Google HTTPS: We’ll Take Care of Switching Your Website from HTTP For Way Less Then You Think!

It’s only a matter of time before Google HTTPS and secure websites become an official Google ranking factor. Essentially, now is as good a time as any to move your WordPress website to HTTPS.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be a WordPress CMS website for us to help you switch from HTTP to HTTP! If you’re ready to change your current server to an secure server, and give your website’s search rankings a potential boost, we can help you today!

Contact us for a free quote and we’ll take care of everything needed to move your WordPress HTTP site to a HTTPS website.

How To Make My Website HTTPS? We’ll Do It For You!

If you or your SEO company has been asking “how do I make my website HTTPS”, we have the absolute best answer to that question: Don’t worry about a thing, we’ll take care of moving your website from HTTP to Google HTTPS asap. Get started here .

If you’re not completely up to speed on exactly what HTTPS or HHTP are, and why it’s recommended for your website to move to a secure HTTPS server, we’ve broken down some FAQ’s about HTTPS and why you should move your site to this protocol sooner than later.

WHAT IS HTTPS?

HTTPS, or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure, is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between browsers and the websites you or any user visits.

The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted.

WHY HTTPS?

The HTTPS protocol is primarily used to protect highly confidential online information and/or transactions. For example, accessing your online banking, logging into to member only websites like forums or social media platforms, as well as for online shopping forms.

WHY DO I NEED TO SWITCH?

Google has confirmed that HTTPS is now a ranking factor. Data shows that HTTPS websites tend to rank higher in search results. If that’s not enough of a reason for you to switch, check out these other benefits of HTTPS:

1. All customer information, including credit card numbers, are encrypted and cannot be intercepted.
2. All site visitors can verify you are a registered business and that you own the domain.
3. All customers are more likely to trust and complete purchases from sites that use HTTPS.

DO I NEED AN SSL CERTIFICATE?

An HTTPS certificate is also known as an SSL certificate. All secure connections require an SSL certificate. This certificate contains the public key needed to begin a secure session. 

There are two versions of an SSL certificate. Your cost is approximately $99/year to maintain the SSL certificate. We’ll guide to which is best for your business.

Our fees do not include the SSL certificate.

WHAT OTHER EXPERTS ARE SAYING

If you’re still not convinced that moving your site from HTTP to HTTPS is worth it for the future of your business, check out this video from Google Developers:

Google Developers YouTube Channel Explains Why HTTPS Matters

Need more expert data? Check these articles:

Why Everyone Should Be Moving To HTTP/2

Google To Begin To Index HTTPS Pages First, Before HTTP Pages When Possible

Ready to make the move to HTTPS? We’ll handle it all for you. Contact us to get started.

THE GEEKY TECH STUFF IN OUR HTTPS PROCESS

If you really want to know the geeky/tech-y details to move your website from HTTP to HTTPS, grab a coffee and a comfy seat and enjoy the following 28 steps.

If you’d rather we take care of all this technical crap for you, and move your site to a secure HTTPS server, Click here and relax!

1. We start everything with a test server.
2. Crawl the current website so that you know the current state of the website and for comparison purposes.
3. Read any documentation regarding your server or content delivery networks (CDN) for HTTPS.
4. Purchase a security certificate and install on the server.
5. Update all references to internal links from HTTP to use HTTPS or relative paths.
6. Update references in templates to use HTTPS or relative paths.
7. Update canonical tags.
8. Update hreflang tags if your website uses them, or any other tags such as OG tags for that matter.
9. Update any plugins/modules/add-ons to make sure nothing breaks and that nothing contains insecure content.
10. CMS-specific settings may need to be changed.
11. Crawl the site to make sure we didn’t miss any links and that nothing is broken.
12. Make sure any external scripts that are called support HTTPS.
13. Force HTTPS with redirects.
14. Update old redirects currently in place.
15. Crawl the old URLs for any broken redirects or any redirect chains.
16. Update and submit sitemaps to use HTTPS versions of the URLs.
17. Update your robots.txt file to include your new sitemap.
18. Enable HSTS. This tells the browser to always use HTTPS, which eliminates a server-side check and makes your website load faster.
19. Enable OCSP stapling. This enables a server to check if a security certificate is revoked instead of a browser, which keeps the browser from having to download or cross-reference with the issuing certificate authority.
20. Add HTTP/2 support.
21. Add the HTTPS version of your site
    to all the search engine versions of webmaster tools that you use and load the new sitemap with HTTPS to them. This is very important.
22. Update your disavow file if you had one for the HTTPS version.
23. Update your URL parameter settings if you had these configured.
24. Go live!
25. Update the default URL if one is required In your analytics platform to ensure that we are tracking HTTPS properly.
26. Update your social share counts if  the networks will transfer the counts through their APIs.
27. Update any paid media, email or marketing automation campaigns to use the HTTPS versions of the URLs.
28. Monitor everything during the migration and check, double-check and triple-check to make sure everything is going smoothly.