{"id":4396,"date":"2023-05-19T21:15:55","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T21:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/?p=4396"},"modified":"2023-05-19T21:15:55","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T21:15:55","slug":"ssl-certificate-does-not-increase-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/?p=4396","title":{"rendered":"SSL certificate does not increase SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p>Google&#8217;s John Mueller deflated the suggestion that an SSL certificate would &#8220;boost&#8221; a website&#8217;s SEO, stating unequivocally that an SSL certificate does not boost your SEO.<\/p>\n<h2>Post on Mastodon About SSL and SEO<\/h2>\n<p><strong>The encounter happened on Mastodon, where a member called EncryptedFence <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@EncryptedFence\/110394898360092171\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Increase your website&#8217;s SEO and reputation with a must-have security measure: SSL certificate &#8211; <\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t miss out on the benefits!  Get an SSL certificate today and keep your website secure.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Google Senior Search Analyst\/Head of Search Relationships John Mueller responded:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;@EncryptedFence this doesn&#8217;t &#8220;increase your website&#8217;s SEO&#8221;, sorry.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>Doesn&#8217;t SSL certificate increase SEO?<\/h2>\n<p>SSL, which stands for Secure Sockets Layer, is an encrypted communications standard (also known as a protocol) for secure Internet connections.<\/p>\n<p>An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that certifies (authenticates) the identity of a website, it certifies that a browser is connecting to the correct server.<\/p>\n<p>The SSL certificate plays an important role in the secure transfer of data over the Internet.<\/p>\n<h2>Google encourages HTTPS<\/h2>\n<p>Google made a major push to help the Internet publish data securely, for a number of reasons, most notably user security and privacy.<\/p>\n<p>One obstacle to adopting HTTPS was the process of obtaining an SSL certificate was that the process was somewhat technical and confusing.<\/p>\n<p>Many publishers preferred to wait to adopt the standard because it seemed unnecessary for websites that were not involved in making financial transactions.<\/p>\n<p>Google responded by incentivizing the adoption of secure standards by making HTTPS a ranking factor in 2014.<\/p>\n<h3>Google makes HTTPS a stronger signal<\/h3>\n<p>Google encouraged the SEO community by promising that it might make HTTPS a stronger ranking factor.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Google <a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/search\/blog\/2014\/08\/https-as-ranking-signal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wrote in 2014<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At Google I\/O a few months ago, we called for &#8216;HTTPS everywhere&#8217; on the web.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve also seen more and more webmasters adopting HTTPS (also known as HTTP over TLS or Transport Layer Security) on their website, which is encouraging.<\/p>\n<p>For these reasons, over the past few months we&#8217;ve been testing whether sites use secure and encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve seen positive results, so we&#8217;re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.  For now, it&#8217;s just a very light signal, affecting less than 1% of global queries and weighing less than other signals, such as high-quality content, while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS.<\/p>\n<p>But over time, we may decide to tighten it up, because we&#8217;d like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Google said it may decide to strengthen the HTTPS signal.<\/p>\n<p>The immediate and widespread adoption of HTTP essentially meant that the SEO community responded, &#8220;I&#8217;m going to force you to do this!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"THERE&#039;S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY Clip - &quot;Prom Rejection&quot; (1998) Ben Stiller\" width=\"760\" height=\"428\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1KTxjTrClRY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The response was overwhelmingly positive, and SSL certificates flew off the digital shelves like discounted TVs on a Black Friday.<\/p>\n<h2>Won&#8217;t SSL Increase Your SEO?<\/h2>\n<p>If HTTPS is a ranking factor, why did John Mueller claim that SSL certificates do not increase SEO?<\/p>\n<p>A ranking factor, after all, is a criterion that Google uses to decide whether or not a website ranks for a search query.<\/p>\n<p>So anything that is a ranking factor will boost SEO, right?<\/p>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s not like that.<\/p>\n<p>Some ranking factors, such as HTTPS, are extremely light.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone agrees that links from other sites are an important ranking factor.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, it is not a mental stretch to accept the fact that other ranking factors are so slight as to play a minimal role in determining how high a website will rank.<\/p>\n<p>Another consideration about HTTPS as a weak SEO boost is that virtually all sites today use HTTPS.<\/p>\n<p>This creates the situation where any ranking bonus derived from using HTTPS is essentially canceled out.<\/p>\n<p>Google&#8217;s John Mueller has been consistent on this point about the relative weakness of the HTTPS ranking signal.<\/p>\n<p>For example, in 2019 he answered a question about SSL certificates where a company claimed that the lack of a certificate would cause Google to drop a site in Google search results.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/krinal\/status\/1090194983561252864\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The claim was<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Without an SSL certificate, Google is likely to leave your website in search results&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mueller <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JohnMu\/status\/1090196646200307712\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">answered<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, this is wrong.<\/p>\n<p>HTTPS is not a factor in deciding whether or not to index a page, at all.<\/p>\n<p>We use HTTPS as a lightweight ranking factor and having HTTPS is great for users.<\/p>\n<p>A free certificate from Let&#8217;s Encrypt works just as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>Once again with the nuance of SEO\u2026<\/h2>\n<p>There has been a lot of confusion about HTTPS as a ranking factor.<\/p>\n<p>Some people claimed it&#8217;s a tiebreaker for all else being equal.  Although HTTPS is so commonly used today that it&#8217;s hard to think of a link that could be broken.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s probably easier to understand if you consider that if links can be a strong signal, this means that other factors, such as HTTPS, can be a weak signal, with no real boost to SEO.<\/p>\n<p>Featured image by Shutterstock\/Ollyy<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.searchenginejournal.com\/google-ssl-certificate-does-not-boost-seo\/487389\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google&#8217;s John Mueller deflated the suggestion that an SSL certificate would &#8220;boost&#8221; a website&#8217;s SEO, stating unequivocally that an SSL certificate does not boost your SEO. Post on Mastodon About SSL and SEO The encounter happened on Mastodon, where a member called EncryptedFence published: &#8220;Increase your website&#8217;s SEO and reputation with a must-have security measure: SSL certificate &#8211; Don&#8217;t miss out on the benefits! Get an SSL certificate today and keep your website secure.&#8221; Google&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}