If a higher ranking in Google search is what your heart desires, there’s another trick to appeasing the Google gods: Securing your website using HTTPS.
While you should continue including SEO-friendly keywords, tags and other ranking signals on your website and within your branded content, having a secure site that protects the data of your customers is a huge plus. Not only does this make you look good in the eyes of Google, it makes you appear more trustworthy to prospects and customers on your site as well.
Also, it’ll help you stand out from the competition — only 32.8 percent of the 151,509 most popular websites are HTTPS-secure.
And with the frequency of companies getting hacked and customer data getting compromised, it’s certainly worth considering.
Why HTTPS?
You wouldn’t willingly give out your private information, social security number and passwords to strangers (or even your friends and family), right? When you submit information to a website that is not secured via HTTPS, your information is at risk of being intercepted by third parties. And if you think about visitors on your website, you want to make sure that they feel just as comfortable submitting their private information.
Websites secured via HTTPS, on the other hand, encrypt that info so it’s protected from third parties. So when a customer on your site submits their credit card number and address, it’s encrypted so that only your server and your customer’s server can decrypt it. By adding this extra layer of protection, private information is secured from those who shouldn’t get their eyes on it.
Google ♥’s HTTPS
Last August, Google began using HTTPS as a ranking signal for its search algorithms. In other non-techy terms, this means that HTTPS has become another factor that can help influence a website’s ranking in Google search. By rewarding site owners that take the extra step of protecting the data of their site visitors, they hope others will be encouraged to follow suit.
What This Means For You
Providing secure connections for your website visitors and encrypting their data is an easy win-win for both you and your customers. While it doesn’t protect against all types of attacks, it’s the best thing you can do right now to protect your visitors’ private information.
Not only does it help with your search rankings, it also allows your customers to feel more confident in your brand. When you take the extra step to secure their data, you become worthy of their trust.
If you’re an AWeber customer, it’s helpful to know that our sign up forms are HTTPS friendly, which means the data your subscribers enter when signing up for your email list will be protected.
If you secure your website with HTTPS after creating a Javascript sign up form, you don’t have to do a thing — it will be automatically updated. But if you have a hardcoded form, you’ll need to make the update manually by:
- Looking at your website source code where you installed the AWeber form
- Finding the line that says https://www.aweber.com/scripts/addlead.pl and changing http to https
- And that’s it!
Get Secure
If your website isn’t secure with HTTPS, you can purchase an SSL certificate from either your web host provider or a third-party company such as Thawte and install it on your website.
Once you do, you can trust that your audience will have the confidence they need to interact with your brand. Plus, you get that boost in your Google search rankings. AWesome!
Have any questions about website security and hardcoding a javascript sign up form? Contact an email marketing expert today.