A Google Ranking Criteria You Probably Didn’t Know Existed

Google is invested in making the whole web safer. Every year they plough hundreds of thousands of dollars into ensuring their security settings drive forward the standard for the Internet age. Despite what you might think about one of the world’s largest corporations, Google is on an endless journey to dramatically reduce the occurrence and quantity of data breaches, not just on the world’s biggest sites, but on the smaller ones too.

As a result, Google has made the bold demand for HTTPS to become standard procedure on all sites. The take up of HTTPS has risen drastically over the last few years and in order to improve global security, Google wants this momentum to continue.

How nice of them, you might think? But why should that affect me and my business’s website performance?

Well, in order to facilitate this change, Google is offering the biggest reward of all. The positive returns they’ve witnessed in sites that have already migrated across to HTTPS has led the world’s largest search engine to officially include the presence of HTTPS as a search ranking determiner. As it currently stands, a security certificate carries a small amount of weight in assessing your rank, but Google themselves have declared that in the future its value is going to be raised, making it impossible for developers to look past HTTPS when deciding how to most effectively run their web content. Put simply, a secure verified site is going to rank more favourably than a non-secure page.

Sounds great, but how do I go about achieving this certificate?

Achieving HTTPS is done through the installation of an SSL certificate of which there are various providers each with a number of different options.

So where is the best place to get certified?

Achieving HTTPS isn’t about installing the cheapest and easiest to authorise SSL certificate. It’s about finding a certificate that fits your exact needs, includes the options required for your unique business operations, and considers the reputation of the provider.

A lot of options from different providers are very similar and most providers tend to provide the same features in their offerings. The crucial part is to install an SSL that will adequately fit with your online business from a reputable provider.

So don’t fall behind the competition, get your website probably secured and continue to climb the Google rankings and if you’re stuck, get in touch, we’re here to help!