Attention! Secure your website quickly with an SSL certificate
Website security, an important yet often uncomfortable topic. Many clients prefer to avoid dealing with this complex matter as much as possible. Not surprising, because unless something really goes wrong, it rarely affects the business. However, there is one security issue that does require attention: an SSL certificate for your website. In 2017, Google will start cracking down hard on websites without a certificate, so we are sounding the alarm. We discuss the how and why so you can take immediate action.
What is an SSL certificate
In the past, a website address started with http://, but in most browsers this is now hidden. This determines the protocol your browser uses to communicate with a server and display the website to you.
Until a few years ago, no one really thought about this, until the rise of online shopping. Suddenly, we started entering credit card and bank information on websites and asked ourselves:
“What happens to my data? Is this safe?”
To reassure you, these websites took action. Suddenly, you saw a padlock or similar icon before some web addresses. These websites had switched to a secure protocol: https. From now on, your information is sent encrypted.
But how does a browser know your website is secure? If a certificate is installed on it, issued by a trusted authority. An SSL certificate.
Until recently, you didn’t need an SSL certificate
If no sensitive data was sent via your website, you didn’t need an SSL certificate was the common belief.
Why does your website now need an SSL certificate?
Google.
Especially in the Netherlands, Google largely determines what happens online. They have a huge market share with their search engine (96%!) and roughly half of the people browse with the Chrome browser. (source: http://gs.statcounter.com/) And Google wants the internet to switch to SSL.
Google’s Chrome browser will penalize non-SSL sites
On the official Google security blog, the company posted an article stating that Chrome will start distinguishing between SSL and non-SSL websites from January. Initially by showing a grey ‘Not secure’ warning next to the domain name, but after some time this will be replaced by the following message:”
It is expected this will make website visitors uncomfortable, causing them to leave. An SSL certificate will therefore become a basic requirement for your online marketing.
SEO: higher ranking for SSL sites in Google’s search engine
In certain markets, this is already happening: websites without an SSL certificate receive a lower position in Google’s search results.
How much does this affect your visitor numbers? Research shows the difference between the top 3 results and the rest is huge. About 60% of people click on the top 3 results, 32.5% even on number 1. So if you drop 3 places, say goodbye to at least half of your visitors.
Not to mention results that fall to the second page.
What determines the price of an SSL certificate?
SSL certificates are issued by what is called a Certificate Authority (CA), an organization that facilitates issuing certificates. The largest CAs are the most trusted, even the most obscure devices recognize these organizations. Smaller CAs are trusted by the most common browsers and systems but are not universally recognized.
The price of a certificate that is only recognized by the most common browsers and systems is much lower than a certificate from, for example, Verisign.
For websites, a certificate recognized by common browsers and systems is sufficient in practice.
A common certificate costs from about €50 and can go up to the highest valued certificates priced at €1,500.
Conclusion: Make your website secure with an SSL certificate
Therefore, install an SSL certificate on your website as soon as possible and route all traffic through the HTTPS protocol. It takes some time, but a specialist can do this fairly quickly. Especially if your website is built on a well-known CMS system like WordPress, an SSL certificate can be installed relatively fast.