Should I get an SSL if my non-SSL site is ranking well?
-
I have a client with a local divorce law business. He's ranking really well, and I don't want to do anything to jeopardize that rank. His site does not have SSL. I feel like it would be good to get rid of the "not-secure" message from Chrome, but not important enough to risk ranks. Would love to get thoughts from this forum on this.
Thanks!
-
Google Chrome shows "not secure" today forms don't matter If you look at the example website it does not have a certificate or is it using HTTPS
Because lawyers websites are considered "money or life" sites they hold more weight with Google & the public. meaning they need to be secure and trustworthy.
Hopefully, he is already updated his site if not make sure he does.
Respectfully,
Thomas
-
Just a word to the wise from the not as wise....is it possible that there is a slower time of year for a divorce lawyer? I would certainly aim the transition for a slower time if possible. If you do it all perfectly, you may not take a hit. But, I don't know about you...but I'm not perfect.
-
I agree with the others. Your client is going to have to convert, it's just a matter of when. The site reputation, and by association, your client's reputation, is at stake.
If you're concerned about rankings, set up a staging area and do the conversion and testing there. Baseline some key performance indicators which you can use to help determine root cause if problems arise. Hire a consultant to double check your work before you hit the migrate button. Set expectations by letting your client know that he or she may experience some short-term movement in rankings but will recover.
-
PS you can use https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/ or Let's Encrypt for free SSL certs but if you buy this has very good pricing for paid SSL certs. https://www.ssl2buy.com/
-
I have the same ( I never do local but was talked into it same type of law business)
_ "but not important enough to risk ranks."_
He needs to understand today Google will not hurt you for moving to https if done correctly see the guide below under to fix use.
As you see now "Not secure" is only on forms In July 2018 all non-https sites in Google Chrome will show up as "Not secure.” This warning will show for all HTTP websites. That will cost someone in Law a lot.
See photo 1 will be in July 2018 & photo 2 sometime after. 3 is google
- https://i.imgur.com/wYMb88P.png
- https://i.imgur.com/ZVeyTuy.png
- https://i.imgur.com/HVsVKAO.png
- SEE https://transparencyreport.google.com/https/overview
To Fix this use
- https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/http-https-migration-checklist-google-docs/
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XB26X_wFoBBlQEqecj7HB79hQ7DTLIPo97SS5irwsK8/edit#gid=1975121463
- https://www.semrush.com/blog/http-to-https-a-complete-guide-to-securing-your-website-semrushchat/
- tools to know it worked.
- Moz crawler
- https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
- https://deepcrawl.com
- SEMrush
Google’s announcement was firm about their goal to warn users of insecure sites, with the intent of further shepherding more web publishers into upgrading to HTTPS.
“Chrome’s new interface will help users understand that all HTTP sites are not secure, and continue to move the web towards a secure HTTPS web by default.”
Cite: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-sets-https-deadline/236225/
- https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-https-works/220347/
- https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-is-requiring-https-for-secure-data-in-chrome/183756/
Hope this helps,
Tom
-
Personally, I believe that making a site https is something that majority of the sites in the world should do. Google gives a slight ranking boost and slowly customers are trusting https sites more, with Google transitioning to "not secure" then it makes it even more of a reason to do so.
In majority of cases, https is quite a simple process if you're using a common cms. Just check that all of the scripts are functional and redirects are in place, once you've done that submit the sitemap and wait for Google to recrawl your site.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Places Competitor Category Ranks (Should we copy them?)
Competitors use "Interior designer" as primary category in Google My Business, they rank well in Google Places, across the phrases we target. Currently we use the same category, but "Office refurbishment service" would seem to be more relevant to us. Should we move to "Office refurbishment service" as the Primary category in Google My Business? If we do move would we need to change our citations? And for other keywords should we be influenced and copy the categories used by our competitors?
Local Listings | | GrouchyKids1 -
Business Split into 2 Businesses - Residential and Commercial Site - 2 different URLs and both have the same address! Can we create 2 separate Google My Business Accounts?
Business Split into 2 Businesses - Residential and Commercial Site - 2 different URLs and both have the same address! Can we create 2 separate Google My Business Accounts?
Local Listings | | 9thCO0 -
Our website ranks first in SERP but is not listed in google local list
Hi, Our website is currently (and has been) ranking 1st for a number of keywords but is not listed under the Google Local list. I have double check that all the (physical) info is correct. I do not have a duplicate page. When I order the Google Local results in rating order, we then appear on top! Has anyone come across such a situation and would you have tips on how to solve this issue? Thanks!
Local Listings | | GVZH1 -
Getting your business name on a Google Map?
