What Is SSL and Why Should I Care?
SSL stands for secure socket layer and when a website uses SSL, it sends its communications encrypted across the internet. Having your website’s communications encrypted with SSL is a best practice because it keeps the information exchanges between the user and your website private.
Why You Should Implement SSL on Your Website Now!
Internet privacy and internet security are top concerns today and search engines such as Google take great pains to ensure they present safe, reliable and secure search results to their users. Websites that implement SSL are favored over their non-SSL counterparts and are rewarded with improved rankings. The user experience is also enhanced as site visitors experience a warm and fuzzy sense of solid protection when they see that security lock in their browser’s address bar.
Why Isn’t Every Website Using an SSL Today?
Traditionally, the stumbling block to deploying an SSL certificate on a website has been cost and complexity. Moreover, most websites did not process financial transactions in the past: If a user did fill out a form, it was usually to provide basic contact information that was also available in a phone book, so there was no pressing need to protect it. Also, search engines did not reward secure sites as much as they do today.
SSL and Secure Websites Today
While you still need a qualified technician to install an SSL certificate on your webserver and go through the process of getting the signing request from the certificate authority, the actual SSL certificate is available for free from Let’s Encrypt (yes, it’s free as in beer). Let’s Encrypt can provide certificates gratis because it is sponsored by internet heavyweights such as Google, Facebook and CISCO, to name just a few. You can see the list of Let’s Encrypt sponsors here: https://letsencrypt.org/sponsors/. These organizations want to remove the stumbling blocks to getting websites SSL-secure because they know a secure and safe internet keeps people on the web, which is good for business. It’s definitely working: To date, Let’s Encrypt has provided more than 100 million SSL certificates, which is amazing!
Let’s Do This SSL Thing!
Our continued goal at Bleevit is for 100% of the sites we host to be verified and maintaining their SSL certificates. We’ve done extensive testing, we’ve proven and documented our setup and installation procedures and clients have reaped the benefits for years. Here’s to a safer and more secure internet!
WRITTEN BY
Rick Hogan, CEO & Co-Founder – Bleevit Interactive Rick possesses over 20 years of digital marketing experience and started Bleevit Interactive with the primary mission of helping local businesses succeed online. When he is not working he can often be found hiking Great Falls, Virginia with his Labradoodle Lily, or sailing the Chesapeake Bay. If you have any comments or suggestions on how we can improve this post or otherwise want to give us a shout, send an email to hello@bleevit.com.
