Changing domain names<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nIf your Web site requires any of these actions then you absolutely should be including a change to an SSL secured site along with it.\u00a0 If your Web site does require these changes, then you should probably wait on making the change to SSL for now.\u00a0 However, in that case you should begin planning for making the change to SSL sometime in the next year or so.\u00a0 It should be combined with other large scale changes to your site if possible, because the kinds and scope work required.<\/p>\n
So How Do We SSL Secure Our Web Site?<\/h2>\n
The process of converting your site to an SSL site involves several steps.\u00a0 We will give you the 30,000 foot view here.<\/p>\n
First, your Webmaster needs to purchase an SSL certificate for the exact domain that you want secured. He or the Web host then installs the certificate on the Web server, and the browser then is able to verify the identity of the certificate (and therefore the Web site) when connecting.\u00a0 The SSL certificate encrypts the connection between the Web server and a viewer’s Web browser.<\/p>\n
SSL certificates come in a variety of types, ranging in price from free to quite expensive.\u00a0 Free certs are issued by the server itself and are “self signed”, meaning there is no way for a viewer to verify the identity of the server, and therefore the Web site.\u00a0 SSL certs with even a very modest cost are issued by a certification authority; the entity from whom the cert is purchased.\u00a0 You are paying for that entity to verify that your domain name is real, that it is registered to you, and therefore can be trusted.\u00a0 Very inexpensive certs, however, are not fully compatible with all browsers.\u00a0 This means that even though you are real and your Web site is trustworthy, your viewers’ browsers may still complain that your site may<\/em><\/strong> be untrustworthy.\u00a0 This is totally unsatisfactory in terms of creating trust between you and your viewer.<\/p>\nMore expensive “DV” (domain validated) SSL certs also verify your domain name and Web site are who you say they are, but they are also compatible with virtually all browsers, so the chances of your viewers getting trustworthiness warning messages while attempting to view your secure pages are very much reduced.<\/p>\n
Another class of SSL certificate is the “OV” (organization validated) cert.\u00a0 When purchasing this cert, the issuer will verify the identity and ownership of the organization owning the domain name, as well as the domain name itself.\u00a0 These certs are more expensive because of this additional validation.<\/p>\n
Our opinion, and the opinion of most other experts on this subject is that a DV (domain validated) SSL certificate is perfectly sufficient for the purposes of being seen to Google as a secure site.<\/p>\n
Secondly, if your Web site is being converted to a secure site (https:\/\/…) from an insecure site (http:\/\/…) then you will need to permanently redirect your insecure pages to their secure counterparts.\u00a0 This is normally done by specifying “301 redirects” for each of those pages.\u00a0 More complicated situations may require variations of this.\u00a0 This is something your Webmaster will do for you.\u00a0 It is a process that requires care in order that errors are avoided.\u00a0 There is potential for creating errors that will cause the search engines to stop crawling your site, or to create massive “duplicate content” issues.<\/p>\n
Thirdly,your Google & Bing Webmaster Tools accounts, and your Google Analytics accounts need to be reconfigured to refect the changes to HTTPS of your Web pages.<\/p>\n
Fourthly, your Web developers will have to pay even closer attention to page download speeds.\u00a0 HTTPS (secure Web browsing) is inherently a bit slower than HTTP (unsecure).\u00a0 That makes download speeds another issue to pay very close attention to, because that also affects Google page ranking.<\/p>\n
And there is more, but these are the main points.<\/p>\n
We will have more detailed articles on secured Web sites in near future, so please stay tuned.<\/p>\n
If you would like our assistance in navigating this new issue of concern for your Web site, please contact us<\/a>.\u00a0 We have been providing SSL certificates for many of our clients for many years.\u00a0 This is a subject to know very <\/strong>well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Really??\u00a0 So a secure Web site will rank better in Google than an unsecured site?\u00a0 But I thought we only needed to have a secure site if we were doing online transactions involving credit card info, or if we were requesting certain kinds of info from viewers. It’s true; Google announced recently that they will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seo","category-web-site-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-networks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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