Confused About Problems Regarding Adding an SSL
-
After reading Cyrus' article: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl, I am now completely confused about what adding SSL could do to our site. Bluehost, our hosting provider, says if we get their SSL, they just add it to our site and it's up in a few hours: no problem whatsoever. If that's true, that'd be fantastic...however, if that's true, there wouldn't need to be like 10 things you're supposed to do (according to Cyrus' article) to ensure your rankings after the switch.
Can someone clarify this for me?
Thanks,
Ruben
-
Thanks Cyrus!
-
Hi Ruben,
Thanks for writing in. I'm unfamiliar with Bluehost's HTTPs service, but I assume they are taking care of top level issues. You'll still want to go through the checklist to make sure everything is valid and you follow SEO best practices.In short:
- Check your links
- Check your assets (images, CSS, javascript)
- Canonical tags
- Register with Google Webmaster Tools
- Update your sitemaps and robots.txt files
This covers the important stuff. As you noted, a few more tips here: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
-
Maybe was obvious to everybody but 301 redirect for every single page is also a fundamental step, otherwise you are going to have broken external links, not to mention WMT which I don't think would be satisfied by just the canonical update.
Sitemap must be updated as well.
We recently switched a website from HTTP to HTTPS and in term of performance there was no difference after the update, at least according to WMT and analytics.
I was kind of scared before to update but at the end everything was smoother than expected, WMT took around 10 days to completely re-index the https version.
But of course we kept finding some non https link embedded here and there in some pages for days and we had to manually edit some content to avoid ssl warning from browsers.
-
I have no idea what CMS you are using but check the server side code generating the link, not just the code sent to the browser.
We recently switched to SSL, and our CMS was already building internal links on pages using the protocol of the http request.
-
Thanks Highland!
-
Great, thanks!
-
Ruben, I had a look at your website and your URLs all have HTTP in them so these would need to be updated all across your site before you make the switch to HTTPS. Because you are using WordPress this should be as simple as updating the site URL to https://www.kempruge.com.
The tip by @Highland about using Firebug is excellent. This will allow you to quickly debug if there are non-HTTPS links remaining - in the WordPress theme or template, for example.
Have a look at the WordPress HTTPS documentation also.
-
Hi Alex,
I'm not really sure if we use a protocol-less linking pattern or not. I don't see http:// in any of our urls, so if that's the criteria I'm guessing we don't? I included a screenshot of one of our URLs. Would you mind telling me if it's clear from the image whether we do or do not?
Thanks for your response. I really appreciate your time and input.
Best,
Ruben
-
One major tip I always point people to is that using protocol-less links for anything external is a great way to make sure your site always supports SSL without issue.
Firebug is a great way to make sure everything is loading HTTPS. Turn it on, switch to the Net tab, and load your page. It will show you every request sent as part of your page. It makes spotting non-SSL requests easy.
You can turn HSTS on yourself if your provider uses Apache and supports htaccess. (sorry I can't link an article, Moz won't let me). If they don't, you will have to have your host enable it on their end.
-
Implementing SSL should be straightforward for the most part
You need to ensure that links around your site (including canonical links) are updated to use HTTPS (so https://example.com/link as opposed to http://example.com/link where example.com is your domain name). If you are already using a protocol-less linking pattern (//example.com/link) you don't need to update the links.
You can also configure your web server to only serve HTTPS. If your web server is Apache you can do this with the SSLRequireSSL directive.
<code><location>SSLRequireSSL</location></code>
HTTPS also causes a significant slow-down as the browser and the server negotiate a secure connection. If your site has already been optimized for speed it should not cause a problem but if in doubt revisit that process and ensure that you are getting the best possible speed for your visitors.
The article by Cyrus has a great checklist to double check everything.
