Duplicate pages with http and https
-
Hi all,
We changed the payment part of our site to https from http a while ago. However once on the https pages, all the footer and header links are relative URLs, so once users have reached the payment pages and then re-navigate back to other pages in our website they stay on https. The build up of this happening has led to Google indexing all our pages in https (something we did not want to happen), and now we are in the situation where our homepage listing on Google is https rather than http.
We would prefer the organic listings to be http (rather than https) and having read lots on this (included the great posts on the moz (still feels odd not refering to it as seomoz!) blog around this subject), possible solutions include redirects or a canoncial tags.
My additional questions around these options are:
1. We already have 2 redirects on some pages (long story), will another one negatively impact our rankings?
2. Is a canonical a strong enough hint to Google to stop Google indexing the https versions of these page to the extent that out http pages will appear in natural listings again?
If anyone has any other suggestions or other ideas of how to address this issue, that would be great!
Thanks
Diana
-
Hi Dan, thanks for the link!
-
Hi Diana
This may have been implied, but is it not an option to change your internal linking? It's obviously best to have all your internal links point to the exact locations you want without 301 redirects. So absolute URLs are recommended in this case pointing to final pages.
I think this article may help you: http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/5-easy-steps-to-fix-secure-page-https-duplicate-content/ - I'd follow the steps there, it's pretty solid!
-Dan
-
a) Some how, the authority passed will be lesser. As under 301 redirects - its not 100% authority which is passed to redirection page. Refer this - http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021832.html
So, Authority passes on keeps diminishing if the chain of redirects keeps on increasing to reach to that page.
b) Canonical gives google a strong indication that the original and main page is x, Google generally respect this and pass on authority to the canonical page.
Had i been on your side, what i would have actually done is :-
a) Removed all 301 redirect chain i.e A to B to home page etc and make all redirect from A to home page, B to home page and applied canonical to home page
b) Have standalone template for Home page and apply canonical tag to it say http://www.abc.com - so that if i near future, again if something changes. The template override of canonical will be considered the main page.
-
Hi Diana,
-
Check this video from Matt Cutts about several redirects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA
-
A canonical is strong enough, check this video from Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm9onOGTgeM
Good luck!
Gijsbert
-
-
Diana,
1.There are good reasons to limit your 301, especially regarding preserving link juice, but you are OK with chaining three 301s, as Matt Cutts describes here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA
2. yes, you can canonicalize those page to the http version to bring them back into the search results instead of the https version. If you can 301 everything but the payment pages, you could use that method too.
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
-
Migrating 1 page to https
Hi there, Although we do plan to migrate our entire site to https, we currently have only one page on our site which we want to migrate to https, as it has passwords and wotnot on it. Lets say it is httpS://www.example.com/login/ I am not really sure how to go about migrating just one page though.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unirmk
I am guessing that we need to: make sure that httpS://www.example.com/login/ is the only page that exists on httpS:// replace any link to the httpS://www.example.com/login/ version on the http:// version remove httpS://www.example.com/login/ from the http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml create a httpS://www.example.com/sitemap.xml on httpS:// which only references the one page (httpS://www.example.com/login/) 301 http://www.example.com/login/ to https://www.example.com/login/ submit both sitemaps to Google so they know whats up. fetch http://www.example.com/login/ so that google finds the redirect. Anything else?? :S Not too sure about this one. Many thanks for your help.0 -
Duplicate content on product pages
Hi, We are considering the impact when you want to deliver content directly on the product pages. If the products were manufactured in a specific way and its the same process across 100 other products you might want to tell your readers about it. If you were to believe the product page was the best place to deliver this information for your readers then you could potentially be creating mass content duplication. Especially as the storytelling of the product could equate to 60% of the page content this could really flag as duplication. Our options would appear to be:1. Instead add the content as a link on each product page to one centralised URL and risk taking users away from the product page (not going to help with conversion rate or designers plans)2. Put the content behind some javascript which requires interaction hopefully deterring the search engine from crawling the content (doesn't fit the designers plans & users have to interact which is a big ask)3. Assign one product as a canonical and risk the other products not appearing in search for relevant searches4. Leave the copy as crawlable and risk being marked down or de-indexed for duplicated contentIts seems the search engines do not offer a way for us to serve this great content to our readers with out being at risk of going against guidelines or the search engines not being able to crawl it.How would you suggest a site should go about this for optimal results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FashionLux2 -
