Verisign Trust Seal and Domain Metrics (Has noting to do with SSL)
-
Hi,
Does anyone have any evidence or case studies that Verisign Trust seal actually raises trust metrics?
I know there are the obvious benefits such as better CTR and Conversion (which could in turn raise trust metrics). But i am looking for actual sighted examples of Verisign increasing trust signals to search engines discrediting the correlation between search metrics improving.
I modified this as i think people are getting confused between SSL products and the specific Versign product i am talking about Verisign Trust Seal seen here. https://www.verisign.com/trust-seal/index.html?tid=gnps
This has nothing to do with security for transactions it is more geared towards all around safer user experience including Malware scans and enhanced "stand out" in SERPS. It is not just a Domain validation but an organizational or Branding authentication check"
With that being said, the question still stands Does anyone have any case studies or direct examples of trust being elevated in metrics for the specific product mentioned above.
Thanks.
-
Shane, it tends to be the sites that manipulate the rankings (black hat) know all those tricks and if all it took was a seal from an SSL company, they would have a different one on each page. It would be surprising that the seal actually gives you page rank, it most likely does the opposite since an outbound link only passes juice to the destination and all those seals link directly to the ssl provider.
As Ryan points out contacting Verisign directly will give you some insight, they are a company built on reputation and would not say it adds Google rank when it does not. You have to consider what their product is 'trust' and if they give you false information that hurts their marketting when you discover that is not the case. They would tell you what I said in my first reply, that their seal brings customer conversions, which is ultimately what you are after.
Generally ecommerce sites exclude their ssl pages via robots.txt or nofollows so the question does not get raised. If the content on those pages is secure but not authenticated then the value is limited as it is public and open to exploit. As a developer, I have attended many seminars on this topic alone.
The rank gain you get is secondary (from more tweets, blog links etc because people trust your site and like it) rather than a direct corelation.
Read the paper (relevant section below) from the link:
If I use SSL on my pages, will we be PageRank'd higher then non-ssl pages? So far, there is NO conclusive proof that a SSL site will get higher Google/MSN/Yahoo search rank listing compared to the same site which is unencrypted. In fact there seems to be no positive or negative result if you have your pages encrypted or not. This is because the quality of the data on the site is not validated by SSL, only that the certificate is independently verified. The most important factor in Google's PageRank for example is the amount of high quality sites linking back to your site. The idea being that if a site like Digg or CNN link to your site then your page rank will increase because their page rank is high. This is completely independent of whether your page is encrypted or not.
-
I know what the trust seal is (and most often it's accompanied by an SSL certificate signed by Verisign). But if you took a poll of people and asked them who Verisign is, I bet the majority wouldn't have a clue. Thus I don't pay for their seal (which I could have gotten with an SSL certificate). This is the only real difference in their costs.
Remember, the trust seal only shows up if you're running AVG antivirus in your browser
-
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. From a marketing perspective and knowing what i know about marketing and sales closing tactics I tend to feel that a company no matter where they point you will never be the counter argument, always the pro argument.
This is why your suggestion to me seems counter intuitive as i had obviously already picked out a specific product, and done research on it.
Also not to mention that if they had readily available information that proved they made domain (or brand) trust metrics with search engines go up (especially knowing what we now know about Panda), why would they not have that front in center as SEO's would be lining up at the door for that opportunity, in my opinion.
-
Actually Shane I carefully read your Question.
"Does anyone have any evidence or case studies...."
To clarify my response, I am not aware of any case studies being performed. If you are looking for "evidence", then the vendor may have that information. You can then determine for yourself the value of that evidence.
One more point. Vendors are usually aware of ALL the case studies performed on their product, even if they didn't perform the case study themselves. Using your SEOmoz example, if someone wrote an article on "What is the best SEO tool suite", then SEOmoz would probably be aware of it and COULD refer you to the article.
Of course, if that article wasn't objective or favorable, they may not. It would depend on the article and the ethics of the company involved.
-
.....
Hmmmm
I guess the wording of case study (meaning actual research done by a third party to investigate something or research) was missed.
Of course a company will tell me what i want to hear....
I was asking for specific case studies (that apparently do not exist because no one can seem to grasp the question) not a recommendation from the company itself.
Is SEOMOZ the best SEO tool suite? (i think so) but i would not recommend calling SEOMOZ to get that info..... seems kind of counter intuitive, granted companies "spin" data to look the best always in their favor...
-
Shane, Verisign offers a toll-free contact number. If I was in your situation I would pick up the phone and give them a call. If any data exists on this topic, they will surely have it.
They may have to research it a bit, but if they do not know, then I would suggest the data does not exist.
-
It can help your click through conversion rate if it is on the checkout page near the 'pay' button as it can build user confidence. I agree that a lot of users do not know all the safety measures developers put into a site, but if you give them a warm and fuzzy feeling when they are about to purchase and a place to check your security or privacy policy, then they are more likely to complete the sale.
I would doubt it adds rank but with Google's emphasis on usability it may be a factor on legitimising your site, especially if you have an EV SSL as the process is more rigerous to be validated.
-
Hi,
I am not talking about SSL, I am talking about the Trust Seal which DOES improve CTR as the seal is shown in search engines.
