Still not running a secure site? Time to jump on the SSL bandwagon. Google has warned since 2014 that websites with an SSL certificate will rank higher than the same site without one. Here are some points regarding making the move to a secure website.
Should you be concerned when switching from your HTTP to HTTPS site for SEO purposes? Not really. Google has been telling webmasters it is safe to do so for years. Although you need to take the proper steps to ensure your traffic doesn’t suffer. That means make sure to communicate to Google that you moved your site from HTTP to HTTPS. Google promises to release more documentation in the future, but for now has provided the following tips:
- Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate, need help deciding? Ask us about SSL’s
- Use 2048-bit key certificates
- Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
- Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
- Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
- Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the noindex robots meta tag.
Google has also updated Google Webmaster Tools to better handle HTTPS sites and the reporting on them. Make sure to track your HTTP to HTTPS migration carefully in your analytics software and within Google Webmaster Tools. Reach out with any questions
