Chances are you already knew (and it's cool if you didn't) that Google gives a slight nod to websites with SSL certificates over those that don't have the shield installed. For less than $100/year, it has made sense for the last few years to get the Secure Socket Layer on your website, because even if you don't accept payments or personal information of any kind, it has given you a slight (debatable, but small) SEO boost over your competition that may not have SSL installed.
While some web development agencies and freelance developers have made it part of a required hosting process to force their clients into SSL, the far majority have not, and will in for a rude awakening and bad Q4 if they don't get their act together by October 2017.
How do I know this? I'm not a headline reader. I'm an avid Google Search Console / Google Webmaster Tools user. I basically live in the platform.
As such, Friday night I received about 100 emails from Google that all look like this...
The struggle is real but the solution is super simple.
- Open your site in Google Chrome, and if you see this icon to the left of the URL address bar, you're all set -
- If you don't, call your web developer, web host, or us, and make them install SSL on your site. Do it right away, don't waste time or risk October getting here and your clients/customers getting a "NOT SECURE" warning when trying to access your site.
If you're a current client of ours, we'll be reaching out to you in advance to get SSL up and running.
Thanks and have a great day!
Paul Hickey has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.
