noindex-tag" target="_blank" rel="noopener">article on the Noindex Tag</a> from Ahrefs.</p>
<h3>Okay. So what are the bad bots and how do I deal with them?</h3>
<p>So you now know that most bots will simply crawl your site. But some bots are malicious and only exist to disrupt your business. They can do this in many ways, but the four biggest threats are: malicious web scraping bots, Denial-of-Service (DoS) bots, spam bots and click fraud bots.</p>
<h4>Malicious web scraping bots</h4>
<p>If we’ve learnt anything from Batman, it’s that there are people out there who just want to watch the world burn. A large portion of these people are cyber criminals. Some cyber criminals have built armies of malicious bots to scrape your site, looking for &#8216;exploits’ they can use to penetrate your site’s security. These exploits are often found in out-of-date plugins or broken scripts. Weaknesses can be quickly found and abused by hackers – which is why you need be sure that you’re keeping your site and its features up-to-date.</p>
<h4>How to deal with malicious web scraping bots</h4>
<p>The best way to keep your site safe from abuse by web scraping bots is to get managed <a href="https://wp.distl.com.au/web-design/domains-web-hosting/">website hosting and support</a>, where your service provider keeps your site up-to-date and secure for you. If you’re interested in managed hosting and support, <a href="https://wp.distl.com.au/contact-us/">get in touch with us</a> to discuss the right plan for your business.</p>
<h4>Denial-of-Service bots</h4>
<p>If your site is constantly going down due to surges in traffic, you could be the target of an onslaught of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) bots. Sent to your site by a third party, DDoS bots work by repeatedly completing resource-intensive tasks until your server starts to struggle. This can cause slowdowns and sometimes a complete server crash, during which your site will go down completely. It’s not pretty.</p>
<h4>How to deal with Denial-of-Service bots</h4>
<p>As with most security threats, the best thing you can do to prevent an attack is to keep your site up-to-date, minimising the risk of an exploit being found on your website. Get in touch if you’re having issues with your website&#8217;s security – we have a great hosting and management plan that will keep your site safe.</p>
<p>We also recommend using a <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/en-au/learning/cdn/what-is-a-cdn/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Content Delivery Network (CDN),</a> like <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cloudflare,</a> that’s designed to be better at handling large amounts of traffic. If you don’t want to use a CDN, we recommend you use a caching plugin like <a href="https://wp-rocket.me/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WP Rocket</a> or <a href="https://distl.com.au/web-design/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">build a static site</a> using something like Gatsby. This will serve static pages opposed to PHP (server side rendered pages, reducing server load).</p>
<p>If you’re keen to learn more about how to prevent DDoS attacks, <a href="https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/view-all-content/threats/denial-service" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here&#8217;s a great government resource.</a></p>
<h4>Spam bots</h4>
<p>Every day, your website deals with massive amounts of potential traffic. Your ability to manage your paying customers looking for your services largely comes down to your ability to respond to inquiries. And it’s frustrating trying to respond to legitimate inquiries when you’re wading through spam that’s come in through your contact forms. While that&#8217;s just one of the many types of spam botting, it is the most frustrating for Australian business owners, as it significantly slows down their inquiry response times.</p>
<h4>How to deal with spam bots</h4>
<p>Good news. Spam bots are way easier to manage than many other forms of malicious bots. You can successfully block the majority of bots using software that detects and blocks bot traffic.</p>
<p>You can block bots site-wide using a security plugin like <a href="https://www.wordfence.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wordfence</a> that will detect and block bad traffic. And you can block spam bots from using forms by fighting fire with fire: <a href="https://www.google.com/recaptcha/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reCAPTCHA</a> by Google works by combining a risk-based algorithm with machine learning (you guessed it – a bot). If your website is using the WordPress CMS, here’s a guide on how to <a href="https://www.gravityforms.com/blog/add-recaptcha-to-your-forms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">add reCAPTCHA to your site if you are using gravity forms</a>.</p>
<p>Reduce the number of bots spamming your emails by obscuring your email address on your website using a function like ‘<a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/antispambot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">antispambot’,</a> which converts email addresses into HTML.</p>
<p>It’s important to remember that of all the ways spam bots can attack your site, forms are the biggest open door for abuse. So, we recommend you take some or all of the following steps to protect your site.</p>
<ul>
<li>Remove forms that are not needed.</li>
<li>Avoid file upload functionality if possible.</li>
<li>Secure your form submissions by using reCAPTCHA (‘I’m not a robot’ checks).</li>
<li>Use third party spam filter services like <a href="https://akismet.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Akismet</a> to filter form submissions before they get to you.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Click fraud bots</h4>
