How To Enable HTTPS in Blogger

Are you looking to add some extra security to your blogger website? How about an increase in performance? Maybe you are worried about getting attacked by hackers? Google has recently rolled out the ability to add an SSL to your blogger website that is fairly simple to activate but a little more difficult to get working properly.

As you can see we are using this free SSL and I have seen performance improvements from the switch. In this article, we will explain how to activate HTTPS as well as discussing the performance improvement from it.

What is SSL/TLS 

SSL which is the older outdated term standard for secure socket layer TLS stands for transport layer security which basically encrypts the connection between your website and the visitor. If you have a form, login, anything that the user is inputting on the website it's very easy to intercept that request and take information that the user is submitting.

This is because on a normal HTTP website the connection and information being sent are over plain text, now normally you aren't in any threat of interception because it requires someone wanting to get access to your session but it's still possible to collect private information from a user without their knowledge.

A uniquely signed SSL is the only way to connect to a website safely and Google has made a push to give ranking boosts to sites using SSL. The best part is they are easy to get (even free ones from Let's Encrypt or CloudFlare). Lucky for us Blogger users though we get it 100% free and it's easy to activate!

Why Should You use an SSL?

When it comes to Google it does offer a small ranking boost to site's that have a working SSL because it gives a message that your website is both secure but also that it's the site it claims. Think of SSL as giving your website a Social Security Number or a Driver's License it says hey this is arcademill.com and I can prove it!

There are also performance benefits from it. Currently, HTTP 2 only works over SSL and this allows your website to load all the resources in a single TCP connection which greatly improves the load time of complex pages with many images (like a Blogger blog), CSS, JS, and other files also receive this improvement.

How To Enable The Free SSL Certificate

If you were to purchase an SSL or use a free one a cheap SSL can cost $10 a year but why spend money on one when you can get it from Google for free?

1. To Enable HTTPS, sign in to Blogger and select a blog on which you would like to enable HTTPS.
2. Go to Settings >> Basics >> HTTPS Settings.
3. In HTTPS Availability, select YES

Now your blog should have a unique SSL certificate. It is important to jump on this train early because Google is going to start likely enforcing HTTPS on Blogger-based websites in the future. So jump on it now get the performance + security boost and squash those mixed content warnings!