- February 15th 2017
- SEO
Now Is the Time to go Secure (HTTPS) – This is Why
Transcript from Video:
Hi, I’m Geoff from Leapfrog Internet Marketing. This is an explanation why I feel now is the time to go secure with your website.
So, when the Internet was born, all websites were HTTP, there was no S after the P, and they looked like this. And then back in 2014, Google was aware that cyber security was becoming more of an issue and they were concerned about the web not being secure. And they made going HTTPS by adding an SSL security certificate a very small ranking factor, so it helped your rankings in some way. So this is where you put the certificate on, and then on each and every page on the website, it’s HTTPS.
Now, since then, there has been a slight uptick and probably maybe under 5% of the web is now secure. But Google wants to now up the ante and force more and more people to make their websites secure. And what they’re now doing is in Google Chrome, which is the most popular browser that people use in the UK, if they come on to a website that collects credit card details or secure information, you’ll get this kind of sign here saying “not secure.”
Now, clearly, this is going to put off a lot of people that have come to your website. At the moment it’s only on pages that collect secure information like credit cards, but my prediction is by the end of the year it’s going to be on all websites. And I feel the next stage after that is actually going back one step to the Google search results, much like Google put a marker saying mobile-friendly or not about two or three years ago, they’ll put something about secure or not secure in the search results.
And so it’s almost irrelevant whether or not putting a security certificate on your website helps your SEO. You should just do it because you don’t want to scare your potential clients. I hope that answers any questions. If you’ve got any questions, let me know.
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