ASEOHosting, a provider of premium SEO hosting, is releasing an advisory to address the concerns of clients and the wider online community regarding Google’s recent announcement that HTTPS and SSL certificates will be used as a ranking signal in its search engine results pages.

It should be made clear that Google’s announcement does not imply that the purchase of an SSL certificate is required to rank in the SERPS. However, in combination with many other ranking signals, a site’s use of SSL encryption is likely to give it an advantage relative to competitors who do not implement SSL.