6 Reasons Your Website Needs a SSL Certificate

Imagine your bank account details or credit card number getting leaked to unauthorized Internet users or even worse hackers? It would be the worst nightmare of your life, right?

To make sure that this nightmare never comes true, you should have a SSL certificate for your website. To check whether the website you are browsing on, is secure or not, look for a green padlock in the URL bar along with the website’s name written in green. If this secure site seal is not displayed, the website is not safe to browse. The real-time fact is that you just cannot give SSL certification a miss if you want to drive more visitors.

It is observed that quite often, owners of businesses and organizations take their website security for granted and then end up paying a huge price for their negligence. If your websites are not equipped with a powerful SSL Certificate, you are likely to end up losing your private information or business data. Business owners are ignorant of the security concerns associated with the website and the advancements in the technical realm. Buying a ‘Secure Sockets Layer” (abbreviated as SSL) certificate can save you of the horror of cyber-crimes. Various levels of SSL certificates are available, and you can choose the one that best matches your security needs.

Here are the top reasons why your website should invariably have a SSL certificate.

SSL Certificates help to ensure website security

You must have come across the message ‘This website is not secure’. Most of the users tend to close the respective browser tab on seeing this message. That’s because we all are looking forward to browsing on safe websites. HTTPS comes into picture here. The S here implies that the website is equipped with a SSL Certificate.

Through this certificate, it becomes possible to prevent the security breach on websites. It provides you with secondary authentication as the PKI (public key infrastructure) helps in sending information only to the respective server and the data is not accessible from any other device on the same server.

This certificate works as digital documentation that verifies the credentials such as the certificate holder, their serial number, and expiry date along with the signature of the certificate-issuing authority.

It has become even more important now because of the 2017 announcement by Google that it will flag websites that do not have an SSL certificate. Google will show a message in the address bar saying “Not Safe” for the websites without the certificate.

It enhances the search engine ranking for your website

To ensure safe browsing for the users, Google will improve the search engine ranking for the websites with SSL Certificate. HTTPS will be used as the SEO ranking parameter. As a result, it is advisable that you install the SSL certification for your website right away if SEO is a major concern for you. (which obviously would be)

Based on your website size and its design, you can convert your HTTP website to HTTPS by following the below mentioned simple steps.

• Purchase an SSL Certificate. You can buy it from reputed SSL Certificate provider like SSL2BUY
• Get the Certificate installed. If your website is on a shared hosting server, you can get it done by the hosting company.
• Change all the links with http to https.
• You will have to redirect all the traffic to the revised links so that the user is redirected to the secured https version from the unsecured web pages. You can seek technical help if you are not well-versed with all the technical geeky stuff of World Wide Web.
• Google Analytics or Google Search Console and similar tools should be updated with the secured pages for appropriate tracking.

Your customers will see you as a trustworthy brand

Even if you are not an e-commerce website, SSL certification is a must. If your customers cannot trust you, they would not visit your website or buy from you. One of the factors that can enhance your website traffic is showing your customers that you care for their security and SSL certificate is the best way to do so. The good part of SSL certificate is that it does not burn a hole in your pocket and is quite simple to execute. Once you have installed it, your customers will see you as a professional brand and build your brand reputation in the digital world.

SSL certification improves the speed of the website

Previously people used to think that installing an SSL certificate would lead to slow loading of the website. That’s a myth. The fact is that HTTPS makes your websites load a lot faster, thereby improving the website performance. This, in turn, improves search engine optimization and helps you in internet marketing.

The user experience becomes better on HTTPS websites

There’s a lot of awareness among your customers regarding the significance of website security. Most of the time, your visitors would be apprehensive about protecting their personal information. If your website has an SSL Certificate, it eliminates this fear and improves their user experience manifold. For e-commerce sites, this holds particularly true as the customer would not be scared to make any payments on a secure site. Ultimately, it will improve your conversion rate and boost your business growth too. Therefore, the ROI of the security certificate is quite impressive.

It helps to encrypt sensitive information

By building a secure website, you are able to encrypt all the sensitive information that is transferred between two computers and from a computer to server as well. This information can be anything ranging from credit card details, passwords, bank account number and other financial information. SSL certificate prevents the leakage of this data and keeps your information protected.

Wrap Up

Secure Sockets Layer Certificate can greatly enhance your customer engagement by instilling a sense of trust in their minds. If a competitive bottleneck is throwing a wrench into the works of your website, it’s time you consider buying a SSL certificate and turn your website visitors into customers. It would help to win their loyalty and build your business as a reputable one.