HTTPS & SSL/TLS
Technical SEO
HTTPS is the encrypted version of the HTTP protocol, secured via an SSL/TLS certificate, and has been a confirmed (if lightweight) Google ranking signal since 2014.
HTTPS is effectively table stakes today rather than a competitive advantage — nearly the entire web has migrated, so the ranking boost from simply having HTTPS is negligible in practice; what matters more now is avoiding the trust and browser-warning penalties of *not* having it. Mixed content (an HTTPS page loading some resources over insecure HTTP) can still trigger browser warnings and should be fixed during any HTTPS migration.
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