Fully On page optimized website rank better in search engine. now google announced new on page seo factor for HTTPS as a ranking signal. HTTPS is all about the Gaining of trust of website users by showing ssl protected signal.
Google has been constantly giving new updates for its ranking factors since its birth. The news of “HTTPS as a ranking signal” is now spreading like wildfire amongst internet marketers. In this blog we will discuss some of the must-know facts about this new Google’s announcement.
On 6th August 2014, Google announced on its Webmaster central blog that it will consider “HTTPS as a ranking signal” more significantly in the near future but for now it is going to give this factor only a little preference. By little preference we can say that if there are 2 sites of equal quality, preference would be given to the site which uses HTTPS.
What do you mean by HTTPS?
HTTPS means Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. It is a bit different from the common HTTP. The variation is of the word ‘S’ that stands for secure, which means your data is more protected.
Typically, HTTPS is significant for the sites that demand and collect users’ private information and in common words that need member login such as banks or for the ecommerce sites that need consumers’ shopping carts details.
A website that is not supported by HTTPS can be accessed by typing http:// prior to its domain name, http://example.com, but a website that is supported by HTTPS will automatically redirect to https://example.com , browsers such as Chrome or Firefox etc. will show the address bar of such site in green and moreover add a padlock icon.
Should you really consider this?
This is a big question that will come to your mind after reading this Google’s announcement, but I suggest implementing this only it is in favor of your customers.
If you own an ecommerce, social networking or associated sites, then using HTTPS is a great thing to do. However, if you own a brochure site, blog or related sites where you don’t need to gather sensitive information of the users, then this can be considered a total waste. It’ll consume your time and resources, and it will not degrade your rankings.
So all in all, considering this thing for now is a no-no until additional reports and evidence is published by Google that HTTPS’ will affect ranking noticeably. Moreover Google says “For now it’s only a very lightweight signal — affecting fewer 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”.
Conclusion:
Thinking about giving preference to HTTPS by Google can be embraced as a welcome innovation as it will make the virtual world a safer place keeping in view of the ongoing Edward Snowden, GCHQ, and PRISM scandals. However taking it as a critical SEO factor for now can be considered a bit hurry.