Should You Switch Your HTTP site to HTTPS?

HTTPS and SEO

Forms on HTTP Pages to be Marked as Not Secure on Google Chrome

Heads up, webmasters. It could very well be time to make that update and changing your website from HTTP over to https. Google has emailed webmasters to let them know that any pages that have forms or other types of input sections will be marked as not secure on their browser.

The emails were sent via Google Search Console to website owners that currently have the forms on HTTP pages on their website. Beginning this October, Chrome will give visitors the ‘Not Secure’ warning when the user enters information on the page and also on HTTP pages that are visited via Incognito mode. Check your inbox to see if you have had a message, the subject line reads “Chrome will show security warnings for”.

This shouldn’t be surprising news as Google has given warnings that this change was on the horizon. Google hopes that this move will encourage more webmasters to make the switch over to HTTPS. The news followed the move to make pages with logins required to be on HTTPS pages.

Reasons to Update Your Website to HTTPS

It is worth considering changing your website over to HTTPS if you haven’t done so already. Even if you don’t have any forms on your websites, eventually Google is going to make all web pages on HTTP as insecure. It’s true that this process will take some time to complete, but putting the job off won’t be of benefit to anyone. Here are a few of the benefits of using HTTPS for your website:

  1. Visitors do not like making purchases on websites that are insecure. Don’t risk losing sales or potential leads simply because users don’t feel protected on your website.
  2. Google will inform users that your web page is insecure as soon as they begin to enter information onto your forms.
  3. Google is working towards created a secure web by default in the future.
  4. HTTPS sites have a faster loading time than HTTP sites. Faster loading sites tend to rank higher than slow loading sites.
  5. HTTPS is a signal in Google’s ranking algorithm.

Are you prepared? Update your website and stop visitors to your website from becoming wary and withhold interacting with you.