What Is an SSL Certificate and Why Should Marketers Care?

An SSL certificate is the technology that puts the padlock icon in your browser address bar and makes your URL start with "https" instead of "http." It encrypts the connection between your visitor's browser and your server, protecting sensitive data like credit card numbers and personal information.

For marketers, SSL is not just a security feature — it is a conversion requirement. When an SSL certificate expires, browsers display a full-screen warning that says "Your connection is not private." This warning scares away virtually 100% of visitors. Your ads keep running, your budget keeps draining, but nobody reaches your page.

How SSL Certificates Expire

Every SSL certificate has an expiration date. Depending on your provider and plan, certificates expire every 90 days (Let's Encrypt) to 1 year (commercial providers). When that date passes, the certificate is no longer valid and browsers immediately start blocking access to your site.

Why do certificates expire?

  • Security practice: Shorter validity periods reduce the window of exposure if a certificate's private key is compromised
  • Identity verification: Certificate authorities want to periodically re-verify that you still control the domain
  • Cryptographic standards: As encryption standards evolve, certificates need to be reissued with stronger algorithms

The Real Cost of an Expired SSL Certificate

When your SSL expires while ad campaigns are running, the impact is immediate and total. Unlike a slow-loading page where some visitors still convert, an SSL warning blocks every single visitor. If you are spending $200 per day on ads and your SSL expires on a Friday evening, you could burn through $400-$600 before anyone on your team notices Monday morning. This is one of the most damaging of the 7 warning signs that your funnel is leaking revenue.

Beyond the immediate financial loss, there are secondary costs:

  • SEO damage: Google penalizes sites with invalid SSL certificates, potentially dropping your organic rankings
  • Trust erosion: Visitors who see a security warning may never return to your site, even after you fix it
  • Platform flags: Ad platforms like Google Ads and Meta may flag or pause ads pointing to sites with SSL errors, requiring manual reactivation

How to Monitor SSL Certificates

The simplest approach is to set calendar reminders 30, 14, and 7 days before your certificate expiration date. This works for a single site, but quickly becomes unmanageable when you are running multiple landing pages across different domains.

A better approach is automated SSL monitoring. Tools like FunnelLeaks continuously check your SSL certificate status and alert you well before expiration. Our platform checks SSL validity as part of a comprehensive 22-point health scan that runs on every monitored URL.

SSL Best Practices for Marketing Teams

  • Use auto-renewing certificates when possible (most modern hosts support this)
  • Monitor SSL expiration dates for all domains, not just your primary site
  • Test SSL after any server migration or hosting change
  • Ensure wildcard certificates cover all subdomains you use for landing pages
  • Keep a centralized inventory of all certificates, their providers, and expiration dates

SSL Is Just One Piece of the Puzzle

While SSL monitoring is critical, it is only one of many things that can go wrong with a landing page. Broken landing pages drain ad budgets through a combination of SSL failures, slow page speeds, broken forms, and failed tracking pixels. Comprehensive monitoring that covers all of these vectors is the only reliable way to protect your investment.

Run a free scan on your landing page to check your SSL certificate status right now — along with 21 other critical health checks.