SSL can help you enormously in search rankings in a number of ways. It is already known to you that your website requires SSL certificate for security purposes but did you know that SSL can boost SEO rankings?
Yes, it is true.
Just putting in SSL can supply you a boost to your website, however SSL is additionally a requirement for different optimizations like Accelerated Mobile Pages and HTTP/2.
HTTPS is a Search Ranking Signal
Back in 2014, Google introduced that it was once adding HTTPS as a rating signal. Since this announcement, the significance of adding HTTPS has increased overwhelmingly. According to some experts and research, it is estimated that HTTPS can provide a boost up to 5%. The announcement made marketers passionate towards getting their websites secure. They want to know how SSL can boost SEO rankings and which SSL certificate is best for them. Marketers want to learn how the SSL can improve the user experience.
When you buy an SSL certificate, it’s vital that you configure your whole internet site for HTTPS.
This is adverse to simply installing on webpages that require SSL for information protection purposes. There are a number of reasons for this and the most important is user privacy. User privacy is achieved by blocking third parties from seeing what pages they’re viewing. But for the best results it is recommended that you get your entire website over HTTPS as it improves your SEO too.
Is it worth having SSL?
The debate is ever going but still most of the webmasters are still confused that whether the installation of SSL is worth the effort. The reason of this confusion is that how do they get to know that whether the boost in sales is due to SSL or any other reason. In real, only 1.9% of the top-most 1 million websites are secured and redirect to HTTPS/SSL. If you take a look to the Quantcast top 10,000 websites- only around 4.3% of websites have shifted to secure version. So in real, only 0.1% of the websites are secure. Most is of the webmasters have no plan to even switch towards Thawte SSL. But, the fact is, not all websites are e-commerce websites and a vast percentage of all the websites may not involve any exchange of payments or personal information.
How does HTTPS/SSL work
The basic advantage of Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is that it provides a secure connection to users. It means that the pages they are using for sharing personal data are secure and no hacker can see the details. The users enjoy the comfort while sharing credit card information and bank details. It will be great if you have GeoTrust SSL Certificates for your entire website. HTTPS adds extra layer of protection on the pages that are secured through SSL.
We are using HTTPS and SSL interchangeably as Secure Socket Layer certificate is the protocol that HTTPS uses. SSL certificate enables you to encrypt the information and keeps communication secure between visitor’s browser and your website. Secure Socket Layer is abbreviated as SSL and the word “encryption” is derived from it. While providing security, the small date files bind a cryptographic key to company’s credentials. SSL certificates bind the domain names, server names and also the organization information. In organization information, you can keep your name, location or any other specifics confidential.
Google has identified that if all other factors are same, HTTPS can act as a game changer in the search engine results. The real time example of Cloudtec observed almost double the number of top 10 search engine rankings, after switching to HTTPS. So this is actual example of how SSL can boost SEO rankings.
Are HTTPS websites getting benefit from the Search Engine Result Page(SERP)
An analysis of 1 million Google search results was done by Brian Dean. He teamed up with SEMrush, Ahrefs, SimilarWeb and MarketMuse to analyze the figures. He found that HTTPS is moderately correlated with higher search rankings on the search engine giant’s first page. So this shows that SSL can boost SEO rankings.
On the basis of his analysis, the following pointers were emphasized”
- A website owner should not switch to HTTPs only for SEO purposes. Switching to HTTPS requires intense resources and there isn’t a strong correlation between two.
- It will be ideal if you have HTTPS from day 1, in case you are starting a new website. In this way you can make it as part of your initial investment and account it as a way that SSL can boost SEO rankings.
Another study for analyzing that how SSL can boost SEO rankings was done by Moz. The analysis was based on 17,600 keyword search results from Google.com (US). The search engine ranking factors were analyzed. Again, Moz found a slight positive correlation between the https URL and rankings.
Conclusion and Recommendations
HTTPS is not the biggest ranking factor for search engines right now. But, it might have a huge impact on websites in coming years. It may become one factor that marketers may strongly consider the fact that SSL can boost SEO rankings.
In order to move towards the shift, Google has incentivized moving to HTTPS. It is enormously possible that Chrome browsers will soon start shaming your unencrypted website. They won’t like browsers to be served with an unsecured HTTP version.
But, make the HTTPS switch only if it is economically feasible for your business.
- If you have website that is for blogs and articles and requires only email address, then you may not opt for HTTPS. It will be better idea to spend your limited budget in some other area. It has been publicly announced by Bing that it has no plans to give websites with HTTPS a ranking push.
- In order to be in your budget, You can also selectively switch to HTTPS versions on the payment pages. This will make secure connection for your customers.