HTTPS/SSL Google SEO and XML Sitemaps

Google recently announced that websites with SSL/HTTPS will gain you a minor ranking boost in an effort to improve online security. This gain is likely to be small to start off with to give webmasters time to adapt their servers and websites, but over time this boost is likely to increase making SSL a key part of your SEO strategy.

What do you need to do?

A key part of updating your website is ensuring you have an effective transition plan. This will include notifying search engines and directories of your new website structure. Sitemaps should be an element of this SEO strategy:

• Get an SSL certificate with a 2048-bit key
• Apply this to your server
• Update your link structure - hopefully you are already using relative URLS.
• Implement HTTP 301 Moved Permanently to redirect traffic to your secure site.
• If you can’t do this you may need a canonical meta tag
• Update your Google XML Sitemap using your new HTTPs address 
• Update Google and other search engines with your new sitemap.

Did you know?

You can access XML Sitemap Generator using HTTPS? In light of the news from Google we will be updating to make this default over the next few days.

HTTP / SSL costs less than you think …

We use 123-reg for hosting, SSL and domains.A basic SSL for 2 years costs only £21.58 (about 36.20 USD or 27 Euros) making it an SEO no-brainer!