How to Secure a Domain and Protect Online Customers with a Free SSL Certificate for a Website
How to Secure a Domain and Protect Online Customers with a Free SSL Certificate for a Website
The 2023 Complete Beginner's Guide for Businesses and Content Creators
Table of Contents
Internet security has become an increasing priority for online businesses and content creators. Properly securing your website or blog protects visitors and online transactions from unauthorized access, data breach, and hacking threats. It is crucial to provide a secure browsing experience for your customers.
Make Your Website Secure with an SSL Certificate
You can take a simple action to prevent your website from data breaches – by having a proper SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. If you are on WPEgine managed web hosting service, your website automatically receives a free SSL certificate with a one-click installation.
What is an SSL Certificate?
SSL or Secure Sockets Layer is a security protocol that establishes an encrypted connection between the web server and browser, ensuring the safety and privacy of data exchanged within the encryption. SSL certificate is a digital handshake that verifies and authenticates the identity of websites so that secure, encrypted data exchange can be made between web servers and browsers.
Example of Why Business Websites Need to Install SSL Certificates
For example, an e-commerce store needs an SSL certificate in place to protect its customer’s private information used during check out.
Why Every Website Needs an SSL Certificate?
It is imperative for businesses online to have an SSL certificate to safe-keep private data such as customer transaction information. Google also penalizes websites without SSL. Your website could lose ranking and fall off the top search results page for popular search terms relevant to your niche market, significantly impacting digital marketing efforts.
Top 3 Reasons Why Your Website Needs an SSL Certificate
- SSL certificate secures website access and safe-keeps data.
- SSL certificate is a necessary ranking factor for your website to appear in Google search results.
- Websites with SSL certificates establish better trust and provide a better user experience and safer online browsing environment for visitors
How to Check If Your Website Has an SSL Certificate?
Look for the “https” in front of your website’s URL. Websites without an SSL certificate will show up as “http”.
Managed Web Hosting Service is Required for an SSL Certificate
You will need a managed web hosting service provider in order to install an SSL certificate. As discussed in our previous lesson, we recommend WPEngine as the best fully managed web hosting provider for WordPress websites.
If you need help choosing the best web hosting service, refer to our lesson on how to choose a managed web hosting provider for a website.
WPEngine
Best for Web Hosting-
A fully managed web hosting service designed for WordPress.
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More than 1.2 million websites are hosted through WPEngine.
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Peace of mind with tech stacks, server security, updates, or server-side optimizations. WPEngine takes care of them.
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The latest and fastest technology to deliver seamless, high-performance digital experiences.
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WPEngine is constantly investing in rendering the best possible secure environment for all businesses online.
Pros
- 100% focused on WordPress.
- Quality 24/7/365 customer support.
- Automatic WordPress core updates.
- Free CDN (Content Delivery Network.)
- Free SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates.
- Integrated web speed performance tools.
- Uptime protection.
- Automated daily backups.
- Development, staging, and production environments.
- Managed core updates and patches.
- Threat detection and blocking
- Disaster recovery.
Cons
- Provide managed web hosting service only.
- Do not provide domain name registration service.
How to Install Free SSL Certificate on a Website with WPEngine
Follow the quick and simple three steps below to add the free SSL certificate to your website through WPEngine managed web hosting. It only takes a few seconds.
Install Free SSL Certificate in WPEngine Managed Web Hosting in 3 Steps
- First, select your domain name.
- Click on “SSL” on the left menu.
- Finally, click “Add Certificates” to enable the SSL certificate on your domain.
Congratulations, you have successfully enabled SSL on your website! Check your web browser to make sure “https” appears before the domain name.
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