Do you know if your website has an SSL certificate? Is your website ‘secured’?
There are lots of different security measures taken to keep your site online; these prevent hackers from taking down or driving traffic away from your site. A secure site gives customers confidence engaging with you as a business, and increases the legitimacy of content on your site.
So, what is an SSL certificate?
An SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate is a form of securing your website and encrypting the data that your website holds. It has a big impact on your site; irrelevant of how large or small your website is.
Especially relevant for sites where data is transferred, like an online shop or communication platform, an SSL certificate protects any data transferred between the user and your server. This protects sensitive data such as contact details, usernames, passwords and payment details from being intercepted by malicious hackers.
Why does my website says it’s ‘not secure’?
Modern browsers now actively highlight sites to users that don’t have an SSL certificate; this comes up as ‘not secure’ in the address bar when visiting your site. This could make customers wary of doing business with you.
Your website might not have any elements that make it insecure - if you’ve got a basic brochure site then there is nothing that makes your site insecure in the first place - but the web browser will still display the ‘not secure’ message to visitors. To this end, having an SSL certificate increases the ‘perceived’ credibility of your website, even if it provides no noticeable benefit to users.
When a website does have an SSL certificate activated on it, the ‘not secure’ message will be replaced with a padlock. This lets visitors know that they can trust your website; making them more likely to stay and interact more with your site.
Does not having an SSL certificate affect my website’s appearance in search results?
Google and other search engines actively downrank sites that don’t have an SSL certificate. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get ranked highly on search engines without an SSL certificate, just that it is a factor working against you.
For an established or niche website, this might not affect you. On the other hand, if you’re working hard to rank highly in a competitive sector, an SSL certificate could be the secret that gets you to the top.
All of our websites are compatible with SSL certificates and existing customers can quickly and easily add an SSL certificate to their website. Speak to us today to find out more about adding an SSL certificate to your site.