HTTP Vs HTTPS: Which One Is Better For Your Website Security, And What Are Its Benefits

Hey guys, In this article, I am going to talk about HTTP Vs HTTPS: Which one is better for your website security, and what are its benefits. So keep reading.

If you have started a website, you’ve made an excellent choice for your business. However, it would be best to make a great choice for your website visitors’ security. Everyone who visits your website does so because he believes that his device or personal information won’t be at risk by visiting it. But if you do not put robust security measures like an SSL Certificate and HTTPS protocol in place, you’re betraying their trust by making them vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

But the security of your visitors is not the only reason why HTTPS is essential for your site. It’s also essential for many other reasons. And here we’ll take a look at those reasons. But before we get into them, let’s understand what HTTPS is and how it is different from HTTP.

What Is HTTPS?

Traditionally, all websites load over HTTP protocol, which is the original protocol developed to distribute web pages. However, a more secure version of this protocol was developed later, which came to be known as HTTPS. As years passed, it became the de-facto standard of web page distribution instead of the default HTTP due to the far greater security it offered. What was that security and how is HTTPS different from HTTP? Let’s explore it.

HTTP Vs HTTPS – Difference Between

If you want to know the answer in one line, then the critical difference between HTTP and HTTPS is an SSL certificate. Installation of an SSL certificate on the webserver is the requirement for loading any website over HTTPS protocol. These certificates are unique and issued after verification of business identity so no domain owner can have an SSL certificate issued in the name of your business without your permission.

However, on a deeper level, there are two more differences between these protocols(HTTP Vs HTTPS):

• The first difference is that HTTPS adds a green padlock sign to your website that serves as a unique proof of identity that can’t be replicated. It appears right before the URL of your site, and by clicking it, anyone can verify your business’s identity by viewing the certificate.
• The second difference is the encryption of data. The HTTPS protocol (also known as SSL protocol) requires all data being exchanged between your web server and your visitors to be encrypted before it’s exchanged.

Because of these two differences, the HTTPS protocol protects your visitors against two of the most common cyberattacks, namely:

Phishing:

An attack was done by creating a copy of your website on a similar-looking domain name. Even if someone manages to acquire a domain name similar to yours and creates a duplicate copy of your site on that domain, they can never get that green padlock sign before their URL because an SSL certificate in the name of your business won’t be issued to them. As a result, their website will show a ‘Not Secure’ label in place of the green padlock sign.

Man-in-The-Middle attacks:

This kind of attack is done by encrypting the data packets transmitting information between your web server and your visitors. For example, someone (i.e. an ISP, government, etc.) may capture the packets containing username and password information to steal that information. HTTPS prevents it from happening because it requires all data packets to be encrypted before transmission.

Let’s look at the five key benefits that make HTTPS protocol necessary for your blog with that information in mind.

5 Key Benefits of HTTPS that make it essential for your website.

1. Security Of Your Visitors

As explained above, the primary purpose of Buying SSL Certificates and installing it to secure your visitors from the theft of their data through phishing and MiTM attacks. Usernames, passwords, credit card data, and almost any other data that they send to you (or you send to them) can be stolen over insecure HTTP protocol through these two types of attacks. HTTPS protocol prevents it from happening by encrypting the data before transit and adding a unique green padlock to your site, thus ensuring your visitors’ security.

2. Better Search Rankings

Another reward of making your website load over HTTPS is that you start ranking higher in search results of Google. The company has made it clear that websites over HTTP protocol will be given lower preference in search results over websites that are HTTPS enabled, so being on HTTP is not the right choice from an SEO perspective as well. When you switch to HTTPS, your web pages may see a slight boost in their search rankings while over HTTP your chances of ranking on the first page of Google SERPS are far lower.

3. Greater Trustworthiness Of Your Brand

If you use HTTP for your blog, Google Chrome and other browsers show a ‘Not secure’ label before your blog URL in the address bar. It gives people a feeling that something is wrong with your site because most internet users are not so tech-savvy that they can understand the hidden reason behind that label. This hurts your brand badly, and overtime people start avoiding visiting your site.

On the other hand, when you’re using HTTPS, it shows that you care for the security of your visitors. Browsers show a green padlock before your blog URL in the address bar, and clicking the padlock also shows users that their connection with your site is secure. This builds trust around your brand and gives your visitors a feeling that you take the security of their data seriously.

4. Improved Site Speed

Switching to HTTPS can also boost the loading speed of your site. That is because it allows your site to be loaded with HTTP/2, which is the newer version of HTTP with considerable speed improvements. In addition to that, HTTPS also helps you enable Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) technology on your site, making your site load faster on mobile devices. And in this era of smartphones, who wouldn’t want his/her site to load faster on mobile devices? HTTPS is one of those many things you need to do to get a fast-loading mobile site. And when your site is faster, it becomes another reason for Google to reward you in search results.

5. Better Statistics

If you’re not using HTTPS, a warning label in Chrome and low ranking in SERPs are not the only things Google does with you. Your Google Analytics dashboard also doesn’t show you referral data. All referral traffic coming from other sites is shown as direct traffic, so you can’t correctly analyze your traffic sources. By switching to HTTPS, you can bypass this problem and have Google Analytics serve you with information-rich referral data.

Conclusion

So, these were the top five benefits of having your website load over SSL protocol. And to get HTTPS enabled for your blog, you need an SSL certificate, which you must install as soon as possible on your web server. Installing SSL is also not a costly or complicated affair anymore, because affordable certificates are available in the market, and plugins to install them are also available in the WordPress plugin repository. So, without thinking much over the subject get an SSL certificate installed on your server today!

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