SSL Certificate’s
In 2014 Google confirmed that they will be favouring websites that have valid SSL certificate to rank websites higher in their search engines.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html
At the beginning of 2017 this was more evident for users of Chrome, where Google were flagging up websites to their visitors and warning them that the website was not a secure website.
Google are also targeting new websites especially ones with recently registered domain names. These were blacklisted until a SSL certificate was enabled.
Why Do I Need an SSL Certificate?
SSL Certificates protect your sensitive information such as credit card information, usernames, passwords etc. It also:
- Keeps data secure between servers
- Increases your Google Rankings
- Builds/Enhances customer trust
- Improves conversion rates
What is a SSL certificate?
SSL encrypts information sent between your website and a visitor’s web browser so that it cannot be read as it is sent across the internet.
SSL stands for secure sockets layer (you never know, it might come up in a quiz sometime), and it’s most commonly used when websites request sensitive information from a visitor, like a password, credit card number or login details.
If you’ve ever bought anything online, you’ve probably used SSL without realizing it. Most web browsers display a padlock when you’re viewing a site over SSL, so you know the connection is secure.
The address of pages viewed over SSL also normally starts https://, instead of http://.
When you buy SSL, you’re actually buying an SSL certificate. This is issued by a trusted authority and identifies your site or business. You can then install this onto your domain name in order to encrypt pages on your website.
An SSL certificate is recommended if you are requesting customer’s information through your website.
Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates:
SSL and SEO
In Google’s ever changing algorithm for SEO rankings, they have now included websites that use SSL certificates as a factor of their ‘trustworthiness’.
What this means is that pages with HTTPS will receive a SEO boost and be the default result for searchers.