<p>The biggest threat to <a href="https://wp.distl.com.au/google-ads-management/">Pay Per Click advertising</a> is a little something called click fraud. It’s the act of clicking ads with the goal of blowing the ad budget of the victim. The simplicity of this task makes it the perfect subject for bot programmers, who design programs that can target a specific ad and repeatedly click it until it no longer appears in search results.</p>
<h4>How to deal with click fraud</h4>
<p>The good news is, you probably don&#8217;t have to worry too much about click fraud – at the moment. We haven&#8217;t seen it affect our clients yet. However, it’s quickly becoming more prevalent, which is why Distl is getting prepared, and you should be to. We’ve researched a whole host of solutions, and what we’ve found is that most operate using advanced AI to monitor the behavior and IP address of users clicking your ad. If they’re detected as fraudulent, they’re added to Google’s IP exclusion list, so they can’t view your ads in search results anymore</p>
<p>If you’re worried about click fraud, one of the better known providers of click fraud protection, ClickCease, shared the <a href="https://www.clickcease.com/blog/what-is-click-fraud/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">5 most common industries click fraud bots target</a>.</p>
<p>They are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Photography – 65%</li>
<li>Pest Control – 62%</li>
<li>Locksmith – 53%</li>
<li>Plumbing – 46%</li>
<li>Waste Removal – 44%</li>
</ul>
<h3>How to identify and remove bot traffic in Google Analytics</h3>
<p>If your traffic is significantly higher than normal, it’s likely that a large portion of it is bot traffic. And we’re guessing that this is affecting your reporting. Here’s how you can identify and remove bot traffic from analytics.</p>
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4514" src="https://wp.distl.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Distl-How-to-exclude-bot-traffic-on-google-analytics.png" alt="" width="1521" height="519" srcset="https://wp.distl.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Distl-How-to-exclude-bot-traffic-on-google-analytics.png 1521w, https://wp.distl.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Distl-How-to-exclude-bot-traffic-on-google-analytics-300x102.png 300w, https://wp.distl.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Distl-How-to-exclude-bot-traffic-on-google-analytics-1024x349.png 1024w, https://wp.distl.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Distl-How-to-exclude-bot-traffic-on-google-analytics-768x262.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1521px) 100vw, 1521px" />
<p><strong>The following steps match the numbers in the image above.</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Head over to your Google Analytics dashboard and look for the acquisition tree in the left-hand panel. Within this menu, you will find <strong>All Traffic &gt; Referrals</strong>. Click referrals, and you will find where all your visitors are coming from.</li>
<li>In the referral dashboard, look at your traffic statistics for the past 2-3 months. If you have bot traffic, you should see an obvious outlier.</li>
<li>Next, take a look at your chart. Assuming your site sees a volume consistent with a normal service-based business’ website, you should see a large spike which flattens your other website traffic.</li>
<li>To filter the traffic, click the<strong> ‘advanced’</strong> button in the filters toolbar. You’ll open a filter tool that you can use to remove traffic with your chosen properties.</li>
<li>Using the drop-downs, select <strong>exclude</strong>, <strong>source</strong>, and <strong>containing</strong>. In the input field, type the name of your referring bot traffic, then hit apply.</li>
<li>Your traffic graph should now look consistent with that of a normal traffic chart, as seen above in Image 5.</li>
</ol>
<h2>All too confusing? Here’s a bot summary.</h2>
<p>Our list of good bots and bad bots to keep it simple.</p>
<h3><strong>Good bots</strong></h3>
<h4><strong>Search engine bots: Googlebot, Bingbot, Baidu Spider, and Slurp (Yahoo!) </strong></h4>
<p>These bots crawl and index content from websites across the internet so that they can understand and recommend your business to customers looking for your services. They are essential to the service that search engines offer.</p>
<h4><strong>Marketing tool bots: Semrushbot (Semrush) and AhrefsBot (Ahrefs)</strong></h4>
<p>Marketing tool bots crawl the internet for link data that provides crucial insights to digital marketers around the world. This information can then be used to better understand your customers and serve them better.</p>
<h4><strong>Aggregator bots and price comparison bots:</strong></h4>
<p>Web crawlers that scrape the internet looking for relevant content such as reviews and deals that they can on-sell to users looking for goods and services. These bots help you find great deals and help you filter the countless services on the web to find the best match for your needs.</p>
<h3>Bad bots</h3>
<h4><strong>Click fraud bots:</strong></h4>
<p>Click fraud bots have one job: to deplete the marketing budget of online businesses. They work by clicking your Google Ads or any other form of Pay Per Click advertising that you may be running.</p>
<h4><strong>Spam bots:</strong></h4>
<p>Spam bots run automated tasks across the internet: filling out forms, posting comments and sending emails to sites across the web hoping to disrupt business or promote services.</p>
<h4><strong>DDoS bots (Distributed Denial-Of-Service Bots):</strong></h4>
<p>DDoS bots maliciously flood your site and carry out resource-intensive tasks to intentionally slow down or completely stop your website server’s operation.</p>
<h4><strong>Scraping bots:</strong></h4>
<p>Scraping bots crawl the internet for vulnerabilities, hoping to penetrate your security, steal your customer data and infect your website with malware by exploiting out-of-date plugins and other holes that may exist in your security.</p>


