How will you ensure the future proofing of your business? Will you keep a close eye on the economic and technological changes of your industry, adapting your business strategy accordingly? Will you ensure that your employees continue to receive the best training and technology so that they remain productive, capable and empowered to face the ever changing challenges your business faces? All of the above are great ways of ensuring the ongoing prosperity of your business, but they amount to little if you’re unable to protect your business from the ever changing threats that face your enterprise on a daily basis. While all businesses face threats from cyber crime such as malware, they also face the more quotidian threat of failing to keep up with the ever shifting digital landscape.
In this digital climate, you need to ensure that your website’s users can place their trust in you. Moreover, in an era where competition is rife and cutthroat, you need to ensure that you have that all important edge when it comes to search engine rankings. Would you believe that a single letter of the alphabet can help you with both of these increasingly important considerations?
What’s in an S?
If you’ve ever used an ecommerce website (and in 2018, who hasn’t?) you’ve likely noticed that whenever you make a payment or submit information of a potentially sensitive nature, from contact details to credit card numbers, you are redirected to a URL prefaced with https://. The “S” stands for secure, and while a secure web page may be indistinguishable from an unsecure page in terms of content, that little S lets users know that the page is encrypted in such a way that their data is safe from digital malcontents.
As of July 2018, Google Chrome (widely regarded as the most popular browser of all) will no longer display the traditional green padlock image to denote a secure website. Instead it will issue a “Not secure” warning to any users landing on a https:// URL. While not necessarily a death sentence to smaller websites or blogs, it’s not a good look on a business. What’s more, as Microsoft’s MVP for developer security rightly asserts, you don’t need to feel that there’s anything important on your website to benefit from the transition;
“But my website doesn’t need HTTPS because there’s nothing important on it”… https://t.co/VULrC7TMd1
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) August 4, 2018
As legions of businesses make the jump to https the last thing you want is to get left behind. Let’s look at the fundamentals of how to do this as well as how you can expect it to influence those all important search engine rankings…
Making the change
Laying the foundation for a more secure digital future is a piece of cake for your CTO. That said, if you run a smaller operation, you may need to carry out the process yourself. Even if you entrust your technical provision to a third party it still behoves you to understand the process. You can find much more detailed information here on changing your website from http to https. Nonetheless, here are some of the bases you’ll need to cover;
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- Check your server’s documentation- The migration to https is fairly standard although different servers have subtly different processes.
- Acquire & install a security certificate- There are free security certificates out there that will help you transition to https but if you want a higher level of verification (and the consumer trust that comes with it) a paid certificate may be the way to go.
- Update your links and Content Management System- This can be a lengthy and laborious process but most platforms will have plugins to make the process easier. Remember that broken internal links are SEO kryptonite!
- Check canonical links- You’ll need to make sure that you have a canonical link present in the <head> section of your website. This will help to properly redirect all traffic coming in from https:// to https://.
Https and your SEO
So, what’s the point of doing all this? Well, apart from the benefit of a safer and more reliable user experience (and the prestige value this carries for your brand), converting to Https can also have a positive impact on your SEO. Google consider security a top priority when it comes to its rankings and as such it’s no surprise that a secure URL carries far more value to Google’s search algorithms than an unsecure one.
Sure, there are other search engines out there with slightly different algorithms, but when it comes to the world’s most popular search engine on the world’s most popular browser… Do you really want your business to be sent to the back of the line?
