Why it is vital your website uses HTTPS
Sarah Sarkies
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Google have announced that by July 2018, web pages loaded without HTTPS will be marked as “not secure”.
Web site visitors using Chrome will see this warning when browsing unencrypted HTTP sites.
Users presented with this warning will be less likely to interact with these sites or trust their content, so it’s vital that site owners not yet using HTTPS have a plan to do so.
What does this mean in simple terms?
You may be familiar with the term https:// that you see at the beginning of a website address.
The ‘S’ on the end of HTTPS stands for ‘secure’.
Why does my site need https?
We know that when we shop online a secure site is vital, we look for the 'https' in the address bar of the browser or the familiar green padlock.
We know that this is important as we are making a purchase and sending our payment details, which must be protected, and HTTPS is what protects the data.
Why do you need https if we aren't selling online?
Even if your site doesn't have payment gateways, forms or collect information from users, HTTPS is important as it protects far more than just form data.
HTTPS keeps the URLs, headers, and contents of all transferred pages confidential. Without HTTPS your website is open to the possibility of all sorts of tampering... injecting scripts, images, words, or advertisement content onto your page so that it looks like you put them there.
HTTPS prevents all of this - it guarantees content integrity.
Google has also indicated for a while that site security is also a key part of your SEO strategy.
How do I implement it?
It's a simple process of asking your hosting provider to issue an SSL certificate on your site and then amending your site URL's from http to https. If you need to know more or help then give me a shout!