What is CA Signed Certificate and How Do I Get One for My Website?

A CA signed certificate is just another name for a trusted SSL certificate. In fact, the reason the SSL certificate IS trusted is because it’s CA signed. But unlike that proverbial chicken and its proverbial egg, we know which comes first — the signature. So, wobble on across the proverbial street, chicken, while we discuss CA-signed certificates and answer the question, “how do I get one for my website?”

What is a Certificate Authority?

The way digital signatures and public key infrastructure (PKI) work is that a trusted entity must vet organizations and websites before issuing digital certificates that can be used to identify them. We don’t need to get into the technical side of how that all works because it’s out of the scope of this article. But, suffice to say, it all starts with that trusted entity — the certificate authority.

CAs are accredited organizations that must comply with a strict set of standards and operate with complete transparency. In return, they can issue trusted digital certificates, or as the SEO keyword we’re targeting calls them, “CA-signed certificates” or “CA signed certificates.” (Gotta love punctuation.)

What’s happening when you obtain a CA-signed certificate is that the CA issuing will first perform a set of validations. These can range from a simple domain control check for a domain validation (DV) SSL certificate, to a complete and exhaustive business vetting in the case of an extended validation (EV) certificate. Organization validation (OV) is the middle child of the two certificates — providing domain and basic business validation without getting into the nitty-gritty of full business validation. The reason validations are done is to verify that the entity obtaining the certificate is who they say they are.

Once this is satisfied, the CA will take one of its signing keys and sign the digital certificate. This signature lets end users know that the certificate was issued by a trusted entity and can be trusted itself. Without that CA’s signature, the digital certificate will not be trusted and end users will see a browser error.

How Do I Get a CA Signed Certificate for My Website?

Not sure how to get a CA signed cert? It’s easy — just obtain one from a trusted CA. There are dozens of CAs that can issue certificates that will be trusted by all web browsers and mobile devices. In fact, we sell quite a few of them right here!

Ah, yes. But how much does a CA signed certificate cost?

Here’s the best part — if you buy through us, you’ll get the best deal anywhere on certificates from brands like Comodo CA, PositiveSSL, EssentialSSL, InstantSSL, and EnterpriseSSL. We even guarantee it. CAs sell direct at MSRP, which can get a little expensive. Through more than a decade of working closely with our CA partners, we’ve earned platinum partnership status and can purchase our SSL certificates dirt cheap. So, we buy in bulk to drive the price even lower, then turn those certificates around and sell them at razor-thin margins — well below MSRP — to the benefit of our customers.

So, what are you waiting for? Here’s a selection of our most popular CA-signed digital certificates.