Is it really true that 24 posts are published in WordPress websites every single second? Yes! WordPress is a giant pillar available for all with great user-friendliness and it offers tons of plugins which can be used to extend the functionalities and performance of your WP site. However, security is a huge issue with running WordPress and it has become important to have an SSL certificates for your WordPress website these days.
SSL Certificates (Secure Socket Layer) inspire confidence and show that you care about the privacy and integrity of the data of your users. An SSL Certificate protects sensitive information of your customers such as name, address, passwords or credit card number, encrypting the information on the server your site is hosted. Additionally, The certificate is required for all e-commerce services. SSL is not only essential in e-commerce but is also for any site, especially in WordPress. Using SSL on your WordPress makes it work much better and increases the security levels exponentially.
THE GOOGLE BOT WANTS TO SEE HTTPS
Sites with SSL are friendlier to search engines and the presence of SSL Certificate improves the positioning of your site, especially in Google. Search engines are now beginning to flag websites without HTTPS as insecure and rank them below others which have HTTPS for every search query. Thus, having SSL certificate in a WordPress Website is literally the best way to ensure that the website gets maximum traffic by getting placed top in the search results.
SSL REDUCED CART ABANDONMENT
SSL certificate enables HTTPS toolbar with the green bar and padlock symbol is a mandatory for most online buyers these days. And foor WordPress eCommerce websites, PCI DSS compliance standards demand to have SSL certificate if their business volumes exceed a particular limit.
GOOD SECURITY IS GOOD BRANDING
Installing an SSL certificate for WordPress helps to protect your site visitors from eavesdropping, phishing, and other common exploits. SSL is an investment that will pay real immediate terms of peace of mind and customer confidence in your website and by extension your brand. SSL is a must have for WordPress sites that have frequent customer interaction, subscribers, contributors, editors, and members.
IMPORTANT TIP:
You need to do one more step when adding HTTPS to your WordPress site before it is completely secure, and that is changing the URL paths to your site’s media. There are several good plugins that can help with this, and it’s usually a quick process. See this one for example: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ssl-insecure-content-fixer/