Https & http urls in Google Index
Hi everyone, this question is a two parter: I am now working for a large website - over 500k monthly organic traffic. The site currently has both http and https urls in Google's index. The website has not formally converted to https. The https began with an error and has evolved unchecked over time. Both versions of the site (http & https) are registered in webmaster tools so I can clearly track and see that as time passes http indexation is decreasing and https has been increasing. The ratio is at about 3:1 in favor of https at this time. Traffic over the last year has slowly dipped, however, over the last two months there has been a steady decline in overall visits registered through analytics. No single page appears to be the culprit, this decline is occurring across most pages of the website, pages which traditionally draw heavy traffic - including the home page. Considering that Google is giving priority to https pages, could it be possible that the split is having a negative impact on traffic as rankings sway? Additionally, mobile activity for the site has steadily increased both from a traffic and a conversion standpoint. However that traffic has also dipped significantly over the last two months. Looking at Google's mobile usability error's page I see a significant number of errors (over 1k). I know Google has been testing and changing mobile ranking factors, is it safe to posit that this could be having an impact on mobile traffic? The traffic declines are 9-10% MOM. Thank you. ~Geo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Geosem0 -
Why does our business directions page rank above business profile page
Hi All, We are having an issue at the moment where our business direction page is ranking above the main business profile page. Our website is zodio.com, similar to Yelp but for South East Asia. An example of each page is below: Business Profile Page - http://www.zodio.com/business/detail/126037914/chowking Business Directions - http://www.zodio.com/business/direction/126037914 On many of our long tail searches for particular businesses, the business directions rank above the business details. Does anyone have any idea of why this would happen? I have researched Yelp and they do not have this issue. A few search examples in Google are as follows (one is in Thai): agonos dental clinic เวิลด์ชาร์มมิ่ง kawanku elektrik I have been rattling my brain and search for answers but cannot find anything. The communities help would be much appreciated. Many Thanks, Neil W
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zodiothailand0 -
Duplicate or not ?
Hello, I have an ecommerce website with products I have many categories and more products are associated with several categories (I can not do otherwise). Urls of each product are not duplicated because I have : http://www.site.com/product-name However, my breadcrumb varies depending on the way. I have for example: If I go through the A section and sub-section Aa, my breadcrumb will:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | android_lyon
Home> Section A> subheading Aa> product 1 If >> I go through the B section and sub-section Ca, my breadcrumb will:
Home> Section B> subheading Ca> product 1 My question: is that with only a breadcrumb different for my product sheets, there is a duplication? My opinion ...... not because the url of the page is unique. Thank you for your feedback. Sorry for the english, i'm french 😉 D.0 -
Home Page Got Indexed as httpS and Rankings Went Down.
Hello fellow SEO's About 3 weeks ago all of a sudden the home page on our Magento based website went down in rankings (from top 10 to page 3-4 Google) and was showing as httpS - instead of usual http. It first happened with just a few keywords and a week later any search phrase was returning the httpS result for the home page. When I view cache for the home page now it (both http and httpS versions) it gives me this http://clip2net.com/s/2OtPS We are not blocking anything in robots.txt Robots tags are set to index,follow There are hardly any external links pointing at the home pages as httpS This only affected the home page - all other pages rank where they used to and appear as http Has anybody ever had a similar problem? Thanks in advance for your thoughts and help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ddseo0 -
Are these doorway pages?
I've added category pages for counties/town on http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com but will google see these as doorway pages? If you click on categories from the menu at the top and view some of the pages you'll hopefully see what I mean? Should I continue building these or delete them? Any advice appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0