There have been some reports of a video Neil Patel published late last year (now deleted) that told people that if they were running a blog, they didn’t need an SSL certificate. I’ve also seen WordPress maintenance companies telling bloggers they don’t need an SSL certificate.
Their logic goes like this:
- You’re not selling anything online
- Therefore you don’t need to protect anything
- Don’t waste money on an SSL certificate
We’ve now reached a tipping point where more than half the traffic being served across the internet is now using HTTPS.
So let’s say you’re not selling anything online. Fine. Let’s talk about the second point for a second …
If you’re a freelancer, creative, agency or blogger, you may not make money online. But you may be making money offline based on the trust and authority you develop online. (For example, you may be collecting leads via forms.) And that’s what matters.
Because later this year, a new version of Google Chrome is coming (68, due out in July 2018) that will mark every HTTP site as “Not Secure.”
Think about the consequence of having “NOT SECURE” on the top of your browser when a visitor considers filling out a lead gen form. I’m pretty sure you won’t see that page convert like it used to.
Also, some of you have been waiting for wildcard SSL certificates. With a wildcard certificate, you could have one single cert that would work for subdomains, like:
- store.example.com
- blog.example.com
- members.example.com
We suggest that you make getting your site secured with an SSL certificate an item on your to-do list.
Written by iThemes Media LLC
