Why Should I Pick HTTPS Instead of HTTP for My Blog?

Choosing HTTPS over HTTP can have some great benefits you may not know about

In the battle of HTTPS instead of HTTP — or vice versa — which comes out on top?

Whether you’re holding off on HTTPS because of the rumored costs associated with the protocol or you simply don’t want to go through the hassle of making the switch, it’s something that you need to do. Google deemed it necessary and made it mandatory in 2018 — other major browsers followed suited.

In any case, having HTTPS instead of HTTP can provide benefits like SEO boosts, increased conversions, and most importantly, increased trust from your visitors and/or customers. Furthermore, enabling HTTPS doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult. This is because there are various resources like ComodoSSLstore available that make transitioning as smooth as possible.

Breaking It Down: HTTPS Instead of HTTP, or HTTP instead of HTTPS?

Let’s go over some of the reasons why HTTPS is significantly better than HTTP in today’s world, as well as what the key difference is between the two protocols.

HTTP: What Is It?

HTTP is the hypertext transfer protocol that websites use to display a website onto your screen. It allows websites to be dynamic, providing ease of accessibility to resources within a site through hyperlinks (a clickable website that is attached to a word, like this).

In today’s world, HTTP serves as the main gateway for websites to transmit information and media due to the ease of its implementation.

However, HTTP has one big vulnerability: poor security.

Within HTTP, there a ton of different types of attacks a hacker can execute on a site, such as SQL injections (which steal data) and broken authentication (which gives hackers full admin rights over your site). So, if anyone argues that using HTTP instead of HTTPS is better, they’re living in the past and are leaving their site (and users) vulnerable.

HTTPS: Why Is It Better?

So, why should you choose HTTPS instead of HTTP? Aside from having stronger passwords and practicing best security practices, there isn’t much you can do to prevent eavesdropping or man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks if your site uses HTTP. Why? Because of the protocol’s unencrypted nature.

This is where HTTPS comes into the picture: It’s essentially the same protocol, but with security added (the “S” stands for “Secure”). You may be wondering, “how is HTTPS any better than HTTP?” Well, the brief list below has a few reasons:

• HTTPS is secure. Unlike HTTP, HTTPS is secure and encrypted because of its use of SSL/TLS over the standard protocol. What this means is that any data that’s given or requested from your site will be encrypted as is travels between the two destinations. This makes it harder for hackers to intercept that data (since encrypted data looks like gibberish and can take years to crack).
• HTTPS gives you an SEO boost. This should be old news, but in 2014, Google announced that they will be starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. The reason Google opted to go this route is because of their “HTTPS everywhere” program, which hopes to have all websites on HTTPS sooner rather than later. As a result, if you care about your site’s rankings, you definitely need to switch to HTTPS.
• HTTPS increases visitor’s trust. With data breaches becoming an increasingly regular occurrence year after year, it’s important that visitors know that they can trust the website they are visiting. Having HTTPS not only prevents visitors from getting the “not secure” warning incorporated in 2018, but depending on how you choose to enable HTTPS on your site, it can also make customers more comfortable with your site because of the visual cues that some SSL certificates offer.

How to Enable HTTPS on Your Site

After seeing all the benefits that HTTPS offers, you likely want to make the switch but have no idea where to start. Fortunately, ComodoSSLstore.com has a guide on how to add HTTPS to your site. Hint: It involves the use of SSL/TLS certificates.

And, because we’re awesome, we even offer SSL certificates at a deep discount, which helps you keep your site secure for as little as possible!