SSL Certificate

[iskq]

Is there any benefit of SSL Certificate for seo?

[Highland]

For SEO? Not really. The biggest benefit (aside from security) would be that you would regain referrers from Google users using Google over SSL. You know those pesky (not set) and (not provided) in GA? Those are caused by users going from HTTPS to HTTP.

[ditoroin]

Wow, that's it? If I add SSL certificate to my web-site all "(not provided)" keywords will be gone?

Thanks.

[KevinBudzynski]

The ssl cert may slow the site down a bit and server speed/page load times can impact SEO. On the positive side, some users may trust your site more with ssl cert (especially in ecommerce--and your payment gateway will require one) and that could increase user experience (helps SEO). Any other views on this?

[RuthBurrReedy]

Having an SSL certificate won't remove your (not provided) keywords. As long as users are arriving from Google's HTTPS service, their keyword data will be stripped out, regardless of your own SSL status.

There's no compelling SEO reason to have or not to have an SSL certificate - as Kevin points out below, it's really more a matter of user trust/data security. If users are providing you any kind of personal information (email, address, CC info, etc) you probably want an SSL certificate at least for the pages where you're collecting and sending that data. Your users will appreciate the extra security.

One thing to watch out for is that http and https versions of the same page may be counted as duplicate content - so make sure that one redirects to the other.