SSL Cert For Privately Hosted Blog/Website?

a fat guy

Hi folks!

I made a personal website/blog a few months ago, trying to get known in Dublin/across the country so I have an easier time in my career.

I have it set up to publish a post every week, but noticed that Google pushes websites down on it's searching index if they don't have an SSL cert.

Is it worth getting one or will my website/blog just get there by itself over time?

Also, how hard is it to get an SSL cert installed? My website/blog is hosted by digital ocean, but the address is with blacknight.

Thanks!
Marc

gctest50

Have a look here :

https://www.blacknight.com/ssl/#section4



Also - be sure sure that if you get huge increase in traffic to your blog etc the charges are capped

PrzemoF

Not sure how to install it with digital ocean / blacknight, but on my home server works fine.
https://letsencrypt.org/

Aswerty

An alternative is to use Cloud Flare (https://www.cloudflare.com/) who provide free SSL between your users PC and their servers. The way it works is Cloud Flare sits between your server and your user. All traffic between the user and Cloud Flare can be done over SSL and then the traffic between Cloud Flare and your server is unencrypted. This give a lot of the advantages of SSL with very little hassle. Some people are dead set against the idea of only half the route being encrypted. Personally I think for something like a blog the Cloud Flare approach is more than sufficient and safe. As such, I use this approach for multiple sites. Cloud Flare also provides other nice functionality such as content caching along with redirecting http to https and your naked domain to www (or vice versa).

To get setup on Cloud Flare you point your current DNS config to be managed by Cloud Flare - they have decent documentation that should get you setup fairly handy.

Graham

+1 on cloudflare for this kind of setup.

NB Don't expect it to make the blindest bit of difference to your Google ranking. Any improvements are so negligible you'll barely be able to spot them, just don't think it's a silver bullet.

That's not to say SSL won't have a greater SEO benefit in the future.

If your site is dropping in rankings, look for another explanation,

Aswerty

Graham wrote: »

NB Don't expect it to make the blindest bit of difference to your Google ranking. Any improvements are so negligible you'll barely be able to spot them, just don't think it's a silver bullet.

That's not to say SSL won't have a greater SEO benefit in the future.

If your site is dropping in rankings, look for another explanation,

Probably the most pertinent answer OP will get!

Though I must say the lack of a green pad lock is becoming quite noticeable from a user point of view at this point. At least for the more technical minded.

14ned

a fat guy wrote: »

I made a personal website/blog a few months ago, trying to get known in Dublin/across the country so I have an easier time in my career.

I have it set up to publish a post every week, but noticed that Google pushes websites down on it's searching index if they don't have an SSL cert.

Google can initially bump you due to being new and fresh, but it's only a temporary initial thing. If you don't get a raft of people reading you quickly, you will drop down the rankings to make space for other new stuff.

Unless you are selling stuff and need the footfall for the kind of stuff you are selling, I don't think search engine ranking is as important as it was. A ton of people never leave the Facebook ecosystem nowadays. Probably 99% of the content generated nowadays is never read by more than ten people excluding bots. You see the same problem in published books or albums, that long tail of less popular content is getting constantly longer and ever fewer people ever read it. Attention is increasingly confined to the most popular only.

Niall

Graham

Aswerty wrote: »

Probably the most pertinent answer OP will get!

Though I must say the lack of a green pad lock is becoming quite noticeable from a user point of view at this point. At least for the more technical minded.

A green padlock or a padlock in general?

Aswerty

Graham wrote: »

A green padlock or a padlock in general?

I can't even remember which colour denotes what. A padlock in general was what I was going for - though the green does stand out!

Graham

Aswerty wrote: »

I can't even remember which colour denotes what. A padlock in general was what I was going for - though the green does stand out!

Maybe I didn't just waste a small bundle on a green certs.

Green denotes an EV (extended validation) ssl cert, a black padlock is a DV (domain validation) cert. The technology behind them both is pretty much the same.

Green ones are more hassle to get and a multiple of the price. Only really of any benefit to an e-commerce operation or on websites that would like to portray a slightly higher level of trust. They require an organisation to prove their credentials as well as proving they own the domain.

mneylon

EV certs show that you have verified and validated who you are.
The DV certs don't give you the same level of assurance
And of course the free certs have been abused: https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/03/25/2222246/over-14k-lets-encrypt-ssl-certificates-issued-to-paypal-phishing-sites