SSL Certificates are important, especially to Google (as you may know from our previous blog “Googles Algorithm is changing”). If you don’t have one Google will flag your website, potentially pushing you down the rankings; because SSL Certificates a ranking signal on Google’s algorithm.
Google loves their users and they will protect them at all costs. Serving only safe content to them. SSL’s are one way of telling Google that your website is safe, giving web users a sense of trust when using your website.
In our blog we will be giving you a guide on how to sign up for a free SSL from ZeroSSL and how to install it onto your hosting provider.
How to get a FREE SSL on ZeroSSL (Guide)
There are many websites out there such as
LetsEncrypt,
SSLForFree but today we’re going to give you a guide on how to create an SSL Certificate with ZeroSSL.
- Go to https://zerossl.com on your internet browser.
- Enter your domain in the form field (Example below).
- Create a Free account with ZeroSSL with your email address and password.
- Once you’ve verified your email and logged in click on ‘New Certificate’.
- Under the domain section enter the domain that you would like to have an SSL and click on ‘Next Step’.
- On the validity section click on ’90 day certificate’. After this click on ‘Next Step’.
- You should now be on ‘CSR & Contact’ – this is now your choice and you can choose ‘Auto-Generate CSR’ or enter your information manually. In this instance we’ve chosen ‘Auto’.
- Click ‘Finalise order’ you can choose to pay for your SSL or have a free SSL for 90 days. We want a free one, click that.
- Awesome, you’ve just created an SSL Certificate. You now need to install it on your hosting provider of where your website is hosted.
- Download your SSL Certificate it should be a .zip file and it will include 3 files. A private.key, ca_bundle.crt & certificate.crt
- Once you’ve downloaded your SSL certificate you will need to login to your hosting provider. In this instance we use 20i or hosting, we highly recommend them; due to the great customer support and cloud hosting.
- Once you’ve logged into your provider locate the area for where you can install an external SSL certificate (The screenshot below is for 20i).
- If you haven’t already, unzip your downloaded SSL certificate from ZeroSSL and open each file within a text editor.
- Once you’ve opened each file, all you have to do is copy + paste it within the field blocks and associated name. For example, certificate.crt goes onto the ‘Certificate’ field.
- Once you’ve pasted your files within each section, click on ‘Install SSL Certificate’; your SSL certificate should then be installed. With 20i this will take around 30 minutes, but with other hosting providers this might take longer.
