Increase your website Google ranking by using SSL and https

When you own a website, especially if it is site that is used for business purposes, making sure that it is ranked well with the leading search engines is certainly important. What many people don't understand is that there are a number of factors that go into the ranking of their site. Major search engines, such as Google, utilize a very complex algorithm to determine how a site is ranked and this ranking will be a major factor in the number of visitors that find their way to your site as well as the conversion of visitors into paying customers.

Recently, Google posted an article on their webmasters blog that explains their commitment to security across their various products. This, of course, also includes a commitment to making sure that websites they recommend or rank highly in their search engine results are sites that are secure.  The best way to keep the internet safe and secure is to ensure sites are encrypted using SSL or Secure Sockets Layer. The use of SSL can help increase security across the web.

For the average webmaster, understanding the various factors that can influence how a particular site will rank with Google's search engine will play a major role in being able to build a successful site. For example, a high ranking site will drive targeted traffic to the site, ensuring it gets quality traffic that can turn into paying customers or clients. With Google's commitment to ensuring a secure online environment, they have already announced that they will be giving a slight increase in preference to sites that have HTTPS or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol with an SSL Certificate installed.

Whether your business relies on secure transactions, such as an ecommerce business or a bank offering online banking, visitors will certainly have more confidence when they know that their entire session will be encrypted with a Digital Certificate. Of course, visitors will know the site has a Security Certificate because a lock icon will be displayed indicating that the website is secure.

While these security measures are certainly essential in making visitors feel confident that their online transactions are secure, it is also an important factor in how many potential customers that find the site. While Google has already made it clear that secure sites will reap the benefits of another ranking signal that will help move the site up in the search results. Additionally, Google stated in their blog entry that they are encouraging all website owners to utilize HTTPS to help ensure a secure environment and that moving forward, they will likely place even more emphasis on a site with SSL receiving an increase in their algorithm results, which will ultimately help the site move up in the search results.

When you have a website and you want to make sure it gets the highest ranking in Google's search results, ensuring your site has an SSL certificate is extremely important. Of course, it is also important to continue adding new, high quality content as well.

Managing certificate expirations

One thing to keep in mind when adding SSL certificates to your site is that these certificates expire. They generally do every year and when they get to that point, browsers will show to your customers a friendly message indicating that your website isn't trusted because the certificate isn't valid. To prevent this, we recommend you use a product like Expiration Reminder that will notify you in advanced when the certificate will expire. Here's a sample on how to configure ssl certificate expiration reminders.