Homepage 302 Redirect For SSL
-
Hi All,
My site, http://domain.com, currently has a 302 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com.
The reason we have an SSL cert is because we have a registration and log in form on the homepage (as well as log in options in the top bar of every page on the site - email/password).
My question is:
When taking SEO best practices into account, would we be better having a 301 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com as most of our inbound links are directed to http://domain.com.
Thanks for any help!
-
Hi Mike,
We used the SEOMoz crawl test tool that provided the results.
The below stats are for the http://domain.com and the https://domain.com (we have a 302 from the http:// to the https://. Results are exactly the same.
<colgroup><col span="4" width="65"></colgroup>
| Internal Links | Linking Root Domains | External Links | Page Authority |
| 216 | 58 | 259 | 45 |
| 216 | 58 | 259 | 45 | -
What tool are you using to get your backlink profile?
Can you provide your domain?
Mike
-
It does not matter from an SEO standpoint whether you link to https or http from your homepage to a secondary page.
What does matter is that you only have one version. You do not want to have http://domain.com/second-page and https://domain.com/second-page on your website.
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
Hi Mike,
Thought you might find this interesting:
I was checking my crawl stats and it appears that the http://domain.com and the https://domain.com pages have returned the exact same backlink and page authority results. As mentioned, we currently have a 302 redirect in place here so I'm not sure how the https has managed to stack up the same page authority and backlinks as the http. Any idea?
-
Hi Mike,
That makes perfect sense. One last question that I'd really appreciate your knowledge on:
We go ahead and set up a 301 redirect from http://domain.com to our https://domain.com homepage.
On the homepage, we have a number of links to other pages on the site that are publicly visible. For these links on the homepage, would you advise that we set up a 301 redirect from https://domain.com/second-page to http://domain.com/second-page or is there any problem with keeping the tier 2 pages as https://domain.com/second-page.Thanks again Mike - much appreciated.
-
-
If you currently have a 302 in place directing http to https, you are only utilizing the backlinks of the https version. Once you implement a 301 from http to https, you will be gaining the backlinks that the http version has pointing at it and directing them to the https version.
-
No. If you need to use https, you need to use it. It is not looked down upon or more difficult to rank for or any of that... merely personal preference or need based.
Does that answer your question?
Mike
-
-
Hi Mike,
Thanks a lot for the response there. Just two quick follow ups:
-
Would we be losing any juice or search ranking already established with http://doman.com if we now set up a 301 redirect to https://domain.com (given that the site has been operating for over a year in its current form)?
-
Is there any negative side to setting up a homepage 301 redirect to an SSL homepage (https://domain.com)?
Thanks again for your help.
-
-
If I were you, I would change the 302 redirect to a 301.
A 302 redirect tells search engines that it is a temporary redirect and to not pass any link juice, because it is a temporary redirect and will be changing.
A 301 redirect tells search engines that it is a permanent redirect and to go ahead and allow link juice to flow from one page to another, because it is a permanent redirect and will not be changing.
Make sense?
Hope this helps.
Mike
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Have issues about expired domain? How to work on it? How to redirect?
Using expired domains to redirect on your site? For this you need to first Active your expired domainsand put two to three articles After google will got it that its now active and so google start crawling after that you need to put same articles that you created on expired site on your new site with same urls Now make a wild card redirect to exact urls or posts you created on your site
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LyleTLai0 -
How Critical to Address Redirect Chains?
We have about 100 redirect chains and were not sure of the impact they are having on our SEO. One SEO expert wants to charge around $800 to clean these up for us. Any thoughts on how serious of an issue this is and how important it is to address?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roundtable10 -
Should I redirect my HTTP to my HTTPS ?
I am about to make a domain name change for my online shop. I have heard that redirecting my HTTP to my https is a good SEO Practice. I have www, non-www, as well as https-www and https-non-www declared in Search console. Both have non-www set as preferred domain. Is the redirect rule from HTTP to https really usefull ? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kepass0 -
Redirect at Registrar or Server
Hi folks, I have run into a situation were a new client has 3 TLDs (e.g. mycompany.com, mycompany.org and mycompany.biz), all with the same content. They are on a Windows IIS environment, which I am not familiar with. Until now, all of my clients have been Linux/Apache environment, so I always dealt with these issues utilizing htaccess. Currently all resolve to the same IP, but the URL remains the same in the browser address field (e.g. if you type-in mycompany.org - it remains as such). We want the .org and .biz version to 301 Redirect to the .com TLD. I am wondering what the best practice might be in this situation? Could we simply redirect at the registrar level or would implementation at the server level be best? If so, I would really appreciate an example from someone with experience implementing redirects on IIS. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCW0 -
.htaccess 301 Redirect Help! Specific Redirects and Blanket Rule
Hi there, I have the following domains: OLD DOMAIN: domain1.co.uk NEW DOMAIN: domain2.co.uk I need to create a .htaccess file that 301 redirects specific, individual pages on domain1.co.uk to domain2.co.uk I've searched for hours to try and find a solution, but I can't find anything that will do what I need. The pages on domain1.co.uk are all kinds of filenames and extensions, but they will be redirected to a Wordpress website that has a clean folder structure. Some example URL's to be redirected from the old website: http://www.domain1.co.uk/charitypage.php?charity=357 http://www.domain1.co.uk/adopt.php http://www.domain1.co.uk/register/?type=2 These will need to be redirected to the following URL types on the new domain: http://www.domain2.co.uk/charities/ http://www.domain2.co.uk/adopt/ http://www.domain2.co.uk/register/ I would also like a blanket/catch-all redirect from anything else on www.domain1.co.uk to the homepage of www.domain2.co.uk if there isn't a specific individual redirect in place. I'm literally tearing my hair out with this, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Townpages0 -
301 redirects
Hello, I want to ditch about 1000 pages of a 2000+ page site. I believe the 301 redirect thing is the way to go but my expertise is limited. Is there a way to do a blanket redirect ie if a user or search engine looks for a page thats not there it all gets redirected to the index page or do I have to do each one manually? Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
After the 301 redirect
Hi all, A quick question, after you have setup your 301 re-directs in .htaccess - is it necessary to keep your content in the original domains directory? My thinking is that requests do get as far as referencing the directory, thus it should be safe to delete all the files on the old domain? Thanx!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gazza7770 -
Redirecting Powerful Domains
What do you do if you have a client that never implemented a 301 redirect on their domain? For example here are the OSE stats for the URLs; http://url.com PA: 48 DA: 50 LRD: 65 TL: 1,084 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5 http://www.url.com PA: 51 DA: 50 LRD: 165 TL: 2,271 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5 G+1:3 My first instincts are to redirect the first one to the second one, but is it too late for that? Will that screw up all of their established stats? Any input or examples of past experiences with this would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0