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In August 2014, Google announced that it will start ranking websites based on site security which means that the website that has a site security, will be ranked above those that do not have one. Security has always been a top priority for Google. Adding an SSL 2048 key certificate is important for site owners now.
When you visit a website, it is equally important to know if the website is secured or not. If it is not secured, the information that comes back and forth can be hacked and looked into.
In a recent update from Google, they mentioned that they would start informing the visitors about the unsecured website if they are visiting one. With the new Chrome web update, sites having HTTP instead of HTTPS will generate a warning about not being secured
With HTTPS, your connection becomes utmost secured for anyone to hack into information that has been exchanged between you and the website.
How to identify a secured website?
The ones who have updated their chrome with the latest update i.e. version 68, they will be alerted when visiting an unsecured website. This is how you can identify an unsecured website.
Which all websites will be affected?
As a user, you might think that all the major website will be encrypted and secured by HTTPS which may not be a right assumption. Quite a few major websites that are well known do not have an HTTPS like ESPN.in, Raymond.in, gwalia.co.in and many others. With this we can conclude that all the websites without https will be affected.
What’s the take away for website owners?
With this recent update, site security has become an alarming change that website owners need to embrace. Having an HTTPS will ensure that your customers don’t shy away from your website as data security is very much important. Instead of taking this step from Google as a penalizing procedure, the positive outcome of this is much more that provides a great amount of security to the data exchange between the client and website.
For the benefit of website owners, Google has released a blog post on how to migrate your site from HTTP to HTTPS to make it more secure for your visitors more than ever it was.
How will the new security update affect your website’s ranking?
The websites that are secured might get a slight boost in ranking with the latest update. The boost may not be much but it is better in two ways:
1) Rank boost by Google
2) No negative response from visitors which might decrease your bounce rate and ultimately improve your website ranking.
Currently, the difference isn’t much but Google said it is planning to make its importance feel through rankings that will, in turn, boost the website owners to make their site more secure. Many Seo Companies in India recommends switching into https.
What are the implications of the HTTPS switch on Search Engine Optimization?
It is a worrisome thing for webmasters when the website switches from HTTP to HTTPS as far as SEO is concerned? According to Google, it is a safe bet but this should be handled carefully making sure that your web traffic isn’t taken for a toss. Here are a few tips to for a swift migration:
• From the list of available site security certificate, decide which one will suit your need; Single, Multi-domain or Wildcard certificate.
• Use relative URLs for resources that exist on the same domain
• Use protocol relative URLs for any other domains
• Use 2048-bit key certificates.
• Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robot.txt
• Wherever possible, allowing indexing your pages by search engines.
• Avoid no index robot Meta tags
The Google Webmaster tools have been updated to handle the HTTPS site better along with reporting on them. Tracking will be an important parameter here using the webmaster’s tool.
All in all, website owners should upgrade their website to HTTPS while visitors should make sure they are surfing over a secured website.