SSL certificates are installed on a website to ensure that sensitive customer’s information’s are transferred only through secure networks and connections that are encrypted.
Installing SSL certificate on your website provides critical security, data integrity and privacy four your site and clients personal information. One of the easiest ways to obtain SSL certificate is to ask your current web hosting company if they offer SSL certificates.
Some of the benefits of securing your website with SSL certificates include the following:
- Improves Google ranking: Google recently added HTTPS as a ranking signal while updating its algorithm, this implies that only websites that are secure with SSL certificates will rank better on the search engine. This also gives your website a competitive advantage over your competitors who are yet to install SSL certificate.
- Secure Payment for your website: A lot of people who shop online will never send their credit card details to a website that is not encrypted. Therefore it is mandatory for a business website to have an SSL certificate installed in order to meet PCI security standards set forth by the payment card industries. Installing SSL certificate will make your website trustworthy and help your visitors have a secure shopping experience.
- Provides security for your website: SSL certificates help to protect sensitive customer’s information such as address, payment details, personal information, login details among others. It does this by encrypting your website connection and safeguarding your customer’s information against cybercriminals.
- Builds credibility: Another benefit of installing SSL certificate on your website is that it helps you win your clients trust. This is because all websites that use SSL certificates have a security padlock displayed on the address bar of the browser, this shows visitors to the site that the connection used by your website is secure and that you take their privacy seriously.
- Provides authentication: Apart from encryption, an SSL certificate also provides authentication which ensures that you are sending your information to the right server and not an imposter. Most times, cyber hackers tend to pretend to be your website and make your users send their personal information. However, with an SSL certificate from a trusted provider, you can avoid this.
- Protects against phishing attacks: SSL certificate also protects your website against phishing emails. A phishing email is an email sent by a cybercriminal who wants to impersonate your website. However, when an SSL certificate is installed on your website, cyber hackers will be unable to impersonate your site entirely.
- Finally, although the benefits of installing SSL certificates on your personal and business websites are enormous, so many websites owners and organizations are still finding it difficult to adopt this new way of encrypting their website due to the intricacy involved and the price of the certificates. However, getting an SSL certificate has become much easier today because there are so many SSL providers online which offer free SSL certificates.
Website owners should leverage on the benefits the HTTPS revolution has to offer and encrypt their website by installing SSL certificates.