Bots invading your website? Identify and block malicious bot traffic!

<p class="intro-text">Like many businesses, you’re most likely using a multichannel marketing strategy running SEO, PPC, and Social Media campaigns.</p>
<p>But do your campaigns complement each other and your overarching digital goals?</p>
<p>This is where an <a href="https://distl.com.au/strategy/digital-strategy/">omnichannel marketing strategy</a> comes into play.</p>
<p>Omnichannel marketing is a seamless digital customer experience regardless of the marketing channel that your customer is on. The intention of this approach is that every touchpoint your customer has with your brand, it feels like a continuation of the previous touchpoint (think about a marketing funnel and what’s next).</p>
<p>This means that the strategy must be deliberately crafted from start to finish with a message that develops at each touchpoint and remains relevant to the stage of the customer journey and ultimately, the customer.</p>
<p>Your SEO campaign and content, your PPC ads, social media ads, and EDMs, need to be crafted in tandem to create a seamless digital marketing strategy that nurtures your customers to purchase or enquire.</p>
<p>While this can sound like a multichannel strategy, it’s not. Plain and simple.</p>
<p>Here’s why.</p>
<h2>Omnichannel vs. multichannel strategy</h2>
<p>The main point of difference between an omnichannel and multichannel marketing strategy is knowing where your customer is in their marketing journey.</p>
<p>Omnichannel marketing offers a personalised approach that places your customer at the centre of the strategy. The messaging within your strategy changes depending on how your customer engages, and what their needs are.</p>
<p>Every message across channels is created with specific intent and to serve based on previous interactions.</p>
<p>The better targeted messaging to their specific stage of the journey, the more likely your customers are to interact.</p>
<h3>Customer centric approach</h3>
<p>In a multichannel marketing approach, a business will be looking to cast a wide net and get in front of as many relevant eyeballs as possible. This will often be the case running, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, as well as running an SEO campaign. However, there will be no cohesion between these channels.</p>
<p>Whereas an omnichannel marketing strategy will intertwine each channel to engage customers holistically. This methodology is focused on creating a strong relationship with the customers and doesn’t simply target a large impression share.</p>
<h3>Consistent messaging</h3>
<p>A consistent message in your omnichannel strategy is necessary to deliver a high level customer experience. Businesses running an omnichannel strategy must be diligent to ensure their customers are receiving the same experience across all channels and through each interaction.<br />
If there are several internal departments or marketers working on an omnichannel marketing strategy, you need to ensure that they are all aligned and delivering the same message and brand image. If they are not in-tune, the likelihood of a successful strategy will significantly decrease.</p>
<h3>Buyer effort levels</h3>
<p>Another key component is the level of effort the customer needs as part of the journey. The intention of the omnichannel approach is to create a seamless experience. We want the customer to feel like their engagements do not create additional effort for them to do so.</p>
<p>A high level of data analysis and strategy implementation is required to ensure that every step is effortless for the customer. The less effort from customers, the more effective our strategy, leading to increased sales.</p>
<h2>Who is an omnichannel marketing strategy for?</h2>
<p>Is an omnichannel Marketing Strategy appropriate for every business? Absolutely not.</p>
<p>It’s crucial to identify how your audience behaves and whether the customer experience is a key factor in their decision-making process. This will help determine the right marketing strategy for your business.</p>
<p>Businesses that need to grab the customers attention, provide a high level of customer experience, and may also have a longer buying journey where customers need to be nurtured, are better candidates.</p>
<p>It’s also essential that you have the right tools, strategy, and process in place to be able to deliver an omnichannel approach.</p>
<h2>What are the benefits of an omnichannel marketing strategy?</h2>
<h3>1. The advantage of customer data</h3>
<p>Often businesses have customer data in excess and haven’t taken it to their advantage. For many marketers, this data is like finding gold. Utilising this data is what takes a good strategy and makes it great.</p>
<p>Here are a few questions you can ask yourself:</p>
<p>1. What experience are my customers having?<br />
2. What is my customer purchase process?<br />
