In the second half of 2018 Google are going to be making a number of algorithm changes that are going to change the way that they rank websites through SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). One of these changes is through SSL certificates.
A while back Google released the news that they prefer secure websites and would rank them a little higher. More recently Google have said that they are going to start punishing websites that are unsecure and fail to add an SSL (secure socket layer) to their websites.
Google will do this by dropping rankings within Google for unsecure sites meaning that less people will be able to find the site depending on how far these ranking drops go meaning that a company could become lesser known and less profitable.
SSLs have always needed to be in place on pages that have geolocation or online payments, meaning that websites have a not secure message next to their URL if they didn’t have an SSL in place, essentially showing customers that their data will not be safe should they submit anything.
Google are also going to be making this more prominent within Google Chrome by adding a red triangle in front of the not secure and changing the text to red. They are doing this to make it more obvious to users that the site they are on is unsecure, and that they are leaving their data with the business, at their own risk.
If you don’t have an SSL certificate your site will be HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) on those pages whereas if you do have it your site will have https in front of the URL.
Why should you enable HTTPS through an SSL on every page for your website?
The first reason as stated above is that Google will be dropping site rankings dependant on how secure a site is. This means that if you have an SSL enabled throughout your website you will have higher rankings than those that don’t.
The second reason is that visitors to your website will think you are a more trustworthy business that can be trusted to hold their personal data should they want to make an order through yourselves.
The S on the end of HTTPS stands for secure so as soon as a user of your website sees this they understand that their data that will be submitted is encrypted and therefore secure.
How can you get an SSL on your website?
To get an SSL on your website you need to purchase a certificate which you then get your site host to activate and install. Once these are installed your site will immediately transfer over to HTTPS within the URL.
We have already moved over a number of our clients over to HTTPS including:
St Gemma’s Hospice Events Section - events.st-gemma.co.uk
FSH Maintenance - fsh-group.co.uk
Prince of Wales Hospice - pwh.org.uk
Monitor IT - monitorit.co.uk
Muta - muta.org.uk
If you would like any help in moving your website over to HTTPS with an SSL Certificate don’t hesitate to call us on 0113 887 1010 or by emailing [email protected]
