Why You Should Have An SSL Certificate Installed On Your Website
Have you been hearing from your website company or technical support that you need to purchase and install an SSL certificate for your website? What does this mean? Why do you need one? Would somebody just please explain what this means in plain English?? Yes… Yes we can.
First, let’s talk about what an SSL certificate is. Have you ever seen that little padlock in your browser’s address bar next to the URL of a website, and the URL change from HTTP to HTTPS? That little padlock and HTTPS mean that the website has an SSL certificate installed. An SSL certificate is a critical part of keeping your website secure. It encrypts sensitive information so that emails, personal information, and credit card information do not fall into the wrong hands.
Without an SSL certificate, every time someone puts information into your website, that information gets passed through several computers until it reaches its destination server. Any one of those computers can see it or read it. If you have an SSL certificate, however, that data is encrypted and is unreadable by any other computers or people.
On top of the security issue, an SSL certificate installed on your website can also help your search engine ranking. In August of 2014, Google announced that it will use HTTPS as a ranking signal for their search ranking algorithm. This means that websites who have an SSL certificate and display HTTPS will be ranked higher in Google’s search results than websites without it.
At D4, we can purchase and install an SSL certificate for your website as long as you are hosted with us. There is a yearly cost to having an SSL certificate, but the benefits of a secure website that will rank higher in the search results far outweigh the cost. If you think your website could benefit from an SSL certificate, give us a call. We will walk through the costs and the steps with you and make sure the process is seamless. Contact us today and let’s make your website more secure and more search engine friendly!
