Utilizing SSL Certificate as Ranking Booster
The Covid pandemic has taken the world by storm and not only forced us to change our lifestyle in a way we never anticipated but also pushed our economy on a downward trajectory. Many of us were forced to quickly transition from our traditional brick and mortar outlets to opening online businesses to continue to work through the pandemic. With many new users opening online ventures, hackers and cybercriminals have taken advantage of loopholes left unattended, or lack of awareness, increased online activities, to expand data theft multi-folds.
Keeping this in mind is pivotal for your website’s smooth running to provide a secure platform to its customers. Moreover, Google associates a lot of importance to the website’s security while ranking them in the (SERPs) Search Engine Results pages. Also, for running a successful online business, Google’s ranking is of utmost importance. SSL Certificates provide an effective and cost-friendly solution to all your security needs. Let us now try to understand SSL security and its effect on search engine optimization (SEO) and rankings.
About SSL Certificate/HTTPS?
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the protocol used to exchange data on the web between the web browser and web servers. The capital ‘S’ in HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’ and reflects all the data exchanged between the website and the browser are secured.
The Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates are the unique digital identities issued to any website (webserver) by Certificate Authorities (CAs). This unique digital identity helps the user’s browser to ensure that they are indeed communicating with your website and allows the user’s browser to confirm your website’s identity. Once you purchase an SSL Certificate for your website, the HTTP protocol changes to HTTPS (Secure) protocol. Any communication between the user’s browser and the webserver is encrypted to provide security from any data theft.
SSL Certificate as Ranking Booster
SSL security or HTTPS does impact its website’s ranking in the Google search engine results page, as stated by Google itself. Websites secured by SSL Certificates occupy higher search results, with much higher visibility than a non-secure website. According to Moz Study, it was established that more than 50% of the pages on Google’s first page results were HTTPS pages.
A padlock is displayed in the address bar of the website, signaling a secured website. The customer feels safer to click on a website marked secure by their search engine than a website that is not secure. Thus, you are sure to attract more traffic to your website if it is secured compared to any non-secure websites that may pose as competition. This can help your business boost its sales conversions.
Especially for e-commerce websites handling financial transactions, providing a secure platform to its users is even more crucial. With customer’s sensitive information like credit card details and other credentials secured, a degree of trust is instilled in them. A secure website tends to keep its customers and users hooked on for a more significant amount of time. Google uses the user’s engagement time on the website as one of its key factors to improve your ranking in the SERPs.
On the other hand, if your site is not SSL Certified, Google and other search engines show the label ‘Not Secure’ before your website address in the address bar, which gives a very red signal to the customers, who tend to think twice before clicking on your website. At the same time, most users will not even risk visiting your website once. After opening it, some might leave the website on seeing the message ‘not secure’ popping up, which suggests that the website may be hacked or compromised.
If many customers leave immediately like this, the web site’s bounce rate increases and google might rate your website as not useful to customers and push you down in the Google search engine results page’s rankings. Lower rankings mean lower visibility on the web and hence, lost visitor traffic and thus sales conversions.
SSL Certificate as Ranking Booster: Improving SEO by improving the user experience
User experience is intertwined with the SSL certification of your website. With Google drawing the users’ attention towards unencrypted sites, most users maunder away from a website marked “not secure” within a few seconds. Google also keeps track of user behavior on your website. If many users visit and then exit your website within a few seconds, this can adversely affect your ranking on the search results page leading to website clicks and traffic.
On the other hand, an SSL secured website tends to keep the user hooked on providing a more trustworthy, genuine experience. Users do not hesitate to fill out personal information or process transactions on a secure website, which increases their engagement time on your page. This has a domino effect on their user experience, which in turn boosts traffic on your website.
In conclusion, if you want to reap the benefit of a sudden boom in the online business space, the first and foremost thing that can boost your business and take you to gain a new height of success is an investment in a good SSL Certificate. Today, take this opportunity to select one according to your requirement and your pocket, and you are ready to attract quality visitors to your website with better search engine rankings, trust, and the most important cybersecurity in the digital world.
