SSL – it is an umbrella of multiple different types of certifications for encryption and validation, but what is the difference – and should you care at all?
SSL certificates have three classifications and can be applied for through SSL providers, or received for free at GMEngine.
Certificates are processed by an CA (Certificate Authority), which is designed specifically to run, qualify and granting these certificates.
For encryption and validation certificates, there are domain, organisation and extended validation. For certificates defined by a number of dmains, the types are single, multidomain and wildcard certificates.
EV - Extended Validation SSL Certificate
You have without doubt seen the padlock certificate at some point of time. This kind of certificate contains the business name and business country in the address bar to qualify the rightfull of the website.
Extended Validation SSL are the most expensive SSL to obtain, but are likewise the most valuable in showing the legimitimacy of your domain from the address bar.
To setup an EV SSL, you must provide evidence that you are authorized to own the domain and that you are an authorized personelle who have requested the certificate. This ensures users that you are legally collecting the data needed to execute certian actions.
An EV SSL Certificate can be obtained by businesses and could be a priority especially for those that need to prove identity assurance. Most private websites, would not need an EV SSL Certificate.
DV - Domain Validation Certificate
The Domain Validation certificate, is usually connected to standard level of encryption and shows purely a green pad next to the URL in the address bar. This is the one of the quickest validation you can receive, and you’ll only few company documents to apply.
The verification happens when you add a DNS to the CA (Certificate Authority). For this kind of certificate, the CA will review the right of the applicat to own the domain being submitted.
Domain Validation Certificates do not secure subdomains, only the domain itself.
Unlike the above mentioned EV SSL, the CA won’t collect any kind of identity data, so you will not, based purely on the SSL certificate, know who is receiving your encrypted information.
Wildcard SSL Certificate
As the name says, a Wildcard SSL Certificate ensures you can qualify a domain name and any subdomain below this domain.
For example, if you bought a Wildcard for gmengine.com, it could be applied for mail.gmengine.com, blog.gmengine.com etc. The option is cheaper than obtaining multiple single SSL certificates for a broad number of domains.
Unified Communications SSL Certificate
UCC certificates, is in common language mentioned as Multi-domain SSL certificates, and allow multiple domain names to be set on the same certificate.
UCC were originally created to bridge communication between a single server and the browser, but have since expanded to include multiple domain names from the same owner.
The UCC is shown in the address bar with a padlock to display verification. They can be considered as EV SSL certificates if they are configured to show that green text, and home country. The only difference is the number of domains names associated with the single certificate.
Multi-domain SSL certificates cover up to 100 domain names, and if you need to alter the names in any way, you can do that with the Subject Alternative Name (SAN) methodology.
Single Domain SSL Certificate
The Single Domain SSL protects one domain, and one domain only. The thing to remember about this kind of certificate is that you can’t use it to product subdomains or other domains through the same certificate.
If you use this kind of certificate, you can’t reuse it – but need to re-issue it, for another use, or issue another single domain SSL Certificate.
How can I get started with SSL?
Initially is to determine what type of certificate you need, and if your hosting provider can provide it free of charge.
The cost of SSL certificates vary, but you can often get it for free or pay a monthly retainer to an SSL auditor. GMEngine is using a tool called Let’s Encrypt through whcih we offers our certificates at no cost.
Let’s Encrypt certificates expire every 90 days, but our automated services is renewing the certificates automatially without you need to worry about it.
Is SSL increasing my SEO Score?
The short answer: Yes.
While the primary purpose of SSL is securing information between the visitor and websites, there are severla benefits for SEO as Well.
According to Google Trends, SSL is now part of Googles Search Ranking (SR) Algorithm.
If two websites are similar in the content provided, but only one has SSL enabled, the website with SSL enabled will receive a slightly ranked boost because it’s encrypted and secured. As a result, there will be a clear SEO benefit to enable SSL on your hosting provider – or change hosting provider to GMEngine, where it is enabled as default.
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