Online businesses thrive on organic searches — a reason why these businesses constantly invest in SEO. Irrespective of how much businesses spend on paid traffic, appearing in organic searches is far more profitable because the visitor is voluntarily searching for terms related to your business.

Moreover, organic searches help businesses generate more leads without investing in advertising or social media campaigns, which reduces overheads and maximizes profits.

So, to run a successful online business, you need to know what influences your website’s ranking.

Search engine algorithms take numerous factors into account while ranking a website and seldom disclose them to others.

However, in a recent statement, Google disclosed that SSL enhances website security and is therefore considered to be a ranking factor.

Now that’s a huge revelation because that statement comes straight from the horse’s mouth. With this move, Google clearly aims at encouraging online businesses to enhance website security.

How SSL Helps SEO?

If you own a website and wondering about your website’s security, then you can get Free SSL Certificate from www.freesslcertificate.org.

However, there are many hosting companies who offer free SSL, but then you need to take their costly plan for hosting your website in order to get free SSL.

You also need to consider the cost of other security essentials such as Firewall, Antivirus, and Spam Experts.

SSL certificates enable your website to run on the HTTPS protocol, which makes the exchange of communication secure. As the HTTPS protocol encrypts the communication between the server and the client, it prevents cybercriminals from intercepting it.

Besides that, SSL helps SEO because the goal of all search engine algorithms is to deliver a superior user experience. So, with the rise in cybercrime, search engines encourage online businesses to enhance website security with SSL by ranking them higher.

Also, having an SSL certificate installed on your web server helps reduce your website’s bounce rate because of the security cues — the green padlock in the URL bar.

Thus, SSL certificates and SEO are now unified with each other. It would be wise decision to get SSL certificate for your website nowadays.

For better validation and security, you can go with advanced SSL Certificate like Organization Validation (OV) SSL certificate or the Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificate for higher validation.

An EV SSL certificate confirms that your business is legitimate and does indeed exist, while the OV SSL certificate only confirms the existence of your organization.

Even if you are browsing over chrome then you may notice about page insecure warning, which happens due to HTTP site. So, it is a clear indication that you need HTTPS on your website.

It is shown that 84% users would leave shopping cart if they find that their data is insecure on the website, which indicates the importance of HTTPS on the website.

HTTPS sites load fast compare to HTTP websites.

Other Factors Affecting Website Security and SEO:

Now that we have already discussed how you can improve your website security with SSL, let us further discuss certain other factors that impact your website’s security and SEO.

All About HTTPS:

Ever since Google declared HTTPS to be a ranking factor, people seem to be confused between SSL certificates and HTTPS.

If you are one of them, then you must know that HTTPS is a security protocol that replaces the HTTP protocol. This is only possible when you install an SSL Certificate on your web server.

Besides enhancing website security, SSL helps SEO and follows PCI compliance.

The PCI DSS clearly requires websites accepting online payments to install an SSL certificate and run on HTTPS. As sensitive financial data is exchanged, there is a sheer need for encryption.

Watch Your Links:

Most online businesses outsource their SEO to consultants promising quick results, which could turn out to be dangerous.

Your SEO service provider could be using black hat SEO techniques such as spammy backlinks, in order to trick the search engines. While this may work in the short run, your website’s IP is most likely to be blacklisted in the long run. The last thing that search engines tolerate is spammy backlinks.

So, unless you post something that is time-sensitive (like news) your content would take some time to rank.

That’s because Google’s algorithm is designed to track and rank time-sensitive content on a different set of parameters.

In other cases, Google takes at least a fortnight to show up new content in its search results. This timeframe could vary depending on several other factors, but you must know that there are no instant results.

A white hat SEO is an ideal way to create high quality backlinks for your website. To ensure this is done in the right manner, you need to closely work with your SEO consultant on your link-building strategy.

Establish Your Authority:

When a visitor visits your site, you want him to stay there longer and to later revisit your website — a feat that can only be achieved by earning the trust of your visitors.

You can do this by enhancing your website security. Depending on the size and volume of your business, you can make use of different types of SSL certificates.

The OV SSL certificates are ideal for organizations and confirm their existence, which helps build more trust.

Likewise, the EV SSL certificates go a step further and confirm both, the existence and legitimacy of a business and provides a green bar with the company’s name and short country code.

How Website Security Affects SEO Rankings?

• If you are planning an SEO strategy, then we recommend that you start with self-introspection. Ask yourself what delivers a superior user experience — security, facts, keywords or something else.
• Always bear in mind that Google and other SERPs design their algorithm with the sole intention to provide a better user experience.
• Therefore, websites that implement stronger security measures and focus on providing superior user experience, tend to rank better. A secured website puts you a step ahead of your competitors.

How to optimize website security and SEO?

SSL works as a backbone in getting higher ranking. There are several other security measures that you need to implement.

To begin with, you need to download reliable security plug-ins and configure automatic backups.

Also, you need to update your Content Management System (CMS), theme, firewall, antivirus and plugins on a regular basis.

Finally, you need to limit third-party plugins and extensions as those may contain malicious code.

Conclusion:

• At present, SEO and HTTPS should be considered at the same time.
• If you ignore customers’ security then your website will suffer a lot due to low ranking, low ROI and less profit.
• It is better to get SSL certificate for your site soon that will provide the confidence to customers and visitors immediately.