The past year has brought a wealth of new updates and changes to online marketing and SEO for businesses and changes to how we all interact online. With the threat of hacks and malware becoming more and more a member of our everyday lives, many companies are looking for ways to improve and show that security is a high priority. One of the best ways to do this in the New Year is to guarantee your website has a SSL certificate in place. Once just an additional option for websites, SSL certificates are now an absolute must in 2017. Learn more about what a SSL certificate is and why it is so important to your national SEO plan for 2017.

 

What Is A SSL Certificate?

Before we get ahead of ourselves, what exactly is a SSL certificate?

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. A SSL certificate encrypts information that is being transferred over a server so information is secure and less vulnerable to hackers.

 

How Else Does A SSL Benefit?

If your business is B2C and offers online E-Commerce options, a SSL certificate is critical and mandatory. The certificate encrypts the information being processed and in the instance of e-commerce sites, this means credit card information, addresses, full names and other critical data. Not only does it keep your information safe, but it now provides your business with a boost in rankings. Google has started to hand out ranking boosts for sites that implement paid SSL certificates in order to secure more sites online. Any help with your SEO that is a simple as adding a small certificate to your site for a menial cost is an obvious win-win.

 

Types of Certificates

Not all SSL certificates are created equal.There are a wide variety available that provide different services.

Domain Validation Cert: This is the lowest of the certs and verifies that the domain is owned and verified as having a SSL Cert. This will work for Google SEO’ boosts but is the lowest form of SSL security.

Organization-Validated Cert: This ensures that the business owns the domain through business information such as address. Requires additional information from the company and increases the validation threshold for encryption.

EV Certificate: Extended Validation Certs require even more information from the business and has one major perk. A Padlock symbol on browsers that help users know and understand that your business is secure boosting confidence.

Want to learn more about SSLs and how you can improve your national SEO strategy using back-end improvements? Contact Atria today!