Choose and activate the SSL certificate best suited to your needs: increase trust towards your website and improve search engine rankings.

What is an SSL certificate?

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a cryptographic protocol that deals with the secure transmission of information. The SSL protocol (today TLS, Transport Layer Security), thanks to the presence of the certificate that identifies the server, creates a secure connection between the server and a client (browser), encrypting the data exchanged on web pages.

Free (Let's Encrypt) and paid SSL certificates

Free Let’s Encrypt SSL

All Hosting Solutions hosting plans include a free SSL certificate from the Let's Encrypt Certification Authority (CA). Let’s Encrypt only issues Domain Validation (DV) certificates, which enable the HTTPS connection for a single website/host name. Activating a Let’s Encrypt certificate is very simple and can be done in complete autonomy: for more information, please see the guide Activate the Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate from the ServerMate control panel.

Paid SSL

The RapidSSL WildCard and the GeoTrust QuickSSL certificates can be technologically compared to the free Let's Encrypt SSL, as they are Domain Validation (DV) certificates and  cover a single website/host name. The paid RapidSSL WildCard certificate, on the other hand, certifies a domain and all its subdomains, while Geotrust True BusinessID EV extends the certification to the company as well (Extended Validation - EV).

A different matter is SAN (Subject Alternative Name) SSL certificates, also known as UCCs (Unified Communications Certificates): a SAN certificate is a multi-domain SSL that covers different host names, whether they are on the same IP or on separate IPs. SAN certificates are generally used in environments that need to simultaneously protect several websites on different domains and/or subdomains.

HTTPS browsing

When we access a website that uses the SSL/TLS protocol (and therefore one with a certificate), we can notice that, in the browser's address bar, the URL starts with https:// instead of http://, often accompanied by a green icon in the shape of a closed padlock symbolising secure transmission. In this case, the HTTP protocol is replaced by HTTPS (HTTP over SSL) which becomes the protocol used by the server and the client (browser) to communicate through a secure channel.

SSL Certificates and Google, advantages in ranking your website

Websites that need to use SSL/TLS certificates are those that exchange private information and/or sensitive data with users (e.g. online banks, e-commerce sites) in order to protect such information.
However, it is important to know that SSL/TLS certificates can also be useful for websites that do not engage in e-commerce and do not necessarily exchange private/sensitive information with users. In this regard, Google has published some articles (HTTPS as a ranking signal and Indexing HTTPS pages by default) which inform us that using the HTTPS protocol can help to improve the ranking of a website’s search: in other words, a website that uses HTTPS (SSL/TLS certificates) will have a better ranking than a website that does not.

Furthermore, from version 68 onwards, Google Chrome will highlight websites that do not use an SSL certificate and that therefore allow HTTP browsing: a website without an SSL certificate will be labelled as 'Not Secure' directly in the URL bar.

Therefore, having secure communication becomes an important element, not only for websites that have an operational need, but also for all those for which indexing in search engines, starting with Google, is crucial.

Below is a list of what Google recommends for the implementation of the SSL/TLS protocol:

• Define the type of certificate you need: single, wildcard, etc;
• Use a certificate with a 2048-bit key;
• Use relative URLs for all resources that reside in the same secure domain as the website;
• Use the protocol (http or https) in the URLs for all external links;
• Do not include crawling impediments in the robots.txt file of your HTTPS website;
• Allow indexing of your website, avoiding using the 'robots' meta tag with 'no-index' content.

NOTES

All our certificates allow the use of applications and tabs on Facebook which, since October 2011, require mandatory HTTPS protocol.

All SSL certificates, subject to our free technical verification, can also be used for websites not hosted by Hosting Solutions.