The Effect Of Data Encryption On Paid Search

Why you need more than just HTTPS and SSL on your website

HTTPS and SSL might not be enough

When HTTPS was introduced in 2014, many SEOs rushed to move from HTTP especially after it was announced by Google that the move could help boost rankings. As a result, every SEO company Toronto recommended their clients to get the certificate in order to increase their chances of ranking higher on Google. The truth is, moving your site from HTTP to HTTPS shouldn’t have anything to do with rankings. The main reason why Google mentioned rankings in a post they did to introduce HTTPS was so that they could get people’s attention.

Enhancing web security

One of the main goals of Google, being the largest search engine, is to make the web secure for its users. HTTPS was introduced in order to enhance user’s security when browsing the web. Google doesn’t want its users to visit websites where their credit card details could be easily stolen and hence will not show such websites in their search results. The search engine will prioritize on sites that have HTTPS because it means they will serve users with quality and safe results.

What does it mean to have an SSL certificate?

One thing you need to understand is that having an SSL certificate doesn’t make a website secure. There are lots of fake websites that still use the HTTPS technology. This is because for you to access this technology, all you need to do as a website owner is to obtain the SSL certificate. Once they obtain this certificate from third parties and implement it on their site within just a few minutes, the web pages are considered secure as far as the browser is concerned.

How does SSL certificate work?

Getting an SSL certificate for WordPress website is important but first, try and find out how it works to determine if this is the only sure way to secure your web pages. We’ll try and explain how SSL certificates work in a simplistic way.

When browsing the web and you access a site that has the certificate, the browser will first verify the validity of the certification. It will determine if the SSL certificate is valid for that domain and has been issued by a trusted certificate authority. The browser will also check to ensure that the certificate hasn’t passed its expiration date. Once the verification is complete, the connection is completed by the browser and the user is able to access the site directly. If not, the browser will warn the user that the site is insecure or even deny access to the site.

To understand how secure your website is with SSL certification, you need to know how HTTPS works. The HTTPS technology allows communication between the browser and website server to be in an encrypted format making it hard for hackers to read or tamper with the data. However, the information is decrypted by the browser when it receives it or by the server when it receives it. This means that the server can store some of this data giving hackers an opportunity to access it. In a nutshell, HTTPS allows data to get to the web servers securely but it doesn’t control how well the data is stored.

How to make it work

SSL and TLS are both important technologies that should be implemented properly but also combined with HSTS to prevent data breaches and hacks. These two technologies alone may not secure your website against malicious attacks. Therefore, when designing client websites, it is important to educate the website owners that they need to invest in more secure technologies and not just HTTPS if they seek to protect their users.

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