Is your website HTTPS secure?

Is your website HTTPS secure?

As of January 2017, Google along with other major web browser vendors require all websites to have an SSL Secure Certificate.

Why do I need this?

• To ensure your website visitors will feel more secure when visiting your site.
  • Google wants to move towards a more secure web, and to help users browse the web safely.
    As of January 2017 (Chrome 56), will mark HTTP pages that collect passwords or credit cards as non-secure, as part of a long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure. Studies show that users do not perceive the lack of a "secure" icon as a warning, but also that users become blind to warnings that occur too frequently. 
  • Google is encouraging all website owners to switch form HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.
• To improve your SEO ( Search engine optimisation )
  • Back in 2014 Google said " Over the past few months we've been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We've seen positive results, so we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it's only a very lightweight signal - affecting less than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content - while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because we'd like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web." 
  • While HTTPS is only a very small ranking signal. It won't make you suddenly rank #1 for each and every keyword, but if your website and another website tie on every other ranking signal then having HTTPS will make you rank higher. For highly competitive keywords you surely don't want to get burned by something as trivial as not supporting HTTPS. HTTPS is not only good for security but also for referrer data and other SEO strategies. When looking at the issue holistically and considering the future of what Google is likely to do with HTTPS, it is recommended to switch over to HTTPS, ASAP, to keep up with Google.

Please contact myself or Digital Stream to upgrade your website.