SSL Certificates, Google Ranking Signals & HTTP/2 – Why This Is Important For Your Organic Traffic

Last Summer, Google announced that it would put an organic ranking preference on sites that employed a site wide SSL certificate, stating that the investment in security for the future of the internet was of paramount importance. Google said that as a result, it would be treating sites with the secure authentication (SSL) engaged as more trustworthy, thus resulting in potentially higher rankings.

In theory, this should be enough to see a wave of webmasters employing the tactic, especially when you consider that SSL certificates start from as little as £10 for the entire year.

However, the number of mainstream websites that have heeded this advice is minimal. Have a look at some of the websites that you have visited today, how many of those have the padlock confirming the SSL connection between your browser and their server (across the site)?

The most important take away here is not just that SSL Certificate = Potentially Higher Rankings, it actually is even more beneficial than that for a different reason altogether.

What Is HTTP/2?

HTTP 2.0 – This is the next generation of standard with regards to data communication across the World Wide Web. Without delving too deep, one of the most important top-level aspects of HTTP 2.0 is the ability to process multiple files from a web server across a ‘parallel’ connection. On HTTP 1.1 connections, only a single request can be processed at a time. For example, if a large CSS file loads through the browser, other files cannot load until the first file is complete. Multiple TCP connections attempted to facilitate ‘virtual’ parallel processes via HTTP 1.1, however there are numerous pitfalls to this…

HTTP 2.0 essentially allows parallelism (and multiplexing and prioritisation and numerous other attributes) in terms of connecting a web server to a browser, this means that all of your websites files can be loaded to a HTTP 2.0 enabled browser (like Google Chrome) in parallel, across the same connection. The below image illustrates the key difference between HTTP 1.1 and HTTP 2.0:

In summary – It will be much faster at loading media rich websites.

As good SEOs know, when websites load faster, not only is there a greater likelihood that engagement rates will be better (lower bounce rate etc.), but faster page load times are another positive ranking signal to Google. All in all, there are a lot of positives to come from implementing HTTP 2.0 on your website.

How Do You Implement HTTP/2?

So, how do you implement HTTP 2.0 on your website? HTTP 2.0 requires an SSL certified site (amongst other things like an enabled browser) in order for the connection to function. And whilst the technology is still in its infancy, this will undoubtedly be the future for quicker mobile & desktop internet connections. So by adding sitewide SSL certificates to your website, you could potentially see the following benefits:

– Faster page load times for HTTP 2.0 ready browsers
– Better engagement from those visitors
– Increased crawl rate from Google and other search engine bots
– Better organic search rankings

Also, it is important to note here that many major technology and security companies are advocating the use of the SHA-2 certificate which is replacing the outdated and potentially vulnerable SHA-1 certificate. So it is important to ensure that any SSL license you purchase is the SHA-2 derivative. If you aren’t sure which type of certificate your site currently uses then you can find out here (whilst the domain name is rather bizarre, it is a very useful resource!).

Please feel free to comment below and make sure to get in touch if you have any questions or need more information.

Anthony