What Is An SSL Certificate? Why Is It Important For Your Website To Have?

 


With the increased activity of human hackers and hacking bots in recent years, you don’t want to take chances with the security of your website and it’s hosting. Especially not when it comes to the personal information of visitors on your site.

SSL is the acronym for Secure Socket Layer. In simple terms, an SSL Certificate is issued to a business and its domain name/website by a Certificate Authority. This certificate is installed on the hosting server of your website. This is to prove to visitors that the link between the web hosting server and the browser is encrypted and secure. Meaning any data inputted into the website stays private and cannot be intercepted.

Browsers will let you know whether a website is secure or not. Websites with https:// and the padlock icon at the start of the site’s URL confirms that the website is secure. Likewise, browsers will also tell you if a site is not secure. When entering such a site, you may be presented with a browser warning page stating the site is not secure and if you want to proceed to that site, it is at your own risk. Other warnings are simply a warning triangle and the words “Not secure” before the websites’ URL in the browser bar.

Having an SSL Certificate on your site enables visitors to feel safe browsing and entering any personal or sensitive information. This means you can build trust with visitors without actually meeting or speaking to them. Your website is an online representation of your organisation, so it is crucial that the site is secure and trustworthy. Many online users will avoid websites that are not secure, as there is a risk personal information could be stolen from such sites.

In recent years, search engines like Google have started to penalise websites that do not have an SSL Certificate present. This means that sites that are not secure are not likely to rank well. However, having an SSL Certificate will help with SEO as Google aims to become the most trust search engine it will favour sites with a valid certificate.

An SSL Certificate is not just for E-Commerce or large websites, even if you are a small organisation, you still need to take the security of your website and web hosting seriously.

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