How do you get your business name to appear on Google Maps? See attachment. What's the process to get this to happen? I have a Google Local listing, but that doesn't seem to be enough. ZzFnwBj
Local Listings | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Ranking opportunity if we omit county in citations
I am looking to rank highly in local search for Birkenhead but have not currently filled in the county on Google + so Moz local is not picking the county up. I am wondering whether I should continue and keep the county off there as there is a potential problem: on our website we are listed as being based in the Wirral and we are also based in a county called Merseyside so have two different possible citations. We are ranking well for the term Wirral and do not want to effect this. I am thinking of building citations without Wirral or Merseyside and was wondering if anyone can advise? The address that I have in the citation would be - business name, building number, Birkenhead then Wirral or Merseyside and post code. I am currently using business name, building number, Birkenhead and post code and we want to rank highly for Birkenhead. Could anyone advise me here? The Wirral is a peninsular as can be seen on Wilipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Borough_of_Wirral
Local Listings | | SEM_at_Lees0 -
Placement of products in URL-structure for best category page rankings
Hi! I have some questions regarding the optimal URL-hierarchy placement of products in a marketplace setting where the end goal is to attract traffic to category pages. Let me start off with some background, thanks in advance for the help. TLDR Goal: Increase category page rankings. Alternative 1 - Products and category pages separated, flat product structure. Category page: oursite.com/category/subcategory Product / listing page: oursite.com/listing-1 Alternative 2 - Products and category pages separated, hierarchal product structure. Category page: oursite.com/category/subcategory Product / listing page: oursite.com/product/category/subcat/listing Alternative 3 - Products placed directly under category page. Category page: oursite.com/category/subcategory Product / listing page: oursite.com/category/subcategory/listing I run a commercial real estate marketplace, which means that our potential search traffic is _extremely _geographic. For example, some common searches are (not originally in english): Office space for lease {City X} Office space for lease {Neighborhood Y} Retail space {Neighborhood Z} And so on... These terms are already quite competitive, where the top results are our competitors geographic and type category pages. For example: _competitor.com/type/city/neighborhood , _is a top result, where the user reaches a landing page that shows all the {type} spaces for lease in {neighborhood}. These users are out to find which spaces are available for lease in these geographical areas, and not individual spaces. I.e. users do not search in the same extent for an individual product, in this case a specific empty space. Our approach has been to place an extreme bias towards a heavy geographical hierarchy. This means that basically any search, resulting in a category page, on our site results in a well structured URL like the following: _oursite.com/type/state/city/district/street, _since we are using Google Maps API's, this is easy and relevant for the user. Our geographical categorization beats our competitors both on extensiveness and usability, especially in long-tail search phrases where our competitors don't care to categorize where we are seeing real search volumes. The hierarchy only extends as far down as the user has searched, for example a lot of our searched just end up being _oursite.com/type/state/city/district. _ Now we are wondering how we should place our products, the empty spaces, in this URL structure. Our original hypothesis was that we should include the products in the original hierarchy, resulting in: oursite.com/category/subcategory/product. Our thinking was that we would both be serving the user with an understandable and relevant URL, and also provide search bots with a logical structure for our site and most importantly content for our category pages. Our landing pages are very dynamic, providing information by relaying graphical information on a map instead of in an SEO-friendly manner. I would however go as far as to say that these dynamic pages provide a ton of value for the user, much more so than our competitors, by describing relevant information about the neighborhood kind of like Trulia, just not in a bot-readable manner. This results in trying to rank them on their own merits being a challenge, whereas we were hoping we could create relevancy by placing products / listings and maybe even blog posts on the topic within the same URL-hierarchy. As of right now our current structure is oursite.com/products/category/subcategory/product. In other words, they are categorized in the same geographical fashion but under a separate URL-path. Our results so far is that we basically only rank for the product pages, and rank extremely poorly for our category pages, which is our ultimate goal to enhance. This is why we developed the above hypothesis. However, what we learned when we did some initial research is that very few e-commerce stores place their products directly below their categories. Most of the major websites we studied, and we looked at quite a few, just go for **alternative 1 **from above. The crux is that most of them choose alternative 1 but simultaneously implement bread crumbs that emulate alternative 3, just without the actual URL's. So, what I'm asking is, what are the actual benefits or downsides of the three alternatives? I feel as if I have a pretty firm grasp on how this could be done, I just need to better understand why most seem to choose to flatline their products or listings in the alternative 1 fashion. Thanks, Viktor
Local Listings | | Viktorsodd0 -
How valuable are citaitons/consistency (Moz Local) for a NON-local business?
Hi All! I'm doing some research for non-local SEO clients and finding that many of them have messy and extremely inconsistent listing profiles (via Moz Local checker). It seems to me that this would be a good thing to take care of, even for a non local site. Anyone have insights on whether or not this is something we should take care of? If so, any details on how or why it would or would not be a good idea? Thanks! Ricky
Local Listings | | SUCCESSagency0 -
Is it better to stick with a generic LocalBusiness Schema Itemtype for a particular type of business or should you get more specific?
Full disclosure... I don't know much about proper Schema Markup. I'm curious about how specific everyone gets when generating the markup for different types of businesses that service a local area and rely heavily on Local Maps listings. For instance, I have a bunch of self-storage facility clients. Is it better to just keep it generic like any other Local Business? Here's 2 examples... which one is better: <div id="search-area" itemid="facility" itemtype="http://schema.org/SelfStorage" itemscope=""> <a style="color: #ffffff" href="http://goo.gl/maps/SjmZ"> <span itemid="facility" itemtype="http://schema.org/SelfStorage" itemscope=""> <span itemprop="name">Elliot Kyrene Storage Solutionsspan>span><br>a>
Local Listings | | barkingtuna
<div itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress" itemscope="" itemprop="address"> <a style="color: #ffffff" href="http://goo.gl/maps/SjmZ"> <span class="street-address" itemprop="streetAddress">543 W. Elliot Rdspan>
<br><span class="locality" itemprop="addressLocality">Tempespan>, <span class="region" title="Arizona" itemprop="addressRegion">AZspan>
<span class="postal-code" itemprop="postalCode">85284span><br> <span itemprop="telephone">480.940.0111span>
a>div>h3>div> Or is this better: <div itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress" itemscope="" itemprop="address"><h2><span itemprop="streetAddress">2636 W. Thunderbird Roadspan><span itemprop="addressLocality">Phoenixspan>, <span title="Arizona" itemprop="addressRegion">AZspan>
<span class="postalCode">85023span>|<span itemprop="telephone">602-863-0111span>
h2>
<span itemtype="http://schema.org/GeoCoordinates" itemscope="" itemprop="geo"> <meta content="33.611544" itemprop="latitude">
<meta content="-112.114374" itemprop="longitude">span>
div>0