In June 2016, Ahrefs reported finding that the percentage of secure pages at positions 1-3 was higher than at positions 4-10. In July 2016, reported that 30% of websites use . While these numbers and percentages may give you a headache, note that all of them were based on different data samples. But, they are all heading in the same direction with as an actionable and necessary SEO tactic. You can see it with companies like Let's Encrypt coming up. They offer free secure certificates and hope to bring businesses to 100% . So far, they've issued 5 million certificates since December 2015. Let's Encrypt has helped big companies like WordPress, Shopify, and Bitly make the switch. If you think of a company that makes you feel safe, you're probably thinking of The Brinks Company, ADT, NorthStar, or even the CIA.
Now, what if these companies fax list were breached? How would that make you feel? Now consider this in the context of your website, and using doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore. Do you really want to risk your user's private information? Feelings of trust, safety, and security provide many different benefits, and they all contribute to a loyal customer. It's at the heart of every business. We want our users to come back. Advertising Continue reading below Thus, we know that benefits users for security. But let's talk about the benefits for SEO purposes. Security and privacy Yes, I think I hammered that above. But, there are amazing benefits for SEO purposes: verifies that your website is the one it is supposed to connect to. uses its . encrypts all your communication to protect your users' browsing history, passwords, creditdebit card numbers, etc.
Rank increase As I mentioned above, Google has confirmed that it is giving sites a small ranking boost. It's not a magic potion to see a spike in the rankings. But it could be heavier on the road. Lots of reference data When traffic comes to your site, it looks like direct traffic in your analytics report. As traffic passes through your site, your referral traffic data is recorded. Whoo Hoo! You can determine where your traffic is coming from. Come on, if the White House Office of Management and Budget has become an early adopter of , then I'd say it's time to set your game. Other heavy hitters have stepped up the transition to. illa moves away from insecure , Wired explains how they plan to make the change, and Apple talks to app developers about using .