Website losing rank positions after https
-
Hi there.. we were having a good increase in rankings since using Moz and then we purchased an ssl certificate so our website would run under https... to make sure our website is only accessed through https, we have used a method on .htaccess (appache) to make sure the website is only reached through https, using:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R,QSA]after doing this, from our last crawl perspective, we lost several positions that we were increasing.. what have we done wrong ? we have to fix this asap, please help us...
-
I got it... managed to change as you've suggested, let's see next Moz crawl how we will behave... thank you so very much and the others for the help, a nice weekend for all!
-
GWT = Google Webmaster Tools. In there you can tell Google your preferred website and now you can add the https version as the preferred site. I'm not real clear on the format so hopefully someone will jump in here and MOZ will have more info soon. It is another way to avoid Google seeing the http and https as duplicate content and penalizing you.
Sorry I can't answer more directly!
-
Chris, thanks a lot! the above link helped me a lot !! by the way, what did you mean by "...have you set up GWT..." ? Didn't understand this part.. thanks a lot!
-
Take a look at this thread a few days ago:
http://moz.com/community/q/seo-best-practice-http-to-https
I think Moosa hit it when he mentioned the need for 301s. Also have you set up GWT for your now preferred https site?
-
Ok here is my understanding regarding this and I could be wrong on this so I would love if anyone in the community correct me if I am wrong.
Google usually consider http URLs and https URLs as different URLs so if your website will be working on both http and https the moz tool will give you duplicate content indications.
The reason I believe your rankings are going down is because you have rewrite the URLs but the link value is still on http versions I believe you need to use 301 redirects so that your link values can also shift to https versions.
Again I am not sure about this but this is something that I feel, it should work like this!
Hope this helps!
-
Not entirely sure why you would be loosing rankings as https is just a protocol. I have done the same thing after reading the post about google giving slight increase in rankings for adding https. I have not lost any ranks though. I'd keep working as normal and check back in a couple of weeks.
Good luck.
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
-
Redesigning a website and losing the .html from pages! .301 needed?
I have redesigned a customers website, i kept all pages with the same name however they have gone from domain.com/pagename.html to domain.com/pagename (lost the .html) will these pages automatically be picked up as the same or do i need to do a 301 direct. If i need to do a redirect is there a faster way? As there's about 250 pages! Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdvimateLtd0 -
New Website's Not Ranking for Branded Term
Hey Friends, I can't seem to figure out why https://feello.com/ isn't ranking on Google for it's branded term (Feello). It's ranking in 1st position on Bing and Yahoo but on page 2 (16th or so) on Google. Going through the list and can't come up with an answer. Metadata: Yes Indexed to Webmaster: Yes, Fetched pages: Yes Google cache on May 27, 2017: Check Using canonical and redirecting for non-www and HTTPS version: Yes & Yes Feello in domain name: Yes Set up social profiles and GMB: Yes Driving traffic: Yes, some email and ads Checked robots.txt: Yes, not created yet Created and Submitted Sitemap: Yes - https version Checked for blocked resources: None. The list goes on...Any ideas would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GarrettDenham0 -
Why some websites can rank the keywords they don't have in the page?
Hello guys, Yesterday, I used SEMrush to search for the keyword "branding agency" to see the SERP. The Liquidagency ranks 5th on the first page. So I went to their homepage but saw no exact keywords "branding agency", even in the page source. Also, I didn't see "branding agency" as a top anchor text in the external links to the page (from the report of SEMrush). I am an SEO newbie, can someone explain this to me, please? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee0 -
How important is the optional <priority>tag in an XML sitemap of your website? Can this help search engines understand the hierarchy of a website?</priority>
Can the <priority>tag be used to tell search engines the hierarchy of a site or should it be used to let search engines know which priority to we want pages to be indexed in?</priority>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mycity4kids0 -
Interlinking multiple websites
Most websites (for example) Zalando intern link there other CC tld domains to the root. For example: On http://www.zalando.nl/damesschoenen-pumps/ the links in the footer go to the other CC tld's: http://www.zalando.es , zalando.co.uk etc. Does anyone have experience with the fact if you would interlink to the relevant page on the other CC tld;s.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ
For example: http://www.zalando.nl/damesschoenen-pumps/ links to http://www.zalando.co.uk/womens-shoes-heels/ in stead of linking to the homepage ?
In theory this would give more relevance intern linking. Looking forward to hear if anyone tried or experienced this and what the results where?0 -
Website Displayed by Google as Https: when all Secure Content is Blocked - Causing Index Prob.
Basically, I have no inbound likes going to https://www.mysite.com , but google is indexing the Homepage only as https://www.mysite.com In June, I was re included to the google index after receiving a penalty... Most of my site links recovered fairly well. However my homepage did not recover for its top keywords. Today I notice that when I search for my site, its displayed as https:// Robots.txt blocks all content going to any secure page. Leaving me sort of clueless what I need to do to fix this. Not only does it pose a problem for some users who click, but I think its causing the homepage to have an indexing problem. Any ideas? Redirect the google bot only? Will a canonical tag fix this? Thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
API to power all websites
I spoke to one of my lead web developers and we are planning on powering all of our desktop, mobile and tablet sites with our new API. Everything will be populated through javascript and is cloud-based rather than through actual HTML. How do we incorporate all of our SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | recbrands0 -
Rankings dropped - Why?
At the end of November a client site dropped significantly in the rankings. The drop effected almost all the keyphrases we monitor. Historically the homepage has always ranked higher than the sub-pages - however now it seems Google is no longer ranking the home page, and instead ranking the sub-pages, just far far lower down. Any ideas what could cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cottamg0