For security reasons, the web is moving away from the insecure http protocol toward the secure https protocol. You don’t need to understand the technical stuff – but you do need to know this:

No online marketer should use insecure http URLs in the year 2020.

Insecure http URLs are “penalized” in various ways, more and more so as each day passes, so don’t use them.

If you’re already using https for all of your web pages, custom domains, Smart Links and all of your other marketing-related activities then you’re in good shape, and you don’t need to do a thing …

On the other hand, if you’re still using http URLs, here’s what you should do immediately:


Action Step #1 – Use Only Secure Smart Links

For your Smart Links, always use our secure https://www.clkmg.com and https://www.clkmr.com tracking domains (this is the default), or set up SSL/HTTPS on your custom tracking domains.

You can set up your secure custom domains for free with Cloudflare. Just follow the steps in this article:

How do I set up a secure custom tracking domain?


Action Step #2 – Make Sure You’re Only Using Secure Web Pages & URLs

Any URLs that you are promoting need to be secure and start with https, not http. This goes for your website and any other URLs you may promote.

If you host your site and you’re still using http, you need to generate and install an SSL Certificate on your web server, which makes your site secure. Your web developer should be able to set this up.

On the other hand, if you use any service or platform to build and host your pages, and all of your URLs do not start with https, you will want to get in touch with them immediately and ask for assistance with switching from insecure http to secure https for all of your URLs/pages.

If you are promoting affiliate links or any other URLs that are http, you should test them with https and see if they still work correctly. If they do great, start using the https version.

If not, you’ll want to contact whoever gave you the URL. If they can’t provide you with a secure https version of the URL, you should probably stop promoting it until they do.
 

Article 206 Last updated: 09/15/2025 3:28:26 PM
https://www.clickmagick.com/kb/?article=206