Is HTTP / 2 Good for Search Engine Optimization - SEO Blog
By: ∣ Updated: May 15, 2021
Now there is another technical standard for SEO: converting a website to HTTP / 2. We also answer the question of whether this is good for search engine optimization and other online marketing tasks such as user-friendliness. (Update 09/21/2020)
HTTP / 2 updates 2020
November 19, 2020 - Google starts with the first HTTP / 2 test crawls, but chooses the pages itself, as far as we can find out from Google's John Müller.
HTTP / 2 Google Crawl - John Mueller
09/17/2020 - Starting November 2020, Googlebot will start crawling some sites over HTTP / 2. The Google Webmaster Newsletter announces that the first websites will be crawled with H2 from November 2020.
You can find detailed information on how Google handles H2 in the Google Developers Blog read-up.
HTTP / 2 facts to share on Twitter
- According to W3Techs, 12.7% of the 10 million top websites supported the faster HTTP / 2 in January 2017
- All browsers available on the market already support HTTP / 2. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Opera.
Quick navigation to the topics of the article
What is HTTP / 2?
HTTP / 2 is a new version of the HTTP network protocol used by the World Wide Web to get data like this blog article where it’s needed. It was developed based on the SPDY protocol, which was experimentally developed by Google.
The Internet protocol HTTP/2 is the new version of HTTP which was standardized as HTTP 1.1 in 1999. Since then, 1.1 has been the standard on the web for nearly 20 years. Most major browsers are now capable of HTTP/2. According to W3Techs, 12.7% of the 10 million top websites supported the faster protocol and its connections in January 2017.
What are the advantages of HTTP / 2?
With HTTP / 2, the transmission/connection in the Internet is optimized and thus accelerated. HTTP / 2 is completely backwards compatible with HTTP / 1.1. - the previous Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
Performance - Some of the top features are
- Several requests to the webserver such as CSS files can be combined at the same time
- Even better options for data compression
- Contents/page elements are transmitted in binary code
- The data transfer is initiated by the server using the push method – TCP
- And other features that ultimately benefit users, technology, and the Internet
Which browsers support HTTP / 2 (since the end of 2015)?
- Google Chrome from version 41
- Mozilla Firefox from version 36
- Safari from version 8
- Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10
- Opera from version 28
What is needed for HTTP / 2?
Ask your web agency, web designer, or technician about an upgrade of your website as it may be on hold here. This (r) first obtains the information whether an HTTP / 2 web host is available because many shared host providers do not yet offer this mode.
You then need to update your website and carry out subsequent tests. The URL structure and content can remain the same. An update on the HTTPS Encryption is necessary.
Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox support the new protocol exclusively with SSL encryption. In the past, there was justified concern about a loss of performance in terms of website speed, this is now almost a web standard, especially for pages that have previously ranked well for SEO.
Is HTTP / 2 Good for SEO?
Better ranked: because page speed is also a factor Search engine optimization factor and also current technology. At the SEOcampixx 2018, there was talk of an SEO boost of up to 25% for the ranking. SEO comprises around 200 factors. Speed is one of them, and so is security. Ultimately, not only for Google, Yandex, and Bing but above all for the visitors to your website.
Info update on March 8th, 2018: John Müller mentions in the Google Webmaster Hangout that Google is still crawling with HTTP / 1. For users whose browser has already mastered HTTP / 2, they have a decisive speed advantage. However, for the time being, websites should also make them available as HTTP / 1, which is the case with a faultless implementation.
Test tools
- KeyCDN – Online test – Verify whether your server or CDN supports HTTP / 2 plus top sites that support this protocol.
- Akamai– Online test whether your browser supports HTTP / 2 and how different the loading speed is. Akamai is a CDN and cloud provider.
In addition, a few connections to the HTTP 2.0 topic: SPDY is faster than the HTTP protocol and ensures the wide performance of the domain and hosting. TLS is the newer name for SSL. In hosting, TCP is used to exchange data between the websites in the hosting. Page elements in the form of hypertext and CSS, the right domain, and modern web design plus TLS and SPDY hosting ultimately support the ranking.