If your website is not on a secure encrypted website connection, it’s costing you organic rankings and conversions. This case study shows how quickly going to HTTPS can help you recover your organic rankings.
As of July 2018, any website that is not hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS) will be identified as “not secure” on Chrome.
That means in the address bar where your domain appears, a website that does not use a security encryption is identified as “not secure”.
Not being on HTTPS is, at this point, more than just a hindrance. It’s a problem that lowers your organic rankings and scares away shoppers.
First and foremost, nobody should share information on a non-secure site – particularly sensitive information like credit card numbers. This is because on an HTTP site, the browser connects to an IP address and assumes it’s connected to the correct web server. The data is sent over the connection in clear text, and eavesdroppers on a Wi-Fi network or ISP can see the pages you’re visiting and the data your sharing.
In an age of increasingly nefarious online operators, this should scare you. If you’ve recently bought something or shared your social security number from a non-secure site, you might want to run an identity theft check and cancel your current credit cards. This can get gnarly.
If you run an eCommerce website, know that your organic search rankings and – in all likelihood your sales – are going to sink like the Titanic if you don’t make the change.
Case in point, we recently changed a large eCommerce site to HTTPS (changed August 2018), causing a dramatic increase in page one keyword rankings:
For SEO data, this a dramatic increase. It reflects the issue created by not having a secure site, particularly on an eCommerce website. They also experienced an 11.23% increase in conversions over the previous period.
At this point, converting your website over to a secure domain is a no-brainer. The procedure is fairly simple for any webmaster to complete.
In addition to having an https domain, you might want to display an SSL trust badge on your site, like this:
Not being on a secure domain will hurt your SEO. And as more consumers start noticing unsecured domains, it will also hurt your credibility.
If you haven’t made this change, do it ASAP.
*Results are based on past client performance. Individual account performance may vary. Results are not guaranteed.