Do you know how an SSL certificate can impact your site's search engine rankings? SSL certificates, once found on the web, are now almost essential for businesses of all sizes. But beyond safety and security considerations, installing an SSL certificate may also improve your website's SEO performance and search engine rankings. In this article, we discuss how that happens and the effect that it can have on your website’s visibility in search engine results. So, if you're wondering whether investing in an SSL certificate is worth it, keep reading to find out!
What is an SSL Certificate?
In a nutshell, SSL Certificates are digital identities that secure your website. They are issued to you exclusively and authenticate the connection between your server and the user's browser. SSL certificate encrypts data for transmission, ensuring that private information is safe from hackers and other malicious actors. They also play an important role in improving your search engine rankings as Google rewards websites that utilize SSL technology.
An SSL Certificate is a small data file that digitally binds a cryptographic key to an organization's details. When installed on a web server, it activates the padlock and the https protocol and allows secure connections from a web server to a browser. It helps protect data transmission by encrypting all sensitive information sent between a website and its visitors, including passwords and credit card numbers.
How Does an SSL Certificate Improve Your SEO?
How can an SSL Certificate help with your SEO? Having a secure website is important not only for visitors but also for search engines like Google and Bing. Sites that employ an SSL Certificate are more likely to get priority in rankings, as it shows customers you take their security seriously. Additionally, search engines also factor in the integrity of your website's content when ranking sites in the index, so having an SSL Certificate can help those ratings as well.
The following are some of the factors that can impact the relationship between SSL and SEO rankings:
1. Increased Website Security
If you are looking to increase the security of your website and protect the information of its visitors, then an SSL certificate is a must! An SSL is a digital certificate that ensures secure data transfer between your website, its visitors, and any third-party services you are working with, such as payment processing systems. This added layer of encryption prevents malicious actors from gaining access to sensitive information like passwords and payment details.
2. Improved User Experience
SSL certificates can also improve user experience by making pages load faster due to the use of HTTP/2 protocols which are often heavily used with HTTPS websites. Additionally, Google Chrome will show a warning to visitors when visiting a page without an SSL certificate installed indicating that the site is "Not secure". Giving visitors peace of mind that their visit is secure can be beneficial overall.
3. Domain Authority Boost
Google has stated on multiple occasions that they use SSL/HTTPS certificates as a ranking signal in their algorithm when determining where websites should appear in search engine results pages (SERPs). Google has implied that if all other ranking factors are equal between two different websites, then the one with the HTTPS connection may have a better chance of outranking its competitor in SERPs simply by having an encryption protocol enabled on its domain name.
4. Trust and Credibility
Having an SSL certificate installed on your website not only builds trust from your visitors but also search engines like Google bots which may decide to crawl or index more content if it trusts your domain name more than others without encryption protocols enabled on them. This increases trust among customers who might be hesitant about supplying sensitive data such as credit card numbers or personal information knowing that it is encrypted during transit from their computers over to yours safeguarding against prying eyes.
5. Better Ranking in Search Engines
Using HTTPS protocol on your website is beneficial for improving your ranking in Google. Encryption through Certificate Authority software and the TLS 1.3 transfer protocol provides security, speed optimization, and increased confidence to visitors who may be sharing sensitive data. Additionally, setting up the appropriate layers of protection not only enhances customer experience but also reinforces trust and credibility, leading to improved search engine rankings due to high-quality standards of security and safety delivered to customers.
What is the Difference Between HTTP vs. HTTPS?
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is a protocol that enables communication between different systems. It is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web and is used to transfer files, such as text, images, audio, video — and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) – across the internet.
HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), in comparison, is an encrypted version of HTTP that provides additional security when transferring sensitive data across the internet. Installing an SSL Certificate on your web server encrypts traffic between the user’s browser and your web server to protect the data being transmitted. This ensures that any personal data sent by users remains secure during transmission.
HTTPS As Ranking Signal
When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), a lot of people wonder if having an SSL certificate can help boost their website's ranking signal. It turns out, the answer is yes! Google officially declared in 2014 that HTTPS is now one of its core ranking signals, confirming the correlation between security and SEO. Having a secure connection on your website through HTTPS is essential for both improving its ranking signal and keeping users safe.
Search engines want to make sure that online users can access accurate information through secure websites and get a reliable user experience without the threat of any scams or malicious activities. This is why they rank up sites that prioritize security over others and vows to lower the rankings of sites operating on HTTP protocols. As such, it's clear that webmasters should act quickly on securing their sites with SSL certificates as soon as possible to conserve or achieve higher rankings in SERPs.
Dangers of Not Having an SSL Certificate
Without the protection of a properly applied SSL Certificate, your website is much more vulnerable to web attacks such as malware and phishing. Furthermore, if search engines detect that your website has been breached, they may respond by reducing or even eliminating your website from its index. This could have a significant negative impact not just on your search engine rankings but also on your website’s traffic and overall visibility.
Conclusion
In conclusion, installing an SSL certificate on your web server is the only proper way to ensure that you are secure, and your visitors are safe. It is also important to remember that having a secure website will help boost your SEO rankings as outlined in this article. Obtaining and installing an SSL certificate is not too difficult and can be done relatively easily with the help of a Certificate Authority at an affordable cost.