Why Do I Need an SSL Certificate NOW?

I was the guest speaker at a Women of Interest meeting entitled Branding Critique. The point was to review women entrepreneurs’ collateral material (printed and online). As the conversation weaved, we discussed websites and SEO (it is part of your brand after all).

I was reminded that the deadline for switching your site from http to https is October 2017. Although Google announced this shift a few years ago, they have given us all ample time to make the change before our SEO is effected.

What’s the difference between http and https

We’ve all gotten used to “http” even though we didn’t really know what it means.

Now you’re being asked to change to https and you’re probably asking “What’s the difference?”

The S in https is for Security. If you have an SSL certificate, your site will be found at an https site rather than http. This means visitors to your site will feel more secure about navigating your site, especially if you ask them to include any personal information, even if only an email address.

Why should you care about https for SEO?

Because Google says so … and for trust and SEO:

“Apart from the SEO benefit HTTPS will become more important for a different reason: Google’s Chrome browser will display a lock overlayed with a red X in the address bar for ALL pages that do not have a correct HTTP setup in the near future: Your website will look broken in the eyes of your visitors. Mozilla will likely adopt a similar policy in Firefox.”

https://ahrefs.com/blog/ssl/

From Blue Corona:

“Back in 2014, Google rolled out updated algorithms across the board in favor of HTTPS websites. Then, it was a lightweight component within the overall ranking algorithm and HTTPS sites experienced only minor ranking increases.”

“In 2015, Google stated that their HTTPS ranking boost may serve as a tie breaker if the quality signals for two different search results are equal in everything else. Meaning, if your website is equal to your competitor’s website in terms of speed, title tags, content freshness, etc. but your competitor’s website is HTTPS and yours isn’t, Google will most likely rank theirs ahead of yours.”

“Although only less than 1% of all websites are secure (talk about getting ahead of the competition!), 40% of Google’s page one organic search results feature an HTTPS site. ”

“Chrome Will Start Labeling Sites As Not Secure in October 2017

Also, get this: Chrome is going to start making it really obvious when a website isn’t secure.”

Where to get your SSL Certificate

We recommend starting with a call (or a chat) with your web hosting company.

Some hosts are providing the SSL certificate for free.

Our site is hosted by Bluehost. The technician I chatted with first said it would cost us about $12/month. And then, after review our site and noticing that it is built in WordPress, they said that the certificate is free and could take about 24 hours to be secure.

If you’d like help with your website and can’t reach, or don’t trust, your web developer, we recommend connecting with us and our trusted developers at ThisWebsiteUnderConstruction.com