Is your website HTTPS? If not you should really consider switching it over. It’s not a particularly difficult thing to do and the benefits make it well worth it.

HTTPS stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. You need it because it protects the integrity of the website and protects the privacy of your users as it prevents tampering of communications and protects against hackers.

So what are these benefits? The main one is SEO. Google favours websites that are HTTPS. It’s one of the many signals that Google uses to determine your position in the search engine results pages.

Another benefit is the confidence it gives to the visitor. If you use the Google Chrome web browser and your site isn’t HTTPS, you may see the words ‘Not secure’ in the address bar. Who wants that!? If the site is under HTTPS, Google Chrome shows the padlock and the word ‘Secure’ in the address bar. Other browsers will at least show the padlock.

Google says, And I quote. ‘You should always protect all of your websites with HTTPS, even if they don’t handle sensitive communications’.

All of my recent websites are HTTPS. There are still a few of the older ones that I still need to update but most are now done. I don’t charge my clients for this as I use the CloudFlare service which is free for small sites.

If you own an eCommerce website, HTTPS is a must. Although it must still be said that if you are sending your customers off to a payment gateway such as SagePay, you are still technically ok. You are losing the SEO benefit of HTTPS and obviously showing that your site is as secure as possible is even more important for an online shop.

HTTPS is the future of the internet. If you’d like to understand more about HTTPS, then please contact me by phoning 01603 383477 or filling in my contact form.