In one sentence: HTTPS is the secure version of the protocol a browser uses to fetch web pages, where the S means the connection is encrypted and verified, so what a visitor types into your form and what your server sends back cannot be read or altered by anything sitting in between.
A protocol is just the agreed method for moving a page from your server to somebody's browser. The plain version sends everything in the open. The secure version wraps it, and that wrapping buys three things: privacy, so the contents cannot be read; integrity, so the page cannot be changed on the way; and identity, so the browser can confirm it is talking to your server and not something impersonating it.
Integrity is the one people underestimate. On an unencrypted connection, any network between your visitor and your server can rewrite the page in flight. A hotel wifi portal can inject its own banner into your homepage. Nothing on your server changed, and you would never see it, because it does not happen on your connection.
HTTPS is also site wide, not a single switch. Every image, font, stylesheet, and script the page pulls in has to come over HTTPS too. If one old image URL still starts with http, the browser treats that page as mixed content and blocks or downgrades the insecure pieces. On older sites, that stray hardcoded link is usually the leftover from a redesign nobody swept up.
Payment processors also refuse to run a checkout over an unencrypted connection. That is a hard requirement rather than a preference. A storefront we built for a Virginia retailer carries over 1,400 products and live Stripe checkout, and a checkout like that cannot be run any other way.
Browsers treat an unencrypted page as a warning state, and that warning sits right where a customer is deciding whether to hand you a phone number. Somebody comparing three roofers does not read the warning carefully. They read the tone of it and move on to the next tab.
Search engines settled this a long time ago too. Secure pages are the assumed baseline, so serving your site over HTTPS is not an advantage you gain, it is a deficit you avoid. Nobody outranks anybody on this alone.
The part that quietly causes trouble is duplication. If both the http and https versions of your site answer requests, you can end up with two copies of every page. Inbound links split between them, and crawlers have to guess which one counts. Pick the secure version, send everything else there permanently, and update your internal links so they do not bounce through a redirect on the way.
Serving the whole site over HTTPS, and redirecting the old addresses once and cleanly, is standard scope on a web development project rather than an upgrade you buy afterward.
An SSL certificate is the file that makes HTTPS possible; HTTPS is what you get once it is installed and working. A 301 redirect is the mechanism for moving your old http addresses to the secure ones for good. Canonical URLs and duplicate content are the problems you prevent by committing to one version of every page and sticking to it.
Yes. Browsers flag unencrypted pages regardless of what is on them, so a plain brochure site gets the same warning as a checkout. There is also the integrity problem: on an open connection, anything in the path between your visitor and your server can alter what they see, and a site with nothing to steal can still be used to serve somebody else's junk.
Done properly it is a routine move that search engines have handled for years. The damage comes from the sloppy version: leaving both the http and https copies live, chaining one redirect into another, or forgetting the internal links and the sitemap so everything points at addresses that now bounce. Move every URL once, to its exact secure equivalent.
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