Security is a top priority for Google, which includes ensuring that the websites people access from Google and across the entire Internet are secure. As part of its security efforts, Google recently called for “HTTPS everywhere” (HTTP over Transport Security Layer) on the web. As a result, Google has been running some tests and decided to start using HTTPS as a ranking signal for web queries. While for now the signal only affects 1% of global queries, overtime they may decide to strengthen it.
Google will be publishing detailed best practices for making your site secure in the coming weeks, however, for now – here are some tips to get started:
- Decide what certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate
- Use 2048-bit key certificates
- Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
- Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
- Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
- Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible
For web development, search engine optimization and other full-service integrated marketing, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at -215-230-9024 or visit sagefrog.com.
