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SSL Certificates and You

SSL certificates provide additional security for your website and are becoming essential to have.

We explain SSL certificates and how they affect you and your website below.

SSL Certificates

Due to changes in how current web technology treats websites it is becoming increasingly important for websites to have additional security applied.

The additional security is called an SSL Certificate and encrypts any data transmitted. You can identify sites with SSL Certificates as follows:

  • Green padlock icon in your browser’s address bar
  • The site address begins with https:// (rather than http://)

The image to the right shows how this appears in the web browser Firefox for the main BBC website.

In particular, Google is pushing for all websites to use SSL Certificates, and we understand that not having one can have a negative impact on your search engine ranking. Google are also reinforcing this with their web browser Chrome. As of October 2017 Chrome will flag up any forms on a non-SSL website as insecure.

Previously we have only recommended SSL Certificates where sensitive data such as credit card details are collected directly on your website (which is the case for a lot of e-commerce websites). Although we feel that Google is forcing a significant change on website owners, we can’t deny the importance of Google and want to highlight the issue to enable you to make an informed decision.

Please contact us at info@webfooted.co.uk if you would like to review the impact of these changes on your website and to get pricing for setting up your website to work with SSL.

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