Google is making changes and why you should consider SSL for your website
Google announced that in January 2017 it will start flagging sites as “unsecure” if their site is not protected by SSL. This will only happen in Google Chrome if this is your browser or choice, but it’s only a matter of time before all browsers make the change.
But I hear you saying “I don’t have a shopping cart, my customers don’t have to login to my site”. Back in the day, any site that was selling goods or services required “SSL” to give reassurance to their customers that the site was secure and their credit card details would be dealt with according to strict privacy laws.
However, it’s no longer just shopping sites that will require SSL.
What will my site look like?
Google will start marking a site as “Not secure” if they do not implement SSL across their site.
Eventually, they will take a more dramatic step and really bring the attention to the reader that the site is not secure like below:
It’s not ideal to have your business website showing as “Not secure” in bold red.
How do I implement SSL?
To implement SSL, you need to obtain an SSL certificate from a certificate provider. Here are a few certificate providers that are popular:
Using a certificate provider, as with domain registration, SSL certificates also expire and need renewing and re-uploading to your website yearly. The cost varies anywhere between $90 to $300 per year.
Our ordering system for example, uses a Premium SSL certificate that costs around $270 per year. It is required because we accept credit card payments. The address bar looks like this:
It shows a padlock and also the governing company or trading company name.
However, if your website is like ours and only an information site, perhaps with a newsletter subscription and enquiry page, you don’t require this. You can implement a “free” SSL certificate from a company called “Let’s Encrypt”. We recently implemented it for our own site. Our address bar now looks like this:
The downside to a FREE SSL certificate is it requires renewing every 90 days. You will require technical knowledge to keep this up to date regularly.
Ask us how to help you implement SSL for your site.
