Should I add SSL certificate site-wide? Or just on Checkout?

[Webmaster123]

I'm setting up my SSL certificate and my programmer said it's smart to just apply it to the entire site. I'm concerned about how this could affect my SEO work. I've heard as far as SEO is concerned, applying it to just the checkout pages is the best way to do it.

What are your thoughts? What are potential problems?

[CaseyKluver]

I think what your programmer meant to say is "It's easier to apply SSL to the entire site". For most instances on a new or existing site, I would recommend just adding it to the checkout page.

[john4math]

I'd do it just on the checkout pages.  If you use https over your entire site, every page will have to load all of its own resources as the browser won't be able to cache any files.  I'd prefer to keep your page load times down, and only use https on pages that need it.

[irvingw]

just on the checkout for the reason that the happy dude in the teal shirt said above me

make sure when the user jumps to and from https and http that you are using absolute links or you could wind up with duplicate versions of the site indexed in both http and https

[Webmaster123]

Thanks for the input.

Irving, I was going to put a redirect in, so that any time a user goes to the checkout page, it redirects from the http:// version to the https:// version (no matter how they get there: clicking a link, typing it in directly, black magic, etc). I believe the search engine bot should honor the redirect and only see the https version.