I recently decided to upgrade my security options by adding SSL certificates to all of my good websites. Take a look at the address bar for this page that you are on right now. See the https:// at the beginning of my URL? The ‘s‘ at the end of ‘http‘ means that my website is secure. Most web browsers also show a locked padlock on secure websites. What exactly does this mean?

• Your connection to my site is private.
• The connection to this site is using a valid, trusted server certificate.
• The connection to this site is encrypted and authenticated.
• All resources on this page are served securely.

There are a few reasons I decided to implement this added layer of security to my websites. One of the main reasons being that it was extremely easy (and free) to do within my good WP Engine hosting account. I figured, why not try it? After I saw how easy it was to put on one website – I added it to the rest of my good sites that I have on that same hosting account. But it wasn’t until after I added it to my sites that I decided to research and find out exactly what the benefits are. What I found was that some of the most popular SEO blogs that I know of have written on this very topic! [Read more…]