What is the only difference between the HTTP and HTTPS?
Correct! The letter S but the same letter S makes it more secure. Can you believe that?
Let me explain it.
But let me give you the disclaimer, the change from the HTTP to HTTPS might heavily affect your site. Making the small change from non-S to HTTPS, we are changing the whole URL which is already indexed by Google. So to inform Google that the website is not new but its URL is changed to the Secured Connection, the process of the 301 redirection needs to be followed.
Otherwise, all the efforts that you have taken over the website ranking will vanish in a snap. And definitely, it will affect the SEO of the site so better you get the help of the SEO professionals to get the correct assistance.
What is HTTPS?
It is basically, HyperText Transfer Protocol and the S stands for the Secure connection that is been made while transferring the data. The three-layered security is provided as follows:
Authentication:
It authenticates the connection that has been made and prevents the ‘Middle-Man-Attack’. It is the most famous way to steal information happens due to a non-secure connection.
Encryption:
It encrypts the information that has been transferred and it encodes the information which can’t be decoded even if it is stolen.
For example, this happens so many times, on a few sites like MSRTC, when you put the user name and the password if it is 8 characters long and you are done typing and you hit the Enter button. It shows you the long trail of black dots and that process is known as encrypting the data.
In this case, it only happens with the passwords but while transferring the chunk of data, the same thing happens to every single word just for making sure that information should not be stolen.
Data Integrity:
Data integrity is basically is the accuracy and consistency of the data. Also, it is referred to as the safety regulatory compliance of data.
This security layer generally helps in the case of data is modified unnoticeably. And it helps in the case of the data distortion happens. It prevents the data from being corrupted from the virus or any there programs.
All these three layers ensure the safe transfer of your data and that is why the Security connection adding to the website is essential.
Why Migrate to HTTPS?
As mentioned earlier the HTTP gets more S for ‘Secured’ when it turned into HTTPS. But apart from that there are other reasons why the site should turn into HTTPS, are the following:
- Private & Secure: It provides privacy and security to the data present on your website. It develops trust with your audience the site is secured and nothing harm will ever happen to their mobile or desktops.
- Enjoy the updates: the HTTPS has awesome updates for the users in various terms of UI and UX of the website. Also, it shows the performance over the speed of the browsing of the website.
- Boosts ranking: As Google is giving hints on strengthening the HTTPS in the future; the websites with HTTPS are given a high ranking by Google.
Now let’s go through the steps of transforming one by one, together.
Crawl the website thoroughly
This will make you help recollect the visuals of the site and the content that your website has. This also helps you to evaluate the current state of your website. While taking the close look at your website you might want to figure out the areas of your websites that might need a separate approach while doing this migration.
Along with that make a list of things that going to break after the migration has done. For example, payment gateways, external scripts, APIs, downloadables, etc. and even after the migration, you should check on to the most vulnerable things.
Checking the Ranking
Things will be sorted in the end but when you are changing the HTTP to HTTPS you might experience the turbulence in the ranking of the website. Although this fluctuation should be for a short period of time as suggested.
To keep track of it you might check the website’s ranking for a week or so and keep a good record of it. This can be carried out before the migration and after the week of migration has been done.
This will keep the record of any significant decline in ranking if happens afterward by detecting the troubling areas.
Choosing the right development Option
So once you are done with the primary plan of the website to finally migrate to HTTPS. Follow the steps below.
- If you are enough brave-hearted you might make the changes directly to the production environment. That is how the changes will be available to users at once. But you might also need to handle the overlooked bugs on the live site.
- Over tasting and tasting it once again is a good time and developed environment to deploy the production website.
- Since this process is most expensive and time-consuming as well; it also can cause you all your SEO efforts making a ‘mirror’ of your website before you merging the HTTP to HTTPS with a production website is essential. But the most time consuming is the setting the tasting environment for the new website.
Depending on the complexity and other specifications of the website you can choose the options but choosing the last option might make you face a number of pop-up bugs, which will make the situation hard to handle.
Getting HTTPS Certificate
Your server needs to get and configure the required SSL/TLS certificate to enable the HTTPS. For that, they recommend that you should start with the trusted certificate provider.
Especially you should prefer the one who provides technical support as well. It does not stop after this; it also includes choosing the right level of security. Google recommends getting the 2048-bit key certificate or anything upgrading to it.
Once you get the certificate, which depending upon your website you can decide a single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate make sure it will get deployed properly and configure to best practices.
The best practices will be discussed in the next article, on-demand. Now we shall discuss the best practices of deployment here.
Now that you got the certificate your website has the secure green lock of HTTPS. And so now we can go for the basic things we are required to check after.
– Re-Crawl your own website and check if all pages and content are there with the lock of cybersecurity.
– Get the help of the checklist that we made before the convert happens, and get everything checked as per it.
If you are cleared with that and if you have retrieved your website the way it was before it gets HTTPS then you are the Champion, already. And you can enjoy the website like earlier with more security indeed.
Leave a Reply