Mark Simmons — February 15, 2017 Follow @mixeddigitalThe concept of HTTPS has been an important one, and forward thinking businesses integrated it a long time ago. Because security is a factor that Google takes extremely seriously today, you can bet that’s it’s going to become even more important in the future – we’re talking soon or already here.
New to HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure)? Here’s the definition.
HTTPS is the process used to send information between the browser and the website that you’re connected to. If your site is already HTTPS enabled, it means all communications between a browser and the website are secured (encrypted).
Following are 5 reasons that your website needs to be HTTPS enabled.
1. 2017’s Not Secure Message
We’re listing this reason at the top because 2017 is here, making it something you should take care of sooner rather than later. If your site accepts online payments and it isn’t HTTPS compliant, Chrome is going to start tagging your site as “Not Secure”. Can you imagine how many current and potential customers will avoid your site if the browser tags it as ‘”Not Secure”?
2. Improves SEO Rankings
Google has already officially announced that websites that are SSL/HTTPS will receive preferential treatment over non HTTPS sites. So, if you want to improve your SEO rankings and haven’t switched yet, it’s time to upgrade to HTTPS. Google consistently works to improve the user experience and that’s exactly what HTTPS driven sites do. This brings us to reason #3.
3. Creates a Better User Experience
Most users will not shop on a site today if it doesn’t exhibit a green padlock (meaning the site is HTTPS complaint). If your website is not HTTPS compliant, then not only are you putting your user’s payment information at risk, you are also losing a lot of business. Would you enter your payment information in such a store? With so many hacking incidences making headlines today, users want to know that the businesses they deal with are making an effort to protect them, ensuring that their private information isn’t compromised or stolen.
4. AMP Requires HTTPS
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an innovation that makes web page’s load instantaneously on mobile. Next year (2107), Google is going to start indexing mobile pages, even though a growing amount of web traffic is already being generated through mobile now. Google is likely to rank search results even higher based on the mobile pages of websites. One of the top ranking factors for Google is the loading speed of a website which is another reason that AMP enabled sites will rank significantly higher than non AMP websites. What you need to know is that HTTPS is required for accelerated mobile pages. This means that HTTPS is now a must if you want to maintain and improve your SEO rankings.
5. Google is Indexing Mobile
Because Google is indexing mobile more than ever, its algorithms will principally use the mobile version of a website’s content in order to rank pages from that specific website. What you need to know if you want to rank successfully is that in order for a mobile website to be indexable, Google advises a number of best practices, with one of the most important being to migrate over to a secure, HTTPS driven site.
Bottom line, if you want to improve your site’s user experience, keep your search rankings up and don’t want to lose digital revenue, you need to ensure that your website is HTTPS enabled.
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