Security Trends: Get On Board with HTTPS vs. HTTP for SEO

If you’re a business owner, somebody’s probably already encouraged you to change your website over from HTTP to HTTPS encryption.

Why is this so important? What’s the difference between HTTP and HTTPS, anyhow? What sort of benefit does HTTPS bring for your company’s search engine optimization? How does that one extra letter make any kind of difference?

Let’s talk.

What’s the Difference Between HTTP And HTTPS?

HTTP stands for “hypertext transfer protocol.” It’s a basic system for sending information back and forth over the internet from point A to point B. HTTP communication transfers data quickly between a server and a browser, making it easy for viewers to access the pages they want to see.

The problem with HTTP is that it isn’t encrypted. It doesn’t take much for a third party with the right equipment and know-how to access the data passing between that server and browser. That’s where the “S” in HTTPS comes in.

HTTPS is basically a secure version of HTTP. HTTPS uses an SSL certificate, or secure sockets layer, to add a layer of encryption to the connection between the web server and browser when information is exchanged.

Why Is HTTPS So Important To Your Business?

Once upon a time, only banks and government institutions bothered with HTTPS security. They had the only websites that usually collected enough of an individual’s personal data to make it worth the extra investment to have the secure encryption.

Eventually, consumers started to notice that a few websites boasted about their HTTPS encryption. Consumers began to catch on to the importance of a secure server when they were transmitting sensitive information -- like their credit card numbers -- and they shied away from doing business with sites that didn’t have it.

As a response, more companies started to shift toward HTTPS, particularly if they did a lot of online business -- although there were still a lot of laggers and late adopters. Some brands got around the issue by using third-party paysites that already had encryption, like Paypal, to take their online payments. Other brands figured that HTTPS wasn’t important for them because they didn’t do a lot of online sales.

Today, however, every business site that collects any form of customer data should have HTTPS. HTTPS offers your customers the security they deserve when they interact with you -- and it may be the only way to gain their trust and business.

Consumers today worry about their identities being stolen more than twice as much as they worry about their homes being robbed. The majority of consumers say that their willingness to give up their personal information to a company depends solely on their level of trust for that company -- and 87% will purchase what they want elsewhere if they don’t believe their data is secure.

Considering that identity theft and fraud is a $16.8 billion dollar business and data breaches and cyber attacks are constantly in the news, consumers have good reason to be worried. They expect every business that wants their information -- even yours -- to be responsive to their security concerns.

So, if you want to gain information about your customer base, whether it’s demographic data or their level of interest in your various products, you need to offer them a secure means of transmitting that information to you.

How Does HTTPS Impact SEO?

Search engine optimization relies on a lot of different factors working together -- and encryption security is one of those factors.

Google has long been in the forefront of the push toward secure website encryption. As far back as 2014, it began heavily encouraging websites to switch to HTTPS by using it as one of their ranking signals in search algorithms. That automatically makes HTTPS an advantage when it comes to getting your website listed higher in the search results!

As of July 2018, Google announced that people using Chrome (a group that includes about half of the world’s internet users) would begin seeing a prominent notice on sites without security encryption. This means all non-HTTPs sites will have the message in their address box next to the page’s web address that says “Not secure.”

Initially, you can expect your customers to see this on HTTP pages:

How would that make you feel if you had just landed on a new website while looking for a particular product or service? Reactions will likely get worse when Chrome rolls out the second-stage warning that’s expected to look like this

You can pretty much anticipate an uncomfortable reaction from your customers and potential customers -- many of whom may almost immediately decide to take their business elsewhere.

Most consumers aren’t going to wait around to determine if a site is safe to browse through or not -- even if they aren’t yet exchanging information with you. The phrase “not secure” is a trigger for many to go somewhere their data is protected.

That instant reaction from consumers may do even more to impact the way Google’s algorithm sees your site in terms of relevance, authority, and trust. If a large number of visitors quickly bounce from your site, that will also hurt your search rankings. It may also affect your ability to get clicks on your links -- which can also feed a decline in optimization and rankings as fewer people turn to your content for the information they need.

Ultimately, of course, less security means a loss in customer confidence, so you may also notice an abrupt decline in how many conversions you’re making as new prospects find you.

Get On Board With Online Safety Today

You want to do everything you can to encourage trust from your current and prospective customers. In today’s world, that means showing them that you respect their data and share their concerns about security -- and that means switching to HTTPS if you haven’t already.