As far back as 2014, Google announced that it would like to see “HTTPS Everywhere,” referring to secure search. The search engine giant indicated that it wanted to make the internet a safer place by ensuring that anyone connected to its services through Gmail, Google Drive, or its browser have a secure connection.
While some webmasters took the hint and switched from HTTP to HTTPS, there was not enough adoption of the secure service to satisfy Google. In 2018, the company announced that it had already begun marking some HTTP sites as “not secure” and would mark all such websites this way by July 2018.
As of February 2018, Google stated that more than 78% of the traffic on Chrome OS and Mac was protected and 81 of the top 100 websites were using HTTPS. But, if you haven’t made this adjustment yet, there are significant SEO advantages to switching to HTTPS. We also have some tips to help you switch your website to HTTPS.
HTTP vs. HTTPS: What You Need To Know
HTTP is short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. This is a structure used to transfer and receive information on the web. HTTP is an application layer protocol, meaning it will submit data to the user regardless of the channel required to accomplish this. It is also stateless, so it forgets earlier sessions and uses less data and can have faster speeds because of this.
HTTP has generally been used to access HTML pages. It has been a useful protocol for websites that are simple and don’t house any sort of confidential information, such as credit card information, names, and birth dates. How do you know if your site is using the HTTP protocol? This is simple enough to determine. When you look at your browser window, it will show: “http://www.yourwebsite.com/.”
HTTPS is short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. The main issue with the HTTP protocol is that the data flowing from the server to the browser (and vice versa) is not secure. This creates a vulnerability where hackers can access sensitive information such as financial data and the information necessary to steal an identity.
An HTTPS protocol fixes this problem by adding encryption in the middle with an SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate. Encryption from the SSL layer will scramble the data on one end and then translate it back into something meaningful on the other. Anyone who happens to intercept that data in the middle (such as a hacker) would not get their hands on anything that they could use because they won’t have the SSL “key.”
HTTPS is similar to HTTP in that it doesn’t matter what path is taken to reach the destination and the data is always presented to the end user in a form that is appealing. The difference is that there is an added layer of security with HTTPS as the data moves from one place to another.
The SEO Advantages of Moving to HTTPS
HTTPS has been in use for years with websites that handle sensitive data. This includes your online banking portal and healthcare management website. Now we are seeing a shift in the use of these protocols, largely driven by Google’s mandate and the desire to either maintain or achieve the best search engine rankings.
When Google announced that it wanted everyone to have HTTPS in 2018, it also made it clear that those who chose to do this could receive a rankings boost. This means that those who ignored the mandate would find themselves at a disadvantage. If you are looking for some incentive to make this change, there are several SEO advantages to switching to HTTPS.
Increase Your Website Rankings
Google has made it clear that those websites that switch to HTTPS are going to do better in the search engines. When given a choice between two sites that have other similar ranking data, the company says that it will favor the one with HTTPS over HTTP.
Preserve Referrer Data
Google analytics will become more effective if you use the HTTPS protocol. This is because HTTPS preserves the security of data from referred websites. With HTTP, this is just listed as “direct traffic,” and it is not secure.
Build Trust with Visitors
Since HTTPS encrypts all transferred data, visitors can have peace of mind knowing that anything they do on their website is protected. This includes not just credit card and password information but also browsing history. Since consumers are now more safety and privacy conscious, this will help you build trust.
Be Able to Use AMP
Google has created a service known as AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), that you can use to load a web page onto a mobile device at a faster speed. In other words, you can give mobile users a better experience if you switch to HTTPS.
Steps to Know When Switching the Website to HTTPS
Considering the SEO benefits of switching to HTTPS, it’s not surprising that so many website owners are now jumping on board. The good news is that this isn’t a difficult process. Here are some simple steps to switch your website to HTTPS.
Choose a Type of SSL Certificate
You have several choices of SSL type depending on your requirements.
- Domain Validated (DV) Certificate – This is the most basic SSL Certificate and is best for a site that doesn’t deal with sensitive information.
- Organization Validated (OV) Certificate – These are mid-range certificates and often used by commercial websites.
- Extended Validation (EV) Certificate – This represents the highest level of security and trust in an SSL certificate.
Choose the Certificate Authority
Once you’ve settled on a certificate type, you’ll need to purchase it from a private company or use a free option for a personal or hobby site. The company will verify your identity and website ownership before issuing the product. The best companies will provide you with the support you need and have short validation times so that you can get up and running quickly.
If you are running a personal site that is non-commercial, you can choose to install the standard Let’s Encrypt SSL. Let’s Encrypt is a trusted CA that is open and free to use. You can get the pre-installed Let’s Encrypt SSL at certain hosting companies like SiteGround (see the screenshot above).
Install Your SSL Certificate
The next step is to install the SSL Certificate on your website. You can do this by accessing your cPanel. Then, go to the “Security” options and “SSL/TLS Manager.”
After you have completed the installation, you need to verify that your setup was done correctly. You can use tools such as free SSL validation tool to validate whether your SSL setup was successful.
Are There Any SEO Concerns in Switching to HTTPS?
While there aren’t necessarily “concerns” about switching to HTTPS since there are so many benefits to doing so, you will need to take care of a few housekeeping items so that the process is as smooth as possible.
Advise Google that you’ve switched from HTTP to HTTPS
There isn’t an automatic notification system letting the search engine know that you’ve made this important adjustment. Since you were promised a ranking boost for doing this, it makes sense that you’d want to ask Google to crawl your site again as soon as possible.
Make sure Google can crawl and index your pages
Check your robots.txt file to make sure that you aren’t preventing any search engines from crawling and indexing your site.
Diligently track your migration from HTTP to HTTPS
Use Google Webmaster Tools or your other analytics software to track your migration so that you backtrack and troubleshoot any errors.
Google has also released a list of specific tips to follow when making URL changes, which are relevant when migrating from HTTP to HTTPS:
- Using 2048-bit key security certificates, generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) on your server.
- Make sure that your SSL certificate remains current.
- For resources that reside on the same domain, be sure to use relative URLs.
- Confirm that you own both the new and old (HTTP and HTTPS) destination sites in the Search Console.
- Use 301 redirects to send pages from the old HTTP URLs to the new HTTPS URLs (mod_rewrite can be used for this).
- Avoid irrelevant and unnecessary redirects that could be treated as a soft 404 error.
- Obtain and configure the TLS certificates that are required for your server.
- Confirm that your website returns the correct HTTP status code.
- Provide the correct 404 or 410 error response codes for any content from the old website that will not be transferred to the new site.
Conclusions
Even though you might feel pressured to switch to HTTPS by big business, you’ll get some benefits by taking a few simple steps. Your website will get the rankings boost that Google promises to sites that fall in line and you will also be able to assure the safety and privacy of your visitors. In the end, you’ll be a more trustworthy web citizen.
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