16.9.11

What is SSL - Its Importance in Online Secure Businesses

SSL certificates are great invention of technology that allows anyone to an online business with secure platform. All online stores or ecommerce businesses must have an SSL certificate for website security as it helps to protect transactions as well as customer's information. If you run an online store you have probably come across the term SSL certificate in your research or from hosting companies.


SSL is acronym of "secure sockets layer" and is a data encryption protocol which will keep your information safe from third parties who might try as well as steal it even as making a purchase from a website. While a SSL certificate has many benefits and can be used in many different ways there are two main functions:


SSL Certificates protect your information throughout the payment transactions. It means SSL turns your information into a code which can only be read by a third party that has the key to read the information. In this way it will keep your customers information safe from third party trying to steal the information from either their Debit or Credit card. Moreover, it offers information about the site and company they are securing.


SSL lets your customers to immediately verify who you are, who you say, making your website or your online business much more trustworthy. Skilled online shoppers will also notice that a dead bolt is displayed by the browser as well as the URL bar may also turn green. This is a great visible pointer to a prospective customer that you take their online security seriously.


Secure Sockets Layer arrive in diverse sizes of bit encryption. The first is a 128 bit encryption that is still very good as well as is the standard encryption level used by most online stores. Moreover, the final one is the 256 bit encryption which is currently the highest level of security available today.


SSL certificates uses ports to send information over the Internet and internet has always used the term port to describe how information is sent. When you use an unsecure website to make any transactions the port that is used is usually number 80, information is then sent in small snippets over the Internet from Port 80. With an SSL Certificate Services because the transactions are now secure the port number becomes 443.

Website Optimization

When it comes to getting customers through the internet there is a lot more to consider than simply having a website built and registered with the search engines. This really should only be seen as the first step and of far more importance is how well the site is optimised and in particular for the Google search robots. In simple terms your website must be as Google friendly as possible if you want to be found on the front page of any search results. This also means that the content must be highly relevant for the customer and the structure of your website must allow a visitor to easily move around the site. This area of expertise is known as "on page optimisation" and is most visible to online visitors.

However, by far the largest and most important area of website optimisatiojn occurs "off the page" and involves special robot friendly computer instructions as well as incoming links to your website from other independant websites which Google views as a vote of confidence in the content you are presenting to the public.

In order to see your website "rank higher on google" action needs to be taken across all the above mentioned areas if you want to consistently rank on the front page of search results and see your business prosper online and your enquiries and sales to both grow month on month.

Recent research amongst leading SEO figures has led to the present day opinion that Google has shifted the weighting factors of its famous logarithm to better represent the true authority of a given website. The main change has been a slight down grading in the importance of the actual url or domain name in favour of social media rankings. Google now takes account of Twitter and Facebook comments and tags. So in future, any business serious about having a consistently high search ranking will have to have social media bookmarking on their sites as well as a corporate Facebook and Twitter account.

Successful online marketing in the 21st Century will become more diverse so don't ignore progress.