Of course SSL would not affect as this is only a certificate, but the Verisign Trust seal is an identity confirmation and a "thumbs up" for security aspects.
-
If your average user even knows who Verisign is I'd be amazed. I have an EV SSL certificate through Godaddy (who is more well known, but for other reasons) and I've not seen any indication that anyone even knows the difference. I've even found many users don't even know what the green bar in the browser means (and Safari doesn't help by making just the protocol text green).
As far as Google goes, I can't say Google does anything significant with SSL, let alone care who your SSL is with.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Questions on switching domain name of my site
Hey guys, I purchased a domain name on May 1st and have been running my site on it since then. At the time when I added the domain name to the shopping cart, I felt that it was the best domain name a human could possibly come up with. But now, after two months, I am not so sure about it. And that means I am thinking of getting a new domain name and redirecting the old domain to the new one. Give that the domain is only two months old, there is not much to lose. However, my domain name does have some valuable backlinks, and has built some credibility in the eyes of search engines. According to MOZ Open Site Explorer, its Domain Authority is 10 and Page Authority (homepage) is 20. It's not much, but I fear that if I switch the domain name, I will reset the clock and the new domain name will have to earn the rankings from scratch That said, after searching this forum, I come across articles like this one from google and this 2012 article from MOZ that gave me some confidence. The MOZ article is from 2102, and there have been several changes since then. Is there an updated version of that article, or another legit article on the internet that you can point me to? As you can tell, I want to be more than sure that we don't take any hit during the migration process. Also want to mention that the site is on WordPress -- in case that is relevant. Thank you for your help.
Technical SEO | | deathbyseo0 -
Domain forwarding
Hi Is it ok or bad practice to domain forward shorter more memorable snappier domains used for promoting a website to a longer domain where the website actually lives, such as: Promoting in social media profiles, emails and offline literature a domain with forwarding set up like: www.brand.com To the main website: www.brandincludingprimaryproductrelatedkeyword.com And if ok (not bad practice), since its the forwarded domains that are being promoted they are hence the links most likely to be shared on social media and other websites so will they be treated like 301's and 'link building' for those will pretty much equate to link building for the main domain (or not) ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Domain Forwarding Implications
Hi, I am working with a client who is planning to rebrand the company and set up a new domain. What is the best way to maximize and pass the authority from the existing sites (there are 2)? Each site already has many inbound links and have been around for a while. Should I set up 301 redirects for all of the pages? Should I set up domain forwarding? If I do this, what are the implications from an SEO perspective? Please advise. Thank you, Erin
Technical SEO | | HiddenPeak1 -
Specific Link Page in Domain
Hi everyone: I have seen that many SEO Agencies have contacted my business (Also SEO but In- House) in order to interchange links. They have created a specific page on their site with the Label "Links" or similar, and on that page they add multiple links of the competence. I have heard that you can only do that if you make sure you add two things: No follow in links. Not inserting links of websites that have nothing to do with our sector. Either way, I have never found this amusing. I always recommend people not to do this but I have my doubts after all. ¿Could some one give me their opinion? Cheers !
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
301 Redirect Domain or 301 Redirect Domain + Interior Pages
Hello - My company acquired another company in our industry and our IT team immediately set up the acquired companies domain name as a an alias to our site. This created a duplicate version of our website under another domain name and Google started ranking interior pages from the aliased acquired site for several top keywords that were previously held by our real site. Should we 301 redirect just the top level domain name of the acquired site to the real site or 301 redirect the top level domain name and the interior pages on the acquired site to help ensure that our real domain will take back the rankings it once had? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Room2140 -
Changing preferred domain
My company has an international website, and because of a technical issue visitors in one of our main countries cannot visits the "www" version of our site. Currently, the www version is our preferred domain - and the non www redirects to that page. To solve this problem, I was thinking of proposing the following and would greatly appreciate any feedback! (Note: If you answered my www vs. non www question, thanks - this is a follow up) 1. Set non www site as the preferred version 2. Redirect from www to non www 3. Contact our current links and ask them to change to without “www” 4. Change canonical URLs to without “www”
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Redirect Multiple Domains
This is a follow-up question from one posted earlier this month. I can't linked to that because it's a private question so I'm trying to summarize it below. We have a number of domains – about 20 - (e.g. www.propertysharp.com) that point to our main domain ip adress (www.propertyshark.com) and share the same content. This is no black-hat strategy whatsoever, the domains were acquired several years ago in order to help people who mistyped the websites url to reach their desired destination. The question was whether to redirect them to our main domain or not. Pros were the reportedly millions of incoming links from these domains - cons was the fact that lots of issues regarding duplicate content could arise and we actually saw lots of some pages from these domains ranking in the search engines. We were recommended to redirect them, but to take it gradually. I have a simple question - what does gradually mean - one domain per week, per month?
Technical SEO | | propertyshark0 -
Redirecting a domain
I was setting up a new campaign and received the following error from Roger Robot. "We have detected that the domain www.sitename.com and the domain sitename.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here." I know about redirecting a PAGE using 301 Redirects and how to specify the www. canonical in Google webmaster tools, but is there a "DOMAIN" redirect that I'm missing. What would you suggest doing given the error message above. Thanks, Bill Sqnch.jpg
Technical SEO | | Marvo0