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If you have experience & knowledge about how to rank your website on Google search results, you might also be aware of the list of stuff that can affect the ranking of a site. After the chrome 69 update, Google Chrome started to display sites as “Not Secure” if the site doesn’t have SSL certificates. Since then it has become essential for every website owner to have an SSL certificate because Google algorithm does consider them while ranking website.

If your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate, it might experience a downfall in its ranking. To keep the safety up to the mark, you need to have to get SSL certificates installed and redirect HTTP to HTTPS. The process of redirection involves editing the .htaccess file. It has all the guidelines to tell the server, how to behave in certain cases.

Out of all stated edicts in the .htaccess file, you need to focus upon two key directives i.e Redirects and Rewriting URLs. As far as the concern is editing the file, there are numerous ways you can adopt to do the job.

1. You can edit the file on your computer and then upload it to the server using FTP.
2. You can remotely access & edit the .htaccess file using the edit option within the FTP.
3. You can use cPanel and edit the .htaccess file through the File Manager, which is an extensively used method.
4. Below is a PHP function code another alternative method.
< ?php
functionredirectTohttps() {
if($_SERVER[‘HTTPS’]!=”on”) {
$redirect= “https://”.$_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’].$_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’];
header(“Location:$redirect”); } }
?>
While editing the .htaccess file you need to add the forth code.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]

And after uploading the .htaccess file it is important to ensure that the permissions are set properly. This code intentionally asks the server to use mod_rewite for searching if HTTPS is active or not, and if not then apply it accordingly