Does HTTPS Matter to Your Healthcare Practice Website?

Google recently announced that forms on web pages over HTTP will be marked as ‘not secure’ in Chrome starting this month. Columnist Fili Wiese believes this presents a good opportunity to make the switch to HTTPS — 

Since 2016, Google has been leading the industry to get more websites covered by SSL and continually make changes to their Chrome browser that is one of the most popular browser being used. So, it makes sense to make sure all of our Digital Marketing clients are covered with encrypted websites using SSL Certificates.

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Why should you care about SSL?

In an effort to make the web more secure, HTTPS connections are now a Google SEO ranking signal— sites with SSL-encrypted HTTPS will rank higher than sites without.

If your site is not secure yet, it should be. Here are some reasons:

  • Increased Google Rankings
  • Improved Security
  • Updated Browser Labels
  • Increased Conversions
  • Increased Patient Confidence

What Is HTTPS?

Let’s start with the basics. The “s” at the end of the “http” part of a URL means the website is secure. HTTPS (Hypertext Transport Protocol Security), or secure, sites include the SSL 2048-bit key and can protect a site connection through authentication and encryption. When installed on a web server, an SSL certificate activates the padlock and the https protocol and allows secure connections from a web server to a browser.

Move to HTTPS sooner rather than later

Plan to move your website to SSL sooner rather than later so your website will reap the benefits from moving to HTTPS: renewed and improved SEO signals in the Google index.

Is your website currently secured with SSL? If not, please contact us using the form below to learn how we can help you with your practice’s search engine rankings.

Source credits:

  1. Search Engine Land
  2. Blue Corona
  3. Google Security Blog