Last year Google called for “HTTPS Everywhere” to help secure more sites on the internet for visitors to access. This move is to try and make the web more secure with all your content being encrypted between you and the site you are visiting.

The result is that Google implemented some small changes in to their search algorithms so that sites running over HTTPS got a better ranking signal. While this only affected fewer than 1% of global queries and carried less weight than other signals such as good, high quality content it shows that a move to giving a greater weight to HTTPS in the future is very likely.

What does this mean for the webs site owner?

Well, if you already have an ecommerce site then chances are you already have a secure certificate installed so that the padlock appears, at least on the checkout process. You may not have it enabled on the whole site and if you have not then it is a good idea to do so.

What if my site is not an ecommerce site?

It will not do any harm to get a certificate installed and have your site encrypted for your visitors. We encrypt our site no matter where you are so you will always have a secure connection through to us. Having the padlock gives peace of mind and will also help with the HTTPS ranking signal at Google.

I heard that HTTPS makes my site slow?

It used to be the case that running over HTTPS slowed sites down and so you would generally only get the padlock displaying when entering sensitive information such as credit card details. These days things have got a lot quicker and Google decided that the speed difference is now so negligible that it will not make any difference to your site if configured correctly.

What does it cost?

Certificates require you to have a dedicated IP address for your site and these are usually charged as an extra with your host. The certificates can be relatively inexpensive compared to the yearly IP address cost. For a standard certificate and IP address from us is currently about £70 per year but prices do vary so contact us for our most current pricing.