You’d be surprised how often I get asked “Do I need to use SSL on my website?”
As it says above, the answer is YES and I go into the reasons why below.
What SSL does and why you need it
You need SSL for website security
Plain and simple, SSL ensures your website is secure. Website security is such a big thing in this technological era and SSL is the way to achieve it.
SSL encrypts sensitive data being transferred
SSL provides enough encryption to protect any user information (e.g. email addresses, names, passwords – not just credit cards and shopping cart information!) being transferred between your site visitor and your server.
Increase client trust with SSL
Have you seen those “Your connection to this site is not secure” alerts in your browser when you visit some websites? Now imagine one of your potential customers receiving an alert like that as they try to visit your website. 😱 Somehow I don’t think they’d be sticking around so you’ve just lost a client. Knowing your website is secure is incredibly important for building and maintaining client trust with both you AND your business.
You need SSL to improve your SEO
Yep, it’s true – having a secure site plays a part in SEO and how well you rank in searches. Google gives priority to websites providing a good user experience. Is an unsecured website a good user experience? Nope. Google is more likely to bump sites that don’t have SSL to the bottom of the list.
SSL authenticates your ownership of the website
SSL verification is like getting the blue ‘Verified’ tick on Instagram – it verifies the identity of your website and proves your business authentication. This also leads to an increase in your brand reputation – site visitors will know they can trust your brand.
How to tell if you’ve got SSL installed
This one is super easy to check and there are two methods. When you visit your website, check the address bar in your browser.
- If there’s a little (CLOSED) padlock before your site’s URL, you’re sweet. 🔒 = ❤
- If your URL starts with HTTPS instead of HTTP, this means your site is secure.
How to get SSL on your website
There are several different ways you can implement on your website – and I’ll go into them further in another blog post – but here are a few of them:
- Enabling SSL via your webhost (if supplied)
- Installing a plugin (such as Really Simple SSL)
- Setting up SSL through a third party like Cloudflare
- Purchasing an SSL certificate
NOTE: You don’t have to spend money on an SSL certificate. There are free ones out there – like Let’s Encrypt, which I’ve been using for years – that are 100% free to use and work brilliantly. This will depend, of course, on what you need the SSL for. If it was a bank or financial company, I probably wouldn’t suggest a plugin or free cert…
If you need some help or have any questions, hit the comments below or send me a DM on Instagram or Facebook.
