Back in August 2014, Google announced that it will use HTTPS as a ranking signal. That means that when your website has a site-wide HTTPS, your Google ranking in its search pages will be boosted. In short, it’s imperative that your website should have an HTTPS, and you should have an SSL Certificate.
Did that make ANY sense at all? If it didn’t – that’s why we’re here. Let’s discuss things one by one by answering the most common questions surrounding the SSL Certificate.
What is an SSL Certificate?
SSL means Secure Socket Layer, and having an SSL Certificate enables your website to use it. This is important because SSL encrypts sensitive information like your passwords and credit card details that are being passed from your website to the web browser. It is the standard security technology that’s used between websites and web browsers.
If you’ve shopped online, you have probably used a web page that has it. It is easy to spot a page that has an SSL Certificate: the address bar begins with https:// rather than http://.
Why the need for an SSL Certificate?
A website is successful when the users can trust it; when your customer is confident that his login usernames and passwords won’t be hacked. Your customer should have the confidence not just on the product that you are selling but also when your customer is confident that his personal details are safely kept.
By installing an SSL certificate on your web server, sensitive data that’s being transferred from your website to your customer’s web browser is encrypted, making it unreadable for third parties that may be snooping around. This is extremely important if you have e-commerce websites because the only way to ensure your customer’s credit card details (that are being transferred from the web browser to your website) is by having these data encrypted, through an SSL certificate.
Where else can I use an SSL Certificate – I don’t have an online shop!
Good question. Obviously, having an SSL certificate is very important – Google is prepared to change its page ranking rules for it. But why do you have to change anything on your website security? Your customers don’t put “sensitive information” there anyway.
Aside from credit card details that are most commonly given away during online shopping transactions, we also give away sensitive information by having our username and password for our login details, especially is true for chat rooms where we are usually anonymous. Also for the website owners, customer databases are sensitive information as well.
Don’t forget the privacy and security issues that surround the internet as well, with all the leaks and hacks that we read in the news almost daily. We need to protect our privacy and our data – and SSL Certificates offer that peace of mind by giving us 100% security on your websites.
AA Marketing can arrange for your site to have a SSL Certificate. More information here or contact us for more information.
Recent Comments