Switching to HTTPS YES/NO ?

[remkoallertz]

Yesterday we received an email form GWT that our website does not have a valid SSL certificate. So google is now standard scanning on the https domain. Is this the beginning of an algo update on security, as Matt Cuts said on the SMX "At SMX West Matt Cutts gave the attendees a few tidbits, one of those items was that making your site secure, encrypted, i.e. SSL enabled, is an important trend for 2014.

At the end of the session, I asked Matt if this means Google is looking to give sites that enable SSL a ranking boost. Matt Cutts shrugged his shoulders and explained that if it was his choice, he would make it so. But he said, it is far from happening and there are people at Google that do not want this to happen".

So should we switch to https with SSL, what are the potential risks with this changes for websites with very good ranking on competitive keywords.

Email we received:

Site host name, https://www.sum.nl, does not match your SSL certificate Subject Name

We have noticed that the host name of your site, https://www.example.nl, does not match any of the "Subject Names" in your SSL certificate, which were:

• *.example.com
• example.com

As a result, many web browsers will block users from accessing your site, or display a security warning message when your site is accessed.

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Recommended action

• To correct this problem, please get a new SSL certificate by a Certificate Authority (CA) with a "Subject Name" or "Subject Alternative DNS Names" that matches your host name.

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Learn more in our =

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[CommT]

Hi,

The sites I work on are both on SSL certificates (entire sites). This was not something I wanted but the powers that be above me in my organisation made it clear that there wasn't a choice.

The two sites are in financial services (we are a mortgage broker) which is why we had to have it, even though it isn't a necessity as far as our regulators are concerned. Just a company policy.

Thank you for posting this information it gives me hope that my sites may start performing even better throughout 2014. I don't have bad listings (in fact we're position 1 for a few things on both sites) and since completing redesigns on both sites one in March one in April this year (one is on a new domain as we created a new company for commercial mortgages as opposed to residential ones) we've seen a real improvement in rankings and conversions.

All I'm saying is SSL shouldn't be a barrier to rankings and it isn't one for our rankings. Though I was extremely worried by it when they decided we had to have it!

Best wishes,

Amelia

[remkoallertz]

Hi Jane, thanks for the input. This site is just a blog/ comparison site, so I guess we can keep it on http for now.

[JaneCopland]

Hi Remko,

If the entire site sits on HTTPS, definitely ensure that you have a valid certificate.

As far as it being necessary to have an entire site sitting on HTTPS, opinion on this has changed over the years. It previously was not a great idea; it's now much more common and many well-ranked websites use HTTPS as standard. I would not change your entire site including pages that do not need to be secure based solely on this session at SMX, especially as it was indicated that there's opposition to making this a ranking factor. I'd wait for more evidence before I did something like that. However, if making a site load solely on HTTPS URLs becomes absolutely necessary, then I'd be more comfortable doing so now than ever before.