By now you’ll already have done a lot of work optimising your blog, and this is a good sign of professionalism and commitment. Nonetheless, apart from features and content, you also need to take care of certain quality criteria such as performance and, in particular, the security of your visitors’ personal information. ContentsWhat is a […]
By now you’ll already have done a lot of work optimising your blog, and this is a good sign of professionalism and commitment. Nonetheless, apart from features and content, you also need to take care of certain quality criteria such as performance and, in particular, the security of your visitors’ personal information.
Contents
What is a SSL Certificate?
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) technology standard allows secure communication between servers and browsers through the use of encryption.
Use of this technology makes Internet communication much safer, by protecting sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers from cybercrimes such as identity theft.
Blogs protected by the certificate are displayed, on most servers, with a small green padlock in the address bar (see the example below).
How can SSL influence your blog’s ranking and increase your profits?
You probably already know the basic factors used in Google’s ranking algorithms: consistent content (made by humans, for humans), well-chosen titles, use of meta tags, well implemented heading tags, friendly URLs, a properly configured site map that is visible in Google Search Console, in addition to correctly implemented keywords. Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that 😉
Since the end of 2014, Google started to consider SSL use as one of the factors for improving website ranking, including blogs.
The reason for this? To offer more security for those using the search engine and who access all kinds of unknown websites. It makes sense, don’t you agree?
With competition becoming tougher by the day, any worthwhile SEO technique should be considered to achieve better positioning. SSL implementation is certainly one of them could be differentiating factor, should Google be “in doubt” between one website and another. For those who use a monetisation strategy, better positioning always results in more income.
How to obtain SSL for your blog?
You can contract an SSL certificate through a range of Internet suppliers, including your blog’s own host server, who should also offer this type of service. If your blog is already up and running, you will need to carry out certain steps after installing the SSL: test the certificate, change from http to https, update the site and Search Console, apply a redirect 301, etc. If you are not a specialist, ask a technician for help or look for information on the Internet, as whilst the process is fairly basic, it does require some knowledge. Any mistakes made during implementation can result in your blog being off-line.
If you want to save money and have a good quality SSL certificate, there are two free services:
Cloudflare is a company that specialises in optimising website security performance. Their Free Plan includes an SSL certificate that can be installed in your blog in a few simple steps.
In addition to the SSL certificate, Cloudflare’s free plan allows you to use CDN (Content Delivery Network) that optimises your blog’s download speed and also helps its Google ranking.
Want more benefits? You will be protected from hackers, that are increasingly more common and have become a constant security challenge for all sizes of business.
Another free and increasingly popular service is Let’ s Encrypt. Launched in 2016, the project already has the support of large corporations like Facebook, Cisco, Mozilla and even the Brazil’s own Vtex. According to Let’s Encrypt, “we’re doing this because we want to create a safer web with higher respect for privacy.” In this way, anyone who has a blog with their own domain can use Let´s Encrypt to get a trustworthy SSL certificate at zero cost.
Let’s get to work!
Now you know that providing security for your visitors is not only an act of goodwill, but also improves your Google ranking, which could result in higher profits.
Now that you’ve learned about the benefits that SSL certificates can bring to your blog, what are you waiting for?