Why you should enable HTTPS on your website

Posted by Andrei on January 18, 2017 in Security

Why is Google doing this? Mainly because it wants to make the web more secure. Google has already announced HTTPS as a ranking signal, also indexing secure pages over unsecured pages. You can even read their guide on securing your website with HTTPS.

Now, you may ask yourself what’s the difference between HTTP and HTTPS. Well, is all about the extra S, that comes from “SSL,” which means Secure Sockets Layer, a certain technology that encrypts your connection to a website, so that intruders can’t intercept any of your data.

Here’s why every website owner should consider switching to a HTTPS website.

First of all, HTTPS is really important for SEO. It seems that when two websites rank for the same position in Google searches, then the one with HTTPS can get the extra boost for winning the race, according to Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes.

HTTPS protects your users and their privacy. SSL prevents hackers from listening or “eavesdropping” to communications between your websites and your users. You may think only websites that handle sensitive data, like credit card information, need HTTPS. A common mistake. Even if you don’t have an online shop, your unprotected website can reveal sensible information about the behaviors and identity of your users. That’s why is very important to win the trust of your users by protecting their data against these kind of attacks.

SSL is important for AMP. Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP it’s a technology that makes certain pages load almost instantaneously on mobile. So, try searching something on Google mobile app and you will probably notice that some results have a special AMP designation that looks like a bolt. This means that those pages will load almost instantaneously. Google already announced that AMP is going to play a major role in SEO, making these a priority for 2017. It seems that pages with AMP will rank better on search engines.

Google will start to index mobile websites. This means that its ”algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site.” Google recommends some best practices for your mobile website to be indexable and one of them is to start switching to a secure site, especially “if [you] don’t support HTTPS yet.”

Avoid the label “not secure”. As we already said in the first part of this article, Google Chrome 56 will start displaying “not secure” in the browser bar for any unsecured site (without HTTPS) that require the login or credit card information of their users. It goes without saying that if a customer sees that warning and he is about to make an online purchase, he will probably leave your website in a heartbeat. And this will translate in a traffic and sales decrease.

Now, these are just a few reasons why HTTPS is vital for your website. Hopefully, after reading the above, you’ll understand why you need to enable HTTPS on your website as soon as possible.