A colleague of mine does SEO for a site where every page is https. Instinctively I'm against it, it just doesn't feel logical to have encrypted info on the public pages. It might slow down the load time. I also suspect that it could be a disadvantage from a SEO point of view, though I can't really prove it. Could any of you please help me with some good arguments against using https for the entire site? The site is indexed by Google though, and even has a decent PageRank but I feel it could do better, especially in the SERPs.
I don't know what type of site it is but HTTPS could be being used as a security set-up which is a very typlical application. As far as SEO is concerned, if the HTTPS is being used as a proper application, there is no difference at all as far as the SERPS go!!
Are you sure, no SEO disadvantages at all with https? That would be good news. It could be that Google has improved its ability to spider- and give PageRank to https pages nowadays, but wasn't it the case before at least that Google had problems indexing such pages?
See this thread: -> forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=16042 (since I cant post links yet ) I dont believe there are issues with Google and SSL. I cannot say for sure about the other search engines. My concern would be any traffic that might be lost due to the SSL requirement.
A few things could factor. As sirrus mentioned, the site could loose traffic if peoples browsers do not meet the requirement. Another problem could be SERPS related due to people linking to http rather then https which could effect the link juice being passed through and effecting SERPS. It would increase server load, but probably not noticibly unless it's a very busy site.
OK, thanks for the info. The general opinion seems to be that https isn't so bad after all. Still, it doesn't quite "feel right" to have it across the whole site. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned...