https as a ranking signal by raza zaidi
DESCRIPTION
From the SMX East 2014 Conference in New York City, NY. SESSION: How To Secure Your Site For Google's HTTPS. PRESENTATION: HTTPS As A Ranking Signal - Given by Raza Zaidi, VP of Product & Technology - Gigaom. #SMX #33ATRANSCRIPT
Raza Zaidi VP Product
• Gigaom.com is built on Wordpress …which claims to be “SEO friendly out-of-the-box”
• Gigaom.com is hosted on Auttomatic’s Wordoress VIP service
• We get lazy in terms of SEO
Background
Panda 4.0 Release on or about 5/19
http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal_6.html
“making sure that websites people access from Google are secure” “we called for “HTTPS everywhere” on the web” “we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.”
HTTPS as a ranking signal
Many “how-tos” available on where to buy cheap certs (EV preferably if you can
afford) and how to install
• Wordpress VIP’s implementation of https uses Server Name Indication (SNI)
• Not supported on XP and old versions of IE • Warnings will be presented to user resulting in lost traffic
• Also can supports HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) • This degrades gracefully so no traffic loss
• Using Wordpress plugin to forward all http traffic (eg. from bookmarks, old links, etc.) to https
• https://github.com/Automattic/vip-quickstart/issues/275
Wordpress VIP
Pay special attention to 3rd Party embeds (& ads!)
Difficult for a media site with 100K+ post pages
• Historical users will have subscribed to the http version
• The feeds will be broken; users will need to manually re-subscribe to the feeds
• Place FAQs prominently on site
RSS Readers
HTTPS Effects (so far) – Google Search Referrals
Post Panda/Pre HTTPS
Sep t8 – HTTPS live on gigaom.com
Post HTTPS