Is your website secure?
If the answer is no then you should be looking to change your site to https in 2017
Https has been around for quite some time now and according to a recent study around 50% of page 1 search results are https websites. This is expected to increase significantly throughout the remainder of 2017, based on the current trend in the increase in percentage rate being seen.
Source: Moz.com
Google has tried to encourage websites to convert to https versions of their website in the past with a small ranking boost being provided in the organic search listings for having a https website. However Google is now looking to warn website users when they are browsing and unsecure website. This is something that eventually could have an impact on the conversion rate of your website.
Google Warnings Signs Being Introduced
Google is recommending that all websites consider switching to https by installing an SSL certificate to help provide a more secure experience on your website and Google is slowly introducing new measures that will warn users of websites who do not have secure environments to browse.
Google is introducing new warning signs on it’s Chrome browser that appear when a user is browsing an unsecure web page.
With Google Chrome being the most used web browser worldwide it means if your website is not https configured then you could potentially be harming the potential conversion rate on your website.
Source: gs.statcounter.com
Percentage share has also been increasing at a larger rate in Asia in the last 6 months.
Source: gs.statcounter.com
At present Google provides warning signs on pages that are not https compliant that provide a form to log in to a secure area and also for pages that ask request personal information to be submitted via a form.
This means if your password or credit card information pages are not https configured on your website, users could be seeing the following warning messages appear on your browser.
Source: googleblog.com
Google has warned that eventually it will be providing warning signs for all web pages that are not https configured
Source: googleblog.com
How can you move your website to https
If your website is in http then to eliminate the risk of your website visitors seeing warning messages you need to migrate to a https version of your website.
Key requirements needed to migrate from http to a https website:
- You need to acquire an SSL certificate for your website and this can be done by obtaining a free or paid certificate version from specialist providers online.
- You need to ensure your current web hosting environment is configured to be able to host a https website on the current server. If not you may need to upgrade your hosting.
- You need to ensure that all your current existing http URLs will be redirected to your new https equivalent URLS
- You need to make sure all your existing images on your site are changed to link to https image URLs
- Existing links within content on your website may also need to be changed to link to https version
Migrating your website to a https version can provide you organic search benefits within Google however we recommend you gain the support of people who have expertise and experience in migrating http websites to https versions, otherwise there is a risk that you could negatively impact your existing website visibility in the organic search results.
Our recent re-launch in of our website included migrating to a https version of our domain and we able to migrate our website efficiently.
At TaksuDigital.com we have had the benefit of managing many https website migrations over the last 5 years and more, so if you would like some support on migrating your website to make sure you maintain your SEO visibility in the process then please reach out to us at contact@taksudigital.com