3. What channels are my customers using to find my business?<br />
4. What channels are my customers using to buy my products/services?<br />
5. What experience are my customers having post sale?<br />
6. How many of my customers are becoming repeat business?<br />
7. Have we surveyed our customers for feedback?</p>
<p>Once you’ve gone through this process and answered all of these queries, you will be equipped with insights on where to improve your customer experience as well as what areas the business needs to improve. Ideally, you will also be able to gain a better appreciation for how to utilise your data at each step of your customers&#8217; purchase process.</p>
<p>The next step as part of your omnichannel strategy will be utilising this data to craft highly targeted messaging. These messages will be specific to where your customers are in the buyer’s journey and tailored to their preferences.</p>
<p>As part of your strategy, this data will also allow you to create automations to better reach out to your customers at the right time, with the right message, effortlessly.</p>
<h3>2. Improve your personalisation with targeted messages</h3>
<p>We just spoke about better targeted messaging. Now to unpack this further.</p>
<p>Personalisation is the heartbeat of an omnichannel marketing strategy. How we utilise the data to create hyper-targeted messages is the core of a successful strategy.</p>
<p>Segmentation is the next step to create personalised messages within your strategy. Segmenting your audiences into different interest groups will help you better create tailored messaging appropriate for their stage of the journey. The intention is to create a message which will provoke a desired action.</p>
<p>As an example, you can identify customers who haven’t made a purchase within the last 30 days. Now you can create a relevant message appropriate to their stage of the buyer’s journey and reach out to them with a promotional offer. Then using the data that you have collated about this type of customer; you can reach out on the platform that will yield the best return and will likely lead to a purchase.</p>
<h3>3. Increased purchase rates</h3>
<p>Utilising data, segmentation, and personalisation, the experience your customers will be having will be far greater than if you were running a Single Channel campaign. This greater experience directly correlates to an increase in purchases.</p>
<p>In 2020, marketing campaigns that utilised several channels vs. those that only ran one, lead to <a href="https://www.omnisend.com/blog/omnichannel-statistics/">a 287% increase in purchases.</a></p>
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4377" src="https://wp.distl.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Single_vs_Several_channels.png" alt="" width="716" height="436" />
<p><em>https://www.omnisend.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Single_vs_Several_channels.png</em></p>
<h3>4. Increased average order</h3>
<p>Not only are customers more likely to order from an omnichannel campaign, on average, they are likely to spend more per order.</p>
<p>Recently, statistics have shown that omnichannel marketing campaigns yield a <a href="https://v12data.com/blog/25-amazing-omnichannel-statistics-every-marketer-should-know/">13% increase in average spending per order.</a></p>
<h3>5. Increased customer loyalty &amp; retention rates</h3>
<p>It can cost up to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2018/09/12/dont-spend-5-times-more-attracting-new-customers-nurture-the-existing-ones/?sh=4235bfa5a8e0">five times more to attract a new custome</a>r than it does to retain an existing one.</p>
<p>Also, according to a study done by Frederick Reichheld from <a href="https://www.bain.com/offices/perth/">Bain &amp; Company</a>; increasing customer retention rates by 5%, can result in profit increases of between 25% &#8211; 95%.</p>
<p>Now to relate this back. Comparing a single channel to an omnichannel marketing strategy, in 2020, <a href="https://v12data.com/blog/25-amazing-omnichannel-statistics-every-marketer-should-know/">customer retention rates were 90% higher</a> when an omnichannel campaign was implemented.</p>
<p>Combining increased purchase rates, increased average order, and increased retention rates, an omnichannel approach effectively sells itself.</p>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>Utilising an omnichannel marketing strategy will allow you to provide more value to your customers and an exceptional &amp; seamless customer experience. With the right business, and implemented correctly, the increase in sales, average order spends, brand awareness, and retention rates can lead to hugely positive results on business growth.</p>
<p>If you’re trying to decide whether an omnichannel marketing approach is right for your business, feel free to <a href="https://distl.com.au/contact-us/">reach out to the team at Distl.</a></p>


