If you’re anything like me, there’s been a time in your life when you’ve asked, “What the heck is https?”
What’s that extra “s” for? Well, it turns out that the “s” stands for “SSL,” which stands for Secure Sockets Layer — the technology that encrypts your connection to a website, so that hackers can’t intercept any of your data.
The whole concept of https is a pretty interesting topic on its own, and we go into detail more about it here (Full Blog Article Link). But in addition to what it actually means, why is it so important? And why do you need it on your website?
Well, there are many reasons, we identified five of the more important ones. (Spoiler alert: A lot of them have to do with your search performance, so have a good look at what they mean for you.)
5 Reasons Why HTTPS Should Be Enabled on Your Website
1) It’s good for search. Google’s algorithm requires sites to essentially battle it for top search
2) It’s better for users. (Safety)
3) SSL is required for AMP.
“AMP” stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It’s the technology that makes certain pages load almost instantaneously on mobile.
4) Google is indexing mobile.
It turns out, Google is actually going to start indexing mobile, which means that its “algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site.”
But in order for a mobile site to be indexable, Google recommends several best practices, one of which is to “start by migrating to a secure site, HTTPS “.
5) “Not secure.”
In January 2017, Chrome 56 started displaying “not secure” in the browser bar for any http (notice it’s missing the “s”) sites that ask users for login or credit card information. This makes online shoppers and visitors nervous, not good for sales. How this for a good reason: only 3% of online shoppers say they would enter their credit card information on a site without the green padlock.
There you have it. If you want your SEO to stay strong — on both desktop and mobile — and you don’t want to lose digital sales revenue, it’s easy to see why https should be enabled on your website.