Do you need to switch to HTTPS?

HenaryMagas

Member
Hello everyone,

SEO ranking is crucial for any website and any feature that does this, can help attain a crucial lead over your competitors.

Does switching to Https improve SEO rankings in any way?

In case you do not have an e-commerce website, you do not need to make the switch? just using standard protocol is enough for you?

Your responses would be much appreciated.
 

RDO Servers

Active Member
I believe there is a tradeoff to consider.

Yes, having a secure site (SSL/https) is now a ranking factor for Google, but I believe it is quite a small impact.

Page speed is also a (small) ranking factor.

https is slightly slower than http since the information has to be encrypted/decrypted when it is sent/received.

If your site is properly optimised and hosted on a fast server, then this speed difference wont make a difference.

However, if your site is running slow due to poor hosting, too many plugins, not optimised, etc, then then added time for https communication may cause you to be penalised due to slow speed, more then the positive effect of having a https (from a purely SEO standpoint).

If your site involves customer transmitting personal information back and forth, by all means use a SSL for security and customer peace of mind!
 

elcidofaguy

Active Member
HTTPS is only relevant in the correct context i.e. situations when you collect personal information such as ecommerce sites when placing an order.. and even then its only relevant to that page... Its only in that situation when G will give some credit for taking such steps...

So unless you plan on collecting personal/sensitive data such as credit card, address etc then there is absolutely no point in getting/using HTTPS... Think about this.. Why would a blog article rank better with HTTPS vs HTTP... It just doesn't happen, there is no supporting evidence of that happening and it makes no sense why it should rank better... Keep in mind there are over 200 ranking factors....

BTW - If you're an e-commerce site you can avoid all of that headache with using a third party payment processor i.e. PayPal which handles secure payments... Its also worth noting email signups i.e. entering your name and email is not considered sensitive data, hence optin pages also fall outside of needing HTTPS...
 

Dean

Well-Known Member
Google uses this as a ranking factor and has for some time so it will help the SEO for your site but only a very little and it's usually only in certain cases of two sites being equal in all other ranking factors.

If you have an ecommerce website then it is very helpful to help instill trust in your buyers. Even if you don't process payments on your website directly it is still a good idea to have one. If you do process payments on your site then you need to have it for sure for security purposes.

Most sites don't need it but it can help in some ways.

Cheers, Dean.
 

Ben

Active Member
Google said that they started using it as a ranking factor but if that's true and how much of a difference it will make, if any, will only be known to them. I think that they like to scare people into using something that they themselves want to be used. If you have an ecommerce store then you should use it but for security as the main reason and not seo.
 

vishwa

Active Member
Google indeed announced that they will consider https as a ranking factor. But they did not make it mandatory for every webmasters to rank their site. So, There is no need to worry about it. However site with https make more trust among users and it will give you extra opportunity for your site SEO.
 
As an SEO or business owner, you understand that using HTTPS is a good thing.

But is it really necessary?

Well, there are two benefits to having it:

  • a small boost in rankings (possibly larger in the future)
  • a more secure site for your users
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
Switching your site to an HTTPS website will gain a very small SEO advantage but you also have to consider other factors in deciding if you need to switch or not.

Some things to consider are the possible extra costs for an SSL, the sometimes slightly slower page load times for an HTTPS website, are you collecting sensitive information from your website visitors like credit card numbers and a number of other things.

Just switching to an HTTPS website has other things that you need to consider before just making the jump. ;)
 
HTTPS is having very small impact on SEO, however it may affect the site's speed. Otherwise there are so many factors which are having impact on SEO. If anyone is here having experience in review writing and posting services then please let me know. I need it to write for my company website. Please PM me.
 
Last edited:
Hello everyone,

SEO ranking is crucial for any website and any feature that does this, can help attain a crucial lead over your competitors.

Does switching to Https improve SEO rankings in any way?

In case you do not have an e-commerce website, you do not need to make the switch? just using standard protocol is enough for you?

Your responses would be much appreciated.

Switching from HTTP to HTTPS helps to improve the trust by the search engine. It might help in SEO but its part is very small.

I believe that it was not necessary for the non-e-commerce sites (site which does not do any transactions )
 

matteomatt

Member
Im still considering it myself at the moment. I don't feel like I have a need for it yet because I don't do any transactions. If I can afford to, I want to try eventually for the extra ranking and security, but right now its not worth it for my small sites.
 
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