What is an omnichannel marketing strategy (and why do I need one?)

<p class="intro-text">Hailing from Turkey, via the United States, Ekin found her way to the Wild Wild West bright-eyed and ready to take on the world of web development.</p>
<p>It was here Ekin began developing her now world-class web development skills. Unbeknownst to her at the time, it was also the beginning of her journey toward Distl.</p>
<p>“While I was a student at UWA, I started my career as a dev by developing a web application solution for a local start up,” Ekin said. And that was just the beginning! After graduating, she continued building up her skills as a software engineer developing VR based learning products; quickly developing a well-rounded skillset.</p>
<p>“I think I have a diverse background in terms of the web technologies I have worked with so I can try to help the team on various types of issues.”</p>
<p>Ekin has been a welcome addition to the Distl family, and in her time here she’s made a huge impact already. With a strong desire to continuously want to improve, she lives and breathes our values by just being her.</p>
<p>“I would love to keep learning and growing as a developer,” Ekin explained.</p>
<p>Aside from her incredible work ethic and eternally positive outlook, she’s also blessed us with continuous fun and laughter. Never taking herself too seriously, she likes to think of herself as “that one comedy-relief character in the Marvel movies”.</p>
<p>After hours, Ekin enjoys writing romance novels (as if she wasn’t talented enough already!), playing Pokemon, online shopping and planning her next amazing set of nails.</p>
<p>We couldn’t be happier to have Ekin on board with us, joining a growing team of female web developers leading the way in some amazing website technologies.</p>
<p>“Distl is the first company I worked at where the majority of our development team are women! It’s absolutely great to see and I’m excited to have more diversity in the dev field in terms of any identity.”</p>


From Turkey to Distl: Ekin’s web development journey

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The recipe for an
unstoppable brand.

Build brand equity. Enjoy sustainable success.

What does all-in branding and digital look like?

Insights

Bots invading your website? Identify and block malicious bot traffic!

What is an omnichannel marketing strategy (and why do I need one?)

From Turkey to Distl: Ekin’s web development journey

The recipe for an unstoppable brand.

Build brand equity. Enjoy sustainable success.

What does all-in branding and digital look like?

Insights

Bots invading your website? Identify and block malicious bot traffic!

What is an omnichannel marketing strategy (and why do I need one?)

From Turkey to Distl: Ekin’s web development journey

The recipe for an
unstoppable brand.