An SSL certificate is a type of digital certificate authenticating a website and enabling an encrypted connection which protects your visitors' data when they're navigating your website. In simple terms, it is akin to sealing a letter before sending it with the post to stop anyone from just looking at it.
SSL certificates show your visitors that your brand is trustworthy by displaying a padlock symbol in the address bar of the browser. This has been proven to increase conversion rates!
Furthermore, SSL certificates are a major aspect for search engines to determine the ranking of websites on search results - not having an SSL certificate will mean lower rankings for your website.
SSL certificates can be issued in as little as two minutes and are a vital necessity if you're looking to do any kind of business on the internet.
There are different types of SSL certificates available:
- DV - domain validation. All this means is that the certificate authority will verify you have control over the domain. This ranges from you putting a file on your website or sometimes an email to the WHOIS contact. We will guide you through this process.
- EV - extended validation. This is the highest level of validation. For example through phone numbers listed on public directories, the WHOIS records, and other. We'll give you advice on what to expect in detail.
- OV - organisational verification. Usually, the certificate authority will verify the company name through business records.
- Wildcard. A wildcard indicates that it covers any subdomain on your site, not just the main domain. For example about.example.com will be covered, as well as test.example.com, www.example.com, staff.example.com, etc!