Beginning mid-Summer 2018 Google will identify not secure websites in the Chrome browser. This will be a big drawback for people visiting your site and thinking the website is unsafe. Having the badge “Not secure” won’t mean necessarily your site is hacked. You will get this label if you don’t have an SSL certificate installed on your website server (hosting) and your site is not accessible on https protocol.
Chrome browser on Mac is implementing this rule and you may see this label on your Apple browser (Safari) too.
What is an SSL Certificate?
SSL Certificates are small data files that digitally bind a cryptographic key to an organization’s details. When installed on a web server, it activates the padlock and the https protocol and allows secure connections from a web server to a browser. Typically, SSL was used to secure credit card transactions, data transfer and logins, and more recently it has become the norm when browsing on social media sites (Facebook etc).
How do I install the SSL Certificate?
First you need to talk with your hosting and purchase an SSL Certificate and let them to install it. Some hosting companies may give you this for free or they may charge you an annual fee. If you have cheap hosting, you will certainly not get it for free. After having it installed on your host, then you need to contact your webmaster and have him/her change all html references from http to https because the site can not have mixed protocols, otherwise you will still get an error. I usually do a search and replace to the entire database, then I recreate a new xml site map and submit to the search engines so they will catalog the new urls. If you are working with Fisher Design we will handle this for you.
What will I get?
Google will give you a small Google and Bing website ranking boost, but more imporantly you will get trust of your audience visiting your site!
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