SSL Certificate: Why Is It So Important For (Your) Website?

The internet world is changing faster and faster and adapting seems to be getting more and more complicated. Sometimes we surf the net and suddenly our browser warns us: “Attention! The site you are about to visit has risks to your safety! ” And to proceed we must confirm that we understand the risks. Why does it happen? The most common reason is the following: the site is missing a valid SSL certificate.

Almost all browsers and search engines pay particular attention to the presence of this certificate. Why? It guarantees that all the data that users will enter on the web portal visited by them, will be encrypted and therefore there is no risk that they will be intercepted and read by possible “extraneous presences” that would like to read the traffic between the web server where you find the site and the browser used by the user.

What is the SSL Certificate?

The SSL certificate links a cryptographic key to a specific organization, that is the person or company that owns the website like animation. Once installed, it activates the HTTPS protocol (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure). In the past, it was used above all in sites where information such as credit card numbers and/or transfer of important data was entered. Now it is required that all sites have it, otherwise, those who visit our portal will receive a security warning. Also, some search engines like Google, “punish” the web server without SSL certificate by not making it appear among the first results of a search seemingly perfect for the website.

How does the SSL Certificate work?

Operation is relatively simple. The site and all those who visit it (whether real or not) have 2 keys that can be translated as simple passwords. One is a public key, which everyone can know and the other is a private key, known only to its owner. A message or any data transferred to a specific site will be treated as follows: the recipient’s public key will be used to encrypt the message, but only the recipient’s private key will be able to decrypt it. If hypothetically, someone were to intercept the message, the only thing that could read would be a long string of letters and numbers without a logical sense.

3 Reasons why you need an SSL Certificate

The main reasons we can list are:

• The data transferred between the user and the server is encrypted and undecipherable. Their safety is assured.
• Increase the score that search engines assign to the site. The higher it is, the more visits it will receive
• Users will trust the site having the certainty that no private data can be read by malicious people.

How to get an SSL Certificate for your site

The method for obtaining an SSL certificate depends mainly on the hosting provider we have chosen, or on the supplier of our web space. Some of them offer the SSL certificate totally free, already included in the price we pay monthly / annually to ensure that our site is always reachable. Other hosts, on the other hand, require an annual payment.

If our site is “hosted” on a private server that can be accessed as a root user, you can install the certificate manually by connecting to suppliers that can generate a valid SSL certificate specifically for our website. The installation varies according to the operating system used by our server and the supplier chosen by us and it is for this reason that you can find more information and instructions to complete this installation process on the websites of SSL certificate providers.

Ultimately, having an SSL Certificate is essential

Having an SSL certificate is therefore fundamental for our activity on the web, otherwise, we will never be able to have excellent visibility and therefore take full advantage of all the possibilities that the Internet offers. The installation procedure can be simple if automated by our web hosting provider, otherwise, it will be more complex and with the presence of possible errors to be understood and solved. In the event that we want to obtain an SSL certificate and we are not in the computer environment, it is certainly necessary to contact a professional to ensure that our website is certified as safe and is not therefore obscured by search engines or browsers.