Is a rebranding that calls for a domain change a good time to sneak in a change to HTTPS?

[JFA]

Assumed: The material around good migration/redesign practices recommend, logically enough, to change as few things as possible in any given step, thus giving search engines as little trouble as possible identifying and reindexing changes. So if someone is doing significant changes to content, including uri changes, and a rebranding that requires a domain migration, they are generally better off doing one, than the other.

1)  Beyond immediate testing and checking for correct crawl health being reestablished after one change, any thoughts on rules of thumb for when to do the second change?  Do you do it as soon as you see your rankings/traffic turn the corner and confirm an upward trend after the drop, or wait till you have it all back (or at least hit a plateau)? In the absence of data or best practice I'm thinking of just letting 1/3rd to 2/3rds come back.

2. Is a change to HTTPS small enough/similar enough from the search engine's perspective that it makes more sense to do that at the same time as the rebrand driven domain change? Does this create any special risks or considerations beyond those that arise from the individual components of the change?

[IM_Learner]

HTTPS is one of the ranking factors and is in testing phase. However, in the near future, it might become a vital factor. Since you are going for a re-branding, now is the time to take the decision.

Regards

[MonicaOConnor]

I don't think that you should wait to change from HTTP to HTTPS. You are developing an entirely new website and domain name. To the engine this won't look like changes made on one site. They are going to see this as a brand new website. So basically, it isn't a matter of making changes too close together, it is creating the website you want, how you want it, right away.