Does Google rank SSL websites higher?
What Is An SSL Website?
I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed this before, but when you go to a website in the browser window at the top, it’s going to say, https://www.google.com. There’s a padlock to the left, and that means that the website is utilizing an SSL certificate.
This is basically a level of encryption that secures the connection and makes it so that any information transmitted through the website cannot be hacked. It protects a lot of other things as well. I don’t know all the ins and outs of exactly what else it does. But I know that it protects from vulnerabilities. It protects from hacking. It protects the website and it protects the user.
Is It a Ranking Factor?
So a couple years ago, Google started making this a ranking factor because they’re kind of valuing security. So if your website is http://www.google.com, it is not using a secure SSL certificate. The only way you can be sure it’s using it is if your URL re-directs to https.
Now, if you’re not using the secure SSL certificate, you’ll probably see an error or a warning sign in Chrome now. So if you look at the top of the browser like you’re on Facebook right now, I’m looking at the Facebook window and they are very clearly padlocked.
But if Facebook was not using an SSL certificate then there’d probably be a warning (and there would not be a padlock). I think now Chrome actually warns you when you go to websites that do not use https.
Should You Use A SSL Certificate And Https?
So, yes, absolutely,100%, make sure your website is using https. It’s very simple to do. I don’t know how to do it but I have a service team that does it for me.
Any web developer that you have or any web management company that you have should be able to do it. First of all, if they haven’t done this for you, fire them and find a new company.
How to Get An SSL Certificate?
Second of all, if you go to another company to replace the company you just fired because they didn’t have your website on an SSL certificate, then any company can do this really easily. You can do it through Cloudflare. There are several ways to do it. Again, I’m not an expert; I don’t really do it myself, but I know it’s important and I have people who do it for me.
So, yes, it is a ranking factor. It is not going to make you go from number 25 to number 1 right away. But Google has so many ranking factors. The more you can check off, the better. So if you can take care of the easy ones that you’re in control of, like the SSL certificate, there’s no reason not to do it.
It’s definitely part of the ranking algorithm. I’m not sure how big of a problem it is, but it is part of it. And they’ve come out and said that it is a part of the ranking algorithm and you should use it. Otherwise, people are going to get errors and warning messages when they go to your website.
