Moving your website to https / SSL: tips & tricks

In January I wrote about our plans in moving Yoast.com to SSL. We’ve since done that, with great results from an SEO perspective: we had no negative effect on traffic, whatsoever. Two weeks ago, we also moved our tool Quix to https. There are quite a few things we learned in the process of moving these two sites to SSL that we thought would be worth sharing with all of you. Also, some things happened in the last few weeks that make SSL a hot topic, so we’ll discuss those first.

Ranking benefit for completely SSL sites?

Last month, Search Engine Land reported that Matt Cutts had said about SSL that he’d “personally love to make it part of the ranking algorithm”. The Wall Street Journal picked up on this two days ago. Whether or not this actually happens (or, perhaps, has already happened) doesn’t really make much of a difference to me. A completely SSL site looks more trustworthy than a non-SSL one