Website Hell – Fixing Failed: Invalid server SSL Certificate Error

Thursday, January 23, 2025

I can’t tell you how much I hate making websites, but yeah, I guess I just told you. Today’s version of website hell involves fixing the “Failed: Invalid server SSL Certificate” error that you can receive on Google Search Console.

Why SSL Certificates Are Important

As you may know, the whole point of websites is to have Google index your pages so that people will come and visit. Last time I checked, there were all these problems, none of which I understood, and so I’ve been avoiding doing the deep dive.

But finally, I had to. So I went to Google Search Console, and if you do this for your site, there will be a ton of errors listed, including “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag” and “Alternate page with proper canonical tag” and “Discovered – currently not indexed.” I looked up several on Youtube, which was often not much help, because many videos may not have the same problem that you have, and frankly, some videos a low quality and hard to follow. Even worse, some titles are in English, but the video is in a foreign language. In one case, there were 5-7 different links, with different cover pages, all linking to the same non-English language video. Yes, that one really pissed me off, guess someone thought they were clever to upload 5-7 links to a single video, each with a different cover graphic, so that they could drive clicks to their terrible single video. If only I could do something about that…

In any case, I eventually came to “Discovered – currently not indexed” and “Crawled – currently not indexed”. I figured these were were important, because again, the whole point is to get pages indexed. If you click on this error, it takes you to all the URL’s that have this problem, and then you can inspect the given URL. And on the inspection page I found, “Failed: Invalid server SSL certificate”. I would provide a screenshot, but since I’ve solved the problem, I can’t actually show the original screen.

Being a complete non-expert, and having a fiery desire to avoid website problems as much as possible, I didn’t really know what an SSL certificate was, although I’ve seen the term, and I had no idea that my website SSL certificate had expired. But apparently, you need an SSL certificate or Google won’t index. After some more Googling, I learned that when you are on your website, there should be a lock on the left next to the web address if the site is secure. If it isn’t, there’s a little triangle with an exclamation mark inside, indicating a problem. And of course, I had the triangle of death.

Buying and SSL Certificate

Immediately I began Googling where to buy one and how much they were, which only made matters worse, because you could buy a certificate for $10 or for $100, and it wasn’t clear why one was better than another, or who was a reputable seller. Then, the cheaper ones required DIY manual installation, and that was sure to be another can of worms.

My site is on Godaddy, and under website management, I found “Website Security” for $6.99, or roughly $84 a year, and it said SSL included. I also chatted with customer service, which seemed much more like a bot than a real person, and they offered an SSL certificate for $99 for a year. I tried to haggle, and they went down to $79 for a year. That alone took an hour or two, but I figured the $84 was fine and I would get some website security in addition to the SSL. So I paid for that, they sent me confirmation, and I waited to see what would happen next.

Computer stuff, especially stuff as basic as this, should happen immediately. But I waited a day, and nothing happened, so I went into my account, and on my website product page, there was a security section and a “Activate” button. Of course, no one told me I had to manually activate, but I went ahead and activated. I waited a bit, but my site still had the lock with the triangle and the exclamation mark, or lock with an error indicator.

So I called customer service, and lo and behold, the “Website Security” product was not what I needed. Apparently, website security creates a firewall, and within that firewall, it has an SSL so Google knows that things are safe behind the firewall. Since my site is within the firewall, that should make things fine, right? NO. Apparently, in order to have an SSL for your site that tells Google your site is secure, you need a separate, independent SSL certificate. Yeah, confusing, and no one tells you that. Argghhh. In the end, I canceled my website security and bought the SSL, it was $210 for 3 years, or $70 per year.

Of course, that’s not the end of it. You have to manually install it yourself. Now, having done it, if you have some familiarity with computers, it’s fairly easy. And if you don’t, then it can be confusing. Still, they can install it for you pretty easily, I imagine there could be an automated process, or it would take a tech guy a few minutes. But of course, Godaddy would charge an extra $60 for the “Managed SSL” product, which includes installation.

Nothing like feeling of having to live in this world where everything is complicated, and every little problem costs an arm and a leg to solve.

For Godaddy’s instructions on how to install and SSL certificate, click here.

In the end, it wasn’t too bad, it took about half an hour including checks, and then the triangle of death error disappeared almost instantly. I did have a hiccup, where I had to take a provided “key” and put it into a box, a step that wasn’t included in the instructions, but it worked out.

Also, there was an extra step. Years ago, the “http” system went to “https”, which is more secure. So if you created an http page, an “https” version of the page is created, and when someone goes to the http page, they need to be re-directed to the https version, which is more secure. This is called a force re-direct, which you also have to set up manually. There are instructions for doing this, and once the installation and the forced re-direct were done, the triangle of death error disappeared instantly.

For Godaddy’s instructions on how to redirect a website to HTTPS in cPanel, click here.

And finally, you have to go back to Google Search Console and see if the error disappears, or you can request the page to be re-indexed and then see if there are any problems. In any case, it can take a bit of time to find out if the problem is solved.

The “Website Hell” series documents the problems I’ve run into doing my own website. To see all my reasons why making your own website sucks, click here.


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