There are very few business owners who believe that it’s now possible to run a successful business without a website. There are however, a large number of businesses whose website isn’t as secure as it could be, and Google is starting to get tough on website security! If Google doesn’t think your site is safe, it will soon be flagged to visitors as ‘not secure’ and you could find your traffic drops away.

This has been coming for some time, as Google have had website security as a priority for several years. Good web developers have been following suit, ensuring that the sites they’ve been building are secure and accessible, so if you’re still without the ‘https’ prefix, we’d advise you to have a conversation with your supplier to find out why it’s missing!

So how do you know if you’re OK, or whether you need to take action?

The feature that Google is looking for is an SSL certificate. It’s easy to check, just look at the url of your home page in Google. If it starts with ‘https’, good news, you’re OK!

If it starts with ‘http’ though, you need to speak to your web developer – fast!

What happens if I don’t do anything?

With the release of Chrome 68, due this month, Google will start showing a warning to anyone who tries to access your site using Chrome, as below:

Is there a cost involved?

The good news is that an SSL certificate is just a few pounds, although free options are available, and, according to our guys, can be just as good as a paid option. The key factors are going to be:

1. The structure of your site; you’ll need to change all of the pages to add the certificate, which would ideally be done using search and replace. If the site hasn’t been built in the most local way though, this may not be possible, which will mean it will take longer to implement.
2. The hosting of your site; some suppliers are less accommodating to large scale changes so again, we would advise having a word with your developer to check this before implementing the certificate.

If you’re unsure about your current developer, do get in touch. We have a great relationship with our web guys, and would be very happy to recommend them.