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
-
Confusing mixture of cross-domain and multi-language - HREFLANG
Hi Mozzers, I am working for an international client, in a highly regulated industry. As such, their international set-up is slightly confusing. They currently operate websites across multiple countries (with ccTLDs), as well as a global .com. E.g: domain.co.uk domain.it domain. es domain.com etc. Additionally, they offer multiple languages across each of these domains, which often cross over. E.g: domain.co.uk/en/, domain.co.uk/fr/, domain.co.uk/de/ domain.es/en/, domain.es/es/ domain.it/en/, domain.it/it/ domain.com/en/, domain.com/es/, domain.com/fr/, domain.com/de/ They are not currently using HREFLANG of any sort. Using EN as an example, this results in 6 URLs showing the same content, albeit for different languages/locations: Main URL domain.co.uk/en/category-A/ hreflang="en-GB" Multi-lingual variants from same domain... domain.co.uk/fr/category-A/ hreflang="fr-GB" domain.co.uk/de/category-A/ hreflang="de-GB" Cross domain variants from other ccTLDs... domain.es/en/category-A/ hreflang="en-ES" domain.it/en/category-A/ hreflang="en-IT" domain.com/en/category-A/ hreflang="en" Can anyone cleverer than myself confirm that the above would be the most effective set-up for this scenario, with each URL referencing each other in this way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pan12340 -
Installing SSL to website and site ranking
I am installing SSL to my website. Will it hurt my ranking in Google as the url will change and backlinks of the website are without ssl url.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Esnipper0 -
Problem with Duplicate Page Wordpress
Hi all My name is Riccardo and i work for a web agency. I'am working on a new client website and i have found this kind of errors through MOZ (Image 1). I checked all the URLs; they work and they remind to the Homepage.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | advmedialab
The website is made with Wordpress. I have already tried to solve this problem with 301 redirect but, as i supposed, it didn't work.
I think that is a problem related to Wordpress URL in Wordpress settings (Image 2). However i would like to know if anybody had the same problem or if there are other possibile causes. Thank you in advance! zDVL0pj aB7MeGe0 -
Repeatedly target a rolling list of kws..or is that cannibalization? Biggest Confusion in SEO Ive found
Also suggesting a WBF topic. Ive read and researched with no luck here... would love a Moz staff reply too! Is it better to blog repeatedly on the same topic (writing multiple blogs around the topic of "content marketing" for example in hopes Google sees you as an authority on the topic over time) OR is this keyword cannibalization? Is it better to have one powerful and comprehensive page on a topic if it makes sense. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls
Hey there. For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
For example: http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.com This is happening to all pages, posts and even category type 1. Site is in Wordpress
2. Using Yoast SEO plugin Any suggestions? Thanks!0 -
Problems with ecommerce filters causing duplicate content.
We have an ecommerce website with 700 pages. Due to the implementation of filters, we are seeing upto 11,000 pages being indexed where the filter tag is apphended to the URL. This is causing duplicate content issues across the site. We tried adding "nofollow" to all the filters, we have also tried adding canonical tags, which it seems are being ignored. So how can we fix this? We are now toying with 2 other ideas to fix this issue; adding "no index" to all filtered pages making the filters uncrawble using javascript Has anyone else encountered this issue? If so what did you do to combat this and was it successful?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Google Semantic Search: Now I'm really confused
I'm struggling to understand why I rank for some terms and not for other closely related ones. For example: property in Toytown but NOT properties in toytown property for sale in Toytown but NOT property for sale Toytown NOR properties for sale Toytown. My gut instinct is that I don't have enough of the second phrasing as inbound link anchor text -- but didn't Penguin/Panda make all that obsolete?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeepster0 -
Few questions regarding wordpress and indexing/no follow.
I'm using Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin on my wordpress site which allows you to quickly set up nofollow / no index on specific taxonomies. I wanted to see what you guys thought was the best practice in setting up my various taxonomies. Would you noidex, but follow all of these, none of these, or just some of these: Categories, tags, media, author archives ( (My blog is mainly a single author blog (me) but my wife does sometimes write posts. So I didn't know how this effected everything. Also I could simply make the blog a single user blog and just have her posts be guest posts, but I'd rather leave her as a user.), and date archives. The example I read on line only no-index's the date archives. Just curious what you guys thought. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoahsDad0