A secured connection has long been associated with a good website. While all free and premium Wix plans come with an SSL certificate and therefore have HTTPS, you might wonder whether this is a benefit or not for your business. So, does having HTTPS attached to my Wix site improve Google SEO? Here are some considerations.
HTTPS is otherwise known as Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. This is a secure system that allows a browser to communicate with websites. When a site is using HTTPS, the data transmitted through the site can be accessed, stolen or manipulated if the website isn’t using HTTPS. When the site is using HTTPS, the data is encrypted, so it is harder for criminals to access the data.
When a new site is activated on Wix, the new website automatically has HTTPS enabled. This costs no extra money to enable.
What are the benefits of Using HTTPS on a Wix website?
HTTPS is such a small part of a website, whether it’s a Wix website or not. However, HTTPS can have a massive impact on the success of a business. There are numerous benefits for you and your customers by ensuring your website is using HTTPS.
For one, your site’s visitors are more secure through encryption. This allows them to send personal information to you with confidence. Many customers (85%) won’t use a website that doesn’t have an SSL certificate or HTTPS. Therefore, you’re losing money if you’re looking at running an eCommerce store online without HTTPS.
In addition, Google Chrome is now displaying warnings when a user visits a website that doesn't use HTTPS. This can damage your reputation as soon as a customer lands on your page and they’re using Google Chrome.
Finally, it is well known that Google will rank websites using HTTPS sites more favourably. Therefore, when you have HTTPS, you can rank higher on search results for your keywords.
What is an SSL Certificate?
An SSL Certificate (Secure Sockets Layer Certificate), allows the visitors to your website to view your site using an HTTPS connection. It secures the connection between a website and the browser of the user. All Wix websites are provided with an SSL certificate as standard. Wix will generate the certificate automatically for a custom domain and subdomain.
Anyone can see whether a website has an SSL Certificate because it will have the https:// at the beginning of their website address.
What is the impact of HTTPS on search ranking?
There are numerous ranking elements within the Google search algorithm, so it can be hard for anyone to say the exact impact that HTTPS would have on ranking. That doesn’t mean that it is impossible to say that HTTPS does have an impact though. Google has stated that websites with HTTPS are ranked higher.
It should also be noted that Google Chrome will display a warning if your website doesn’t have HTTPS. This warning confirms that Google takes the HTTPS element very seriously.
While it is impossible to know the full extent of the increase in ranking on Google and other search engines, there are important considerations. The top-ranked position on any search term will gain nearly a quarter of the traffic from the search query.
The third-ranked position on Google search results will get nearly half the amount the top position will get. Those who are ranked at the 10th of the page will get just 2.3% of all the searches of that term. Therefore, they’re getting a tenth of the traffic of the website ranked first.
This is important to note. Even a small increase from position 10 to position 6 on the rankings can double your traffic. If your website’s HTTPS can enable that kind of change in your rankings, your business’ fortunes will be much better.
How to enable your SSL on Wix
99.9% of the time, Wix will automatically install SSL to your site within 24 hours of you connecting your website to your live domain. If for any reason the SSL (you should see a padlock to the left of your domain name in the address bar of your browser) does not go live, simply contact Wix Support through your Wix Dashboard and they will help you to sort it out.
How long will it take to make an impact on SEO?
It is difficult to say whether adding the SSL to your website will have an immediate impact. It will depend on how quickly Google will crawl your website and notice the change. For busy websites, this can take just a few hours. For other sites, it can take several days. Even then, the change to your ranking can take a few weeks for you to notice a difference.
And even if it does have an impact, it won’t be a big change. You will still need to deploy other beneficial SEO tactics on your Wix website.
Conclusion
Not having HTTPS on your Wix website can be very harmful to your business. Nearly 9 out of 10 customers won’t do business with sites that aren’t secure and Google will rank you lower. All Wix websites come with HTTPS enabled as standard, but in rare cases, you might need to activate it. Even then, it won’t rank you at the top of rankings.
If you need help with your SSL certificate and HTTPS on your Wix website, then you can speak to the Wix SEO Guy. He can also help you to build a better SEO strategy for your Wix website.