There are many people that have recently been urging you to switch your website to the HTTPS security encryption. They cite Google’s announcement that HTTPS is a ranking signal and that failure to switch could mean your ranking will take a hit. But what is the true difference between HTTP and HTTPS?

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It’s a protocol that allows communication between different systems. Most commonly, it is used for transferring data from a web server to a browser to view web pages. The problem is that HTTP (note: no “s” on the end) data is not encrypted, and it can be intercepted by third parties to gather data being passed between the two systems. This can be addressed by using a secure version called HTTPS, where the “S” stands for secure.

Without HTTPS, any data passed is insecure. This is especially important for sites where sensitive data is passed across the connection, such as e-commerce sites that accept online card payments, or login areas that require users to enter their credentials.

Sure, there are limits to this. HTTPS is not like a web application firewall. It’s not going to prevent your website from getting hacked. It’s not going to stop phishing emails getting sent, either. If you’re using a content management system (CMS), like WordPress, or you have any other login where you host any kind of sensitive data, then setting up a secure HTTPS login is the absolute minimum precaution you should take. In reality, HTTPS is the basic price of security these days. It’s the very minimum you can offer your visitors. Aside from security, HTTPS also improves trust.

HTTPS offers the base level of website security. Whether or not you should switch to HTTPS is a decision increasingly being driven by Google’s search algorithm. Switching to HTTPS is fairly straightforward for smaller websites. For larger websites, it’s more complicated, from an SEO perspective and requires skilled technical staff to make the changes.