Google has announced that it will give websites that are using secure, encrypted HTTPS certificates a boost in ranking over other websites. This change is aimed at promoting better internet security, in an effort to make everyone safer when browsing the internet. With such a rise in online crime and identity theft, Google is making a valid attempt to stress the importance of HTTPS protocol and SSL encryption to all web developers and/or website owners out there.
There have been some concerns within the online development community in regards to incorporating SSL encryption for SEO purposes. Google has stressed that if implemented correctly, SSL encryption will not negatively influence a website’s rankings or traffic.
Here are some tips from Google to make sure that you implement your SSL certificate properly:
-Determine the type of certificate your website requires- options are single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificates
-Use 2048-bit key certificates
-Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
-Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
-Check out our site move article for more guidelines on how to change your website’s address
-Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
-Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the noindex robots meta tag.
Some are saying that it is unfair that Google can implement such a rule, and that it is the web developers or website owners choice in regards to implementing SSL. Google has also said that the boost is only a very small boost, and will impact ranking percentages by less than 1 percent. In fact, proper ranking factors, such as unique content and alt tags, will influence rankings much more.All in all, we feel that this is a good move for the general online community. SSLs should be more utilized on websites, especially in today’s day and age.
