[Essential] What Is Sitewide SSL? [SEO and Trust]

From ACIDHOUSE, INC., this is Tetsuya Ashida.

Owners of small and medium businesses with websites sometimes ask me this question.

Recently, someone knowledgeable about the web told me, ‘You should enable SSL across your whole site.’

What is sitewide SSL? What are the benefits of implementing it? Does it affect sales after all?

This article answers those questions.

What Is Sitewide SSL?

SSL communication encrypts data when sending and receiving it so that it cannot be deciphered even if intercepted.

Sitewide SSL applies this to every page of a website.

Previously, ‘partial SSL’ was the usual way of operating a website.

SSL communication was used only for clearly sensitive information such as personal details and credit card data; other information was generally handled without SSL.

Today, the volume of information is enormous, and developments in social media, GPS, and similar technologies have made personal information ubiquitous.

Sitewide SSL was probably adopted because these developments meant we needed constant protection against interception, while devices, software, and communications infrastructure progressed enough to handle continuous SSL communication despite its additional processing load.

Many websites use sitewide SSL, including leading companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon.

You can identify whether sitewide SSL is enabled by checking that

Those are the indicators.

https:// (with a padlock icon)

Certificate

What Are the Benefits of Sitewide SSL?

Let's look at these in detail.

Improved Evaluation by Google (a Slight SEO Benefit)

Google aims for a world where the internet can be used safely and has recommended sitewide SSL for websites.

For that reason, it is said to rate websites with sitewide SSL more highly than sites without it.

That said, I do not feel it has had a noticeable effect on search rankings so far.

We do not know what will happen with major algorithm changes, but following Google's policy should not have a negative impact in the long run.

Providing Reassurance and Earning Users' Trust

Connecting to the internet involves risks such as tampering, impersonation, malware, and eavesdropping, but sitewide SSL can improve security.

The indicators showing that a website uses sitewide SSL also help reassure users and earn their trust.

Conversely, websites without SSL show ‘Not secure’ in the address bar, and clicking it brings up the display below.

This is the important benefit of implementing it.

In this way, it has become a warning message, which could alarm users, make them hesitate to visit, and lead to lost opportunities.

This Trend Will Inevitably Reach Smartphones and Safari

Currently, more devices connected to the internet are smartphones than PCs.

iPhones have a large share of Japan's smartphone market, but as of February 2019, viewing a website without sitewide SSL in the iPhone's browser (Safari) does not produce a warning message like the one above.

However, you still need to enable sitewide SSL immediately.

Google leads the world not only in search engines, but also in smartphone operating systems (Android) and browsers (Chrome).

Mobile devices will inevitably follow this trend toward sitewide SSL.
The iPhone and Safari should also follow suit.

In other words, you will need to do it sooner or later, so it is better to take care of it now.