You might be asking “Why should my website employe SSL technology?”. The short answer is increased SEO, higher Search Engine Page Ranking and better security.
In 2014 Google started the push towards “SSL Everywhere”. In 2015 Mozilla jointed the campaign with most other internet companies following suite.
What is SSL
SSL is an encryption scheme which encrypt data between your browser and the web server. When setup correct it virtually impossible for a 3rd party to decrypt and read information transferred.
CloudTech SEO increase after switch to SSL
SSL & SEO
To give more incentive to site owners to move to SSL the Google ranking algorithm favours HTTPS websites. While SSL is only one of over 200 singal used to rank your page it can be the tie breaker moving your site above other sites with a similar page rank. The weight of the SSL signal was initially very small but lately it has been increased by Google and all indicators are that it will further be increased over time.
User Experience & Perception
Starting with pages containing credit card or sensitive data entry forms and escating over time all other data entry fields and eventually to all pages websites Google Chrome Browser displays a warning label next to your URL.
While this new label only means that your website does not provide secure
HTTPS connections, users don’t fully understand that, and many feel a sense of unease from seeing that label on a site they are browsing which will negatively affect customer confidence.
Visitor & Data Security
- SSL encryption ensures that a user’s activity cannot be tracked or their information stolen.
- SSL encryption prevents files from being corrupted as they’re transferred
The advantages of moving your website to SSL
- A secure connection gives your customers peace of mind that your website can be trusted and their information is safe.
- SSL will increase your pagerank on Google Search.
- SSL positively affects Google Ads.
- When setup correctly your HTTPS website will load faster than a non HTTPS website.
- Higher conversions as according to a 2016 survey over 80% of users would abandon a purchase or form submissions if they knew the data was send over an insecure connection.
How to move your website to SSL
SSL is a technical mine field with various encryption protocols, encryption protocol versions, certificat types, encryption key strengths. Setup correctly it has many advantages but an incorrect setup will to much more harm than good.
Amphibic ITC expert knowledge and experience in converting websites to SSL to ensure that you will receive all of the gains while avoiding all the pitfalls.
An incorrect setup have serious consequences to the success of your website. At the time writing:
- of the top 10 000 internet domains over 90% had a sub-optimal HTTPS implementation;
- HTTPS was not working correctly over 65% of the top 10 000 domains;
- almost 1 in 4 of the top 10 000 domains where missing a canonical HTTPS version;
- almost 1 in 4 of the top 10 000 domains where using an incorrect redirect code;
- Only 1.9% of the top 1 000 000 websites were using HTTPS by default;
- Buffer, a large international company, saw 90% of their search engine traffic drop of after an incorrect setup when they switched to HTTPS.
