from Jan Griesel
We received several questions about implementing comprehensive SSL encryption. Today, I want to answer these questions and clear up any misconceptions.
Do I need comprehensive SSL encryption?
Here's a comment from Werner Schankweiler seo2b:
Online businesses and E-mail providers are increasingly turning to SSL encryption in the wake of highly publicized events such as the NSA scandal. Not only is SSL encryption a good idea, but implementing it will be inevitable in the future. Government surveillance and hacker attacks are occurring at an ever increasing rate. Public awareness of these issues has also increased due to the media attention surrounding such events. Citizens are becoming more cautious when it comes to Internet security.
Long ago, Google switched to only offering encrypted services. Recently it also began indexing HTTP and HTTPS URLs separately in Google Webmaster tools. Taking this step was necessary because websites are increasingly being accessed via HTTPS and their site owners want to know how these URLs are indexed. Google is also glad to see increased willingness among Internet users to ensure a more secure connection.
Of course, there are several important points that need to be considered when switching to HTTPS in order to prevent or minimize any interruption of visibility and traffic in the organic search. Server performance has to be maintained (response time and loading time) and all old HTTP URLs have to redirect to the new HTTPS equivalents via 301 redirect. It also has to be possible to consistently switch the canonical targets, internal links and sitemap to the new protocol.
Ranking & Searches
Implementing SSL encryption is similar to switching to a new domain. In our case, the implementation was carried out correctly. This means that customers who access an old URL (http://your-store.com/) will automatically be forwarded to the new URL (https://your-store.com). Furthermore, the sitemap file for your plentymarkets store only contains the new HTTPS URLs. If your website works with absolute wildcard character links, then they will also be converted from http:// to https://.
Nonetheless, search engines need a bit of time to match the relevance of old URLs to the new URLs. How quickly this process is completed depends on the previous relevance of your website. Our SEO partner agency, seo2b, informed me that its customers have already seen a dramatic increase in relevance after switching to HTTPS. In other words, we have already seen a positive trend and we expect it to continue over the next several days.
Werner Schankweiler of seo2b commented:
If you paid attention to the points listed above, then you should not encounter any long-term interruptions of visibility and traffic. It is normal for Google to react to the changes. This can never be prevented with 100% certainty, since this is a major change to the domain/URL structure. We will have to wait the next few weeks until Google has analyzed all of the "new" websites and correctly matched them.
Saving the correct URL
Please save the correct URL in your analysis tools. If you work with Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools or a similar tool, then you will need to save the HTTPS URL here. If you work with Google Webmaster Tools, then simply click on the ADD A SITE button and enter the URL along with https://. You will start to see an increase in searches for the HTTPS URL and a decrease in the HTTP domain. No need to worry about the decrease in searches for your HTTP URL as searches for your HTTPS URL will increase at the same time.
Deactivating the redirect
Some users do not want to have an automatic redirect to SSL. We added a new function to the Service Center, which allows you to deactivate the redirect. If you use this function, then customers who access an http URL will not automatically be redirected to an https URL. The internal links and sitemap will still only contain https URLs to avoid jeopardizing the new changes.
Talk to your SEO agency and decide whether to use the automatic SSL redirect.
This function is found under Start » plentymarkets account » Service Center. Select the desired plentymarkets system and click on the Cache tab. The function is found under Permanent SSL redirect. The change will go into effect the next time the webserver is updated. Webserver settings are currently updated four times per day.
Error messages
When using SSL encryption, you will immediately notice if there are any errors such as absolute URLs for images or other content. Such errors have already been occurring in some browsers, since both encrypted and non-encrypted content was loaded. Previously, this error only occurred at the start of the order process. It likely caused confusion among your customers and made some decide to abort the purchase.
You can quickly find this error and fix it. The error typically occurs if images, CSS files or JavaScript files were loaded with an HTTP URL. You should avoid using absolute URLs in general for loading such content.
An example of an incorrectly loaded CSS file:
An example of a correct relative URL:
The same holds true for images:
Please use the following notation if you need to load CSS files from external domains. The example relates to the service Google Fonts.
This version causes errors:
Alternative notation, which allows the browser to decide whether to load the content with HTTP or HTTPS:
When accessing your own website, you should see this symbol or a similar symbol in the address bar. This means that all of the content was correctly linked and the website was completely encrypted.
