Secure Your Web Site with SSL
Securing your web site with SSL is important because it secures data transmitted between your computer and destination servers. With an SSL certificate, any information that is transmitted is encrypted by inserting random characters into the original message making it nearly impossible for hackers to steal your information.
Securing your website with an SSL certificate is importantfor all web sites including a basic blog, small businesses and massive ecommerce sites such as Amazon or Ebay. Everyone knows that ecommerce sites need an SSL certificate to ensure that personal information including credit cards are transmitted securely during the checkout process but why is it important for other sites?
Starting in 2017 Google will label any website, as "not secure". Furthermore Google states:
We’ll mark HTTP pages that collect passwords or credit cards as non-secure, as part of a long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure.
If you don't have SSL, eventually Chrome will display your url like this
Clearly Google considers it important to secure the web. In August 2014 Google started giving a boost in search results ranking to sites using https/ssl.
Prepare Your Site for HTTPS
What you can do to prepare your site for using HTTPS is:
- Use relative urls when linking to internal pages. For example /blog/ instead of http://domain.com/blog
- Use protocol relative URLS when linking to external resources such as files stored on a CDN. You can do this by using //domain.com instead of http://domain.com
- Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
- Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the noindex robots meta tag.
Install an SSL Certificate
Once you've prepared your site you should purchase and install an SSL certificate. A standard SSL certificate will cost anywhere from $20 to $100 depending on where you purchase it.
Are you ready to install an SSL certificate and secure your sites and your visitors data as well as improve your google ranking? Contact Us and we can help you with everything you need.
