HTTPS, free certificates and Google seo
-
As we all know, Google decided to give some weight in rankings to encrypted sites. SSL certificate providers are quite a lot out there, but there is also a free alternative (Let’s Encrypt). I've been going over some of these services and compared Godaddy's and the above certificates, and there isn't much of a difference.
The question is: using a free certificate would have the same effect as a paid one? I would rather pay for one than be punished for using a free one, but free would be good too.
What's your take on this?Thank you
-
If there are redirects on your site from http to https, I believe the best practice is to actually leave your old sitemap in place in the http property, as well as submitting the new ssl sitemap to that property.
We learned this AFTER recently moving from http to https and most of our URL structure changing as well. However, with 301s set up for as many site URLs as possible, we saw the new ones gain in indexation and rank rather quickly, even without the old http sitemap.
-
Thank you for answering my question! Another one if I may ask: how do you add the website to Google Console? Let's say my site is site.com
I have already added in Google Console the following
www.site.com (as preferred version)
and now adding https://www.site.com
I have removed the sitemaps added to www.site.com and added them into the https://www.site.com, but is that all that needs to be done? Unfortunately the site move tool Google provides does not take moving from http to https into account.
Thank you
-
Letsencrypt is a great way of offering SSL. It's backed by a LOT of big organisations: https://letsencrypt.org/sponsors/
"using a free certificate would have the same effect as a paid one? I would rather pay for one than be punished for using a free one, but free would be good too."
I am confident that as long as the site is secure, the level of encryption does not matter. As then SEO would become "pay to win" which I don't think is the case. -
Hi Adriana,
The whole point of an SSL certificate is so that the browser has a reasonable degree of trust in the server's public key for HTTPS transactions. As per my opinion SSL has advantages for SEO and also for creating trust with the website visitors.
Do the SSL certificate actually matter, you should read this study / research http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2015/03/03/https-vs-http-website-ssl-tls-encryption-ranking-seo-secure-connection/
Generally, browsers come pre-loaded with lists of people/organizations that the browser should trust. When your website presents this certificate to a browser and the browser would unquestioningly accept it (assuming that you've paid a sufficiently well-known CA (certifying authority ) that is likely to be in the trusted lists of all browsers).
Now, it's the trust level of these CA which matters to the browsers and search engines, then there are risks / disadvantages of using free certificates. Check following links
https://www.cybersecureasia.com/blog/the-risk-in-free-ssl-certificate
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-using-a-free-SSL-Certificate-for-signing-and-encrypting-email
https://www.volusion.com/ecommerce-blog/articles/5-reasons-you-should-beware-of-free-ssl-certificates/Coming back to original question, whether free vs paid SSL would matter for SEO, on the surface, it looks it won't matter if your CA has enough trust with browsers, however, if you scratch the surface there are some hidden facts which are highlighted in the disadvantages of a Free SSL mentioned on above links.
It would be better to get a paid certificate, be safe and secure without being worried about if it would hurt your SEO.
I hope this helps, let me know if you have further questions via your response.
Regards,
Vijay
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
-
Google Page Rank has no any rankings as of now. what to do?
my domain and page authority is working well right now but my Google Page Rank has no any rankings as we speak. What to do now? can some of you give me advice on this? Thank you very much in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Panoramictrip0 -
Best .net cms and ecommerce platform for seo?
Hi and thanks for looking. Due to internal constraints we are looking at a .net cms and ecommerce solution, I would have preferred a magento and wordpress solution but we have to work within our constraints. Can anyone share their experiences or thoughts on what cms they would use with seo in mind and what eCommerce platform, again with seo in mind. thanks again for looking and all replies gratefully received.
On-Page Optimization | | Renford_Nelson1 -
Using Google structured Data for SEO benefit
Hi there I run www.isacleanse.com.au and I've set up some Structured data using Google Webmaster Tools which says it will be picked up during the next Google update (has been set up over 4 weeks ago), however I dont seem to see any of the structured data for the products/reviews/ratings etc coming through in search results. Question at hand: Is there additional things I need to do in the code of the website or should this be sufficient? (see attached screenshot) szpFUpX
On-Page Optimization | | IsaCleanse1 -
Seo for company services page?
I am creating a site for a Dentist with 30 pages of services in a mega menu. Other than the actual pages should there be a central page with all the services on it hyper linking to each one? Thanks Scott
On-Page Optimization | | scott3150 -
How does Google treat Dynamic Titles?
Let's say my website can be accessed in only 3 states Colorado, Arizona and Ohio. I want to display different information to each visitor based on where they are located. For this I would also like the title to change based on their location. Not quite sure how Google we treat the title and rank the site.... Any resources you can provide would be helpful. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
Google Indexing
Hi, We recently launched a new version of our site on the Magento platform. I submitted a new sitemap and on the first crawl only 7 pages out of 132 were indexed...a few days later and we now have 107 indexed (phew). My question is this....how on earth do i find out which pages are indexed and more importantly not indexed? For all i know they might be really important ones so I need to be able to identify the missing pages so i can work on getting them indexed. Nic
On-Page Optimization | | nicc19760 -
How is my on-site SEO looking like?
I know this is a broad question. My site's content has been written more than one year ago and haven't been changed so far. Our main goal is to make the application hosted in the site work better every day, so we don't worry much about writing content. The URL is http://www.onlinelogomaker.com
On-Page Optimization | | rpedri0 -
SEO for Image only posts
Let's say I have a post where I show 25 different wood textures. I start the post with a small paragraph and then I show several images of wood textures linked to an internal or external page. Since I don't use a text link, then I have to rely on alt tags. It would be very difficult to assign a different alt tag to so many similar images, and I guess there would be a risk of keyword stuffing (walnut wood, oak wood, etc). On the other side, if I assign the same tag to all images, then that clearly is keyword stuffing (alt=wood textures). This is just an example, but it applies to most of my posts. What do you think I should do with the alt tags? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | enriquef0