SSL certificate

What SSL certificates do

SSL certificates authenticate your site's identity and establish encrypted connections. When visitors access your site over HTTPS, their browser verifies your SSL certificate, confirming the site is legitimately yours. Then all data transfers encrypt, protecting form submissions, login credentials, and browsing behaviour from interception.

Without SSL, browsers display prominent "Not Secure" warnings that destroy trust before visitors see content. Modern browser features—geolocation, camera access, service workers—require HTTPS to function. SSL isn't optional anymore.

SSL and search rankings

Google confirmed HTTPS as a ranking signal in 2014. While it's a lightweight factor compared to content quality, all else equal, HTTPS sites rank better than HTTP equivalents. Given SSL is now expected baseline behaviour, there's no reason not to use it.

Beyond direct ranking impact, HTTPS affects trust signals. Higher trust leads to better engagement metrics—lower bounce rates, longer sessions, improved conversions. These engagement signals indirectly influence rankings.

Certificate types

Domain Validation (DV): Confirms you control the domain. Fastest to issue, sufficient for most sites. Free via Let's Encrypt or Cloudflare.

Organization Validation (OV): Verifies organization details. Shows company name in certificate. Used by businesses wanting additional authentication.

Extended Validation (EV): Most rigorous validation. Previously displayed company name in browser bar, but browsers removed this, reducing EV's differentiation. Rarely necessary now.

For marketing sites, DV certificates provide full encryption and authentication. The distinction between DV, OV, and EV mostly matters for e-commerce or banking where additional trust signals were historically valued.

Automatic SSL via Cloudflare

Let's Encrypt revolutionized SSL by offering free, automated certificates. Services like Cloudflare Pages build on this: automatic SSL provisioning, installation, and renewal. HTTPS works from day one without configuration, cost, or maintenance.

All Fernside sites deploy with automatic SSL via Cloudflare. You never think about certificate renewals, configuration, or management. HTTPS just works, permanently.