WHY DO YOU NEED A SSL CERTIFICATE

Having a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate on your website is no longer just for social commerce websites and anything that requires information to be kept secure. While it seems like an unnecessary hosting fee from most website providers, a SSL certificate is actually vital these days in an era of hackers trying to steal and impersonate “legitimate” websites.

There are five big reasons why you should keep your SSL certificate current and on your website, and some of them are actually surprising. These are-

NOT HAVING SSL LOWERS YOUR GOOGLE RANKING

Google’s algorithm for finding websites is notoriously opaque and difficult to figure out. But one of the biggest factors in Google’s ranking is backlinks. When people link their content such as websites, social media, or anything else to your content, that creates a backlink. And, the more backlinks you have, the better-if people are looking at your content, it must be important, right?

When deciding between the importance of two different backlinks, the backlink that connects to a web page that is secure will be ranked higher than the backlink that doesn’t link to a secure website. 

THE THREAT ENVIRONMENT IS HOSTILE THESE DAYS

According to current estimates, every thirty-nine seconds, a web page or web domain is attacked by hackers. One of the best ways to keep a hacker out is to make it difficult for hackers to get into your website. This is what an SSL certificate helps with, by requiring authentication before you can alter or manipulate anything on the website. 

By making your website a harder target for hackers, they will go somewhere else that is easier to attack. Since most website hacking these days is done with automated tools, SSL can serve to discourage “low-hanging fruit” hackers from attacking your websites.