Get a free SSL certificate to encrypt your website

encrypt website

We all know having an SSL (secure socket layer) certificate installed on your domain helps protect users coming to your website and is essential for website security, free SSL UK hosting, and modern SEO requirements.

Using an SSL can also help your website SEO as it shows Google, Bing and other search bots that your website is protected and safe. This is especially important when using Let’s Encrypt SSL or free SSL certificates on hosting platforms.

A lot of companies are not aware when having a website that they can have more protection added to their website, leaving them at risk from 3rd parties that try to tamper or gain access to your website.

Advantages of having an SSL certificate

So what are the advantages of http vs https? We'll quite a few actually:

  • Increased Rankings - Yes its confirmed by Google and you'll notice a slight increase once you have installed your SSL on your website for several days but only accounts for about 1% of Google's Algorithm.
  • Security & Privacy - HTTPS prevents tampering by third parties, makes your site more secure for visitors and encrypts all communication between the server and user including browser history and credit card numbers.

    • What do I need to look for in an SSL

    When choosing your SSL certificate the main points you need to look for:

  • How secure is the SSL key - We recommend a 2048-bit key certificate.
  • Don't block your website from Google or any other search engine bots as they won't be able to access your robots.txt which is required to keep your website updated on search engines.
  • Add an HTTPS version of your website on Google Webmaster Tools and get Google to crawl all new HTTPS links on your website.

    • How do I install an SSL certificate

    Our recommendation is if you aren't very IT savvy is to let your web hosting provider do it for you, and they usually do it free of charge if you are hosting with them. We also offer the option to get a free Lets Encrypt SSL with any of our web hosting packages.

    Where can I get a free SSL

    Until recently to get an SSL you had to pay for and they weren't cheap, unless you was creating a self-signed certificate for personal use, but this left errors for anyone coming to your site. Now you can get a free SSL from Lets Encrypt.

    Getting your free SSL is easy, simply head over to certbot.eff.org where you can select the server software type you are using on your server.

  • Apache
  • Nginx
  • Haproxy
  • Plesk

    • Need to check your current SSL certificate?

    Use our free SSL Checker tool to instantly verify expiry, validity, and configuration.

    Install Lets Encrypt on cPanel server

    All hosting accounts can use the Lets Encrypt FREE SSL service by installing it on a cPanel Server.

    /scripts/install_lets_encrypt_autossl_provider

    Install Lets Encrypt on Directadmin

    To enable this feature in DirectAdmin, ensure you have DirectAdmin 1.50.1 or newer.

    cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
    ./build letsencrypt

    If you are wanting a website with free SSL included, check Website Hosts UK.