Assuming every other SEO factors being equal between two web pages, a small ‘s’ can make a difference in the SEO ranking. I am talking about the ‘s’ in ‘HTTPs’. Security has long since become a critical factor in SEO ranking. Apart from the SEO advantage, there are several other benefits why your business must have HTTPS enabled for its websites.
Understanding Https And Its Business Implications
HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. The secure is the additional ‘S’ which means that the website is configured with an SSL certificate.
An SSL certificate is a bite-sized certificate that is used to encrypt information sent and received over the Internet. This is particularly of great use in banking, eCommerce, social media and other websites where security is of prime importance. With SSL certificate, the web is slowly becoming a safer place.
To put it in perspective, HTTPS establishes a safety tunnel for data to transfer between two sides; the client-side system and the server-side system.
Here is how an HTTPS website works:
- User accesses the HTTPS website and makes a request, like giving data input in forms for logging in
- The client-side server checks the DNS records of the website to find its host
- Once the DNS records are found, the user request is forwarded to the host server
- The host server requests for a secure connection that is encrypted using an SSL Certificate
- Host responses with valid SSL certificate
- Finally, a safe and secure connection is established between the user system and web host.
Benefits that HTTPS brings to your business
It is common knowledge that HTTPS pushes your business to the top charts of search engine rankings. However, there are several others benefits that it brings to a business.
Four, to be more precise. While two are technical and can be more easily appreciated by a technical person, the other two are benefits that will reflect on your business easily.
Beneficial for AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP is an open-source initiative that aims to improve web experience by improving the performance of web contents on mobile devices. Web pages enabled with AMP load faster, almost instantly without any delay. AMP works by inserting a code into the website’s backend. AMP web pages are indicated by a lightning mark making it more inviting for visitors to click on them.
But, not all websites can be made AMP-ready as AMP needs HTTPS to work. So, if your website is still stuck in the HTTP era, you need to upgrade it to HTTPS. In the future, when techniques like AMP will become mandatory, you don’t have much choice but to upgrade to HTTPS. It is better to upgrade now and stay ahead of the curve.
Updated browser labels
If you have noticed the address bar of Chrome browser for some websites, they appear in variations like these if still using HTTP:
As you can see from the image, Google is already marking HTTP pages as insecure or doubtful.
Only HTTPS pages are passed as safe. That green HTTPS and padlock symbol goes a long way in making visitors feel safe. Especially, if you are running an online store or a website that collects sensitive information.
HTTPS will update your browser labels as secure. It goes a long way in making your site visitors stay longer without bouncing off.
Improves creases online conversions
Shopping security concerns is one of the common reasons why customers are abandoning shopping carts. It is also what is stopping a large population of third world countries from moving to digital banking and payment systems.
HTTPS can fix all those insecurities easily. The green text of HTTPS and the padlock symbol is easily identified by any user as a sign of web security. This helps improve online conversions, be it for an online store or for a business website.
Boosts customer confidence
HTTPS is enabled with the help of an SSl certificate. When you buy an SSL certificate from an authorized reseller of Comodo SSL certificates, you can also get a good discount price as well as free trust seals and badges. By displaying these seals and badges on website’s checkout pages or where you accept confidential information from users, helps to decrease cart abandonment. Trust seals and badges look something like this:
Winding It Up
HTTPS is a critical factor in SEO. Google has long since hinted and established in action that websites with HTTPS are given first priority. Even today, a majority of the first-page results are HTTPS websites. HTTP websites are losing an edge over their secure counterparts.
Apart from the SEO advantage, there are also several other advantages that upgrading to HTTPS brings to a business. Like increasing conversions, boosting customer confidence on the website.
Having said that, perhaps, now is the best time to shift from HTTP to HTTPS, because, sooner or later HTTPS will become the norm of the web. You will be too late by then. It is better to start early and move with the trend. You will also gain the trust of your customers.
There will be slight glitches in the upgrade process. Like your SEO juice not getting carried over or the boost in search ranking as beneficial as before.
