If you have been looking for ways to improve your website’s ranking on popular search engine sites like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, then chances are you’ve come across terms like “Search Engine Optimization” and SSL Certificates. Though what they are and how to use them strategically isn’t always clear.

To help you improve the ranking of your website, while also improving overall functionality to provide your site visitors with a truly robust experience, we decided to ask and answer some key questions.

What Is An SSL Certificate?

SSL is an acronym for “Secure Sockets Layer”. These certificates play an important role in search engine optimization rankings as well as adding a layer of security throughout your website. This makes them important on multiple fronts for improving your SEO ranking on popular search engines, while also protecting your intellectual properties. All while ensuring that your users have a robust experience when they visit your site, safe in the knowledge that you are providing the necessary level of cyber security throughout their interaction on your company’s website.

On a nuts & bolts, functional level SSL certificates are essentially small data files that are located on a web server. They are designed to work as a type of padlock that confidently ensures the connection received from a web server to the user’s browser is fully secure.

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization. It is one of the driving forces that help your website rank high on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. It is a critical part of any digital marketing strategy as it strategically integrates elements of content marketing, along with critical keyword research as well as technical improvements to demonstrate the value offered by your company’s website.

Effective SEO practices involve the strategic use of keywords, structured meta descriptions, and active links that make it easy for a search engine to clearly determine your site’s value in a way that will get it ranked higher than your competitors. This will go a long way toward getting more clicks, responses, reviews, and conversion to active sales. to rank it higher on a search result page. That higher ranking translates into more people finding you online.

Researching and developing an effective SEO strategy can make or break your company’s website. This is even more important in highly competitive sectors, online stores, and regions where you have a high density of local competitors who are all vying for market share.

Do SEO Strategies & SSL Certificates Work Together In An Online Marketing Strategy?

What this comes down to is how your website’s security affects popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Google, which is the biggest search engine presence in the market tends to treat site security as a major factor when assessing if a website is safe for potential users to visit.

They have even gone so far as to update their algorithm to specifically include SSL certificate use. This means that a website with updated SSL certificates is more likely to be ranked higher in a Google search compared to a competitor’s websites that do not have a properly updated one.

Google essentially wants the user to feel that they can trust their search engine to send them to a website that is safe for them to use without the risk of their personal information being stolen. This in turn encourages users to keep using Google as their primary search engine, which has become one of the many important factors powering the search engine’s growth.

Google’s algorithm does this by looking for page URLs that have an “s” added to the HTTP. This indicates the presence of a security certificate. This encourages site visitors to prioritize HTTPS pages, which might become the norm as the practice continues to grow in popularity.

How Do SSL Certificates Work?

There are several benefits to using SSL security certificates on your website. It starts with confirming your company’s identity, which further affirms that users can trust that your website is truly authentic and trustworthy. This is an increasingly important factor when you consider the recent spread of duplicate or fake websites that are often used to illegally capture your information.

Of course, the vast majority of today’s internet-savvy website users completely understand security matters and prioritize it in the websites and companies that get their business. These users actively look for HTTPS prior to the website they’ve used.

If your company’s website or online store doesn’t have an SSL certificate, then chances are good that this very large body of internet-savvy users will take their business elsewhere. This might be even if your site offers products and services at a better price. The trust concerns are just too high for these users, who would rather pay a little bit more than risk the potential consequences that come with vulnerabilities in security issues.

SSL certificates essentially protect the user’s data by producing a better server-to-client communication connection. It does this by ensuring that every component of information shared is encrypted. This also means that the effective date is locked and cannot be accessed by any other party other than the intended recipient.

SSL certificates are especially important if your site will be processing personal information from new or returning customers. Indeed, most online retailers and hosts considered updated SSL certificates to be an absolute “Must” for e-commerce sites and online stores.

It improves search engine rankings. Google needs to see an SSL certificate to give your site that extra boost it needs.

SSL Certificates Encourages New & Loyal Customers

Online retailers and e-commerce sites with updated SSL certificates enjoy a higher level of trust from major search engines like Google. This helps them rank higher, which encourages new users to visit your site. This security trust further encourages new visitors to convert into new users not to mention boosting their confidence in returning to your site to become long-term loyal customers.

This can also be a factor in referring their friends and family members to your e-commerce site over the competitors. Not to mention maintaining updated SSL certificates will also go a long way toward reducing your liability risks.

When you consider the minimal cost to implement SSL certificates it seems like a good time to get on board with this practice that is quickly becoming the new industry standard for e-commerce.