Migration to https
-
Hi there,
For several reasons we consider to switch from http to https. My question about this:
- Does this change impact organic search results since the URL changes? Is a simple 301 on the highest level enough to keep all of our positions with every page?
Are there any other possible issues we might think about before deciding?
I'm talking about a webshop with over 50k indexed pages and lots of running marketing channels all setted up based on the http URL structure.
Thanks in advance.
Marcel -
Hi Kevin & TorontoV,
Thanks for your responses, and your warning signs concerning a migration to https. We recently launched a new website and we are going to 'migrate' this one first before taking any action on our main webshop. Since we had'nt received any backlinks until now on the new domain, there is no thread for this one.
@Kevin: I'll definitely follow your advice not migrating until Google gives a countdown message for our main domain.
Thanks again!
Marcel
-
Ey Kevin, we experienced the same thing. our blog traffic got decimated after moving to https and I can see some other sites that did the move and also went into instant nosedive in Semrush. How are the results now?
we are considering moving the blog back.
Marcel, you too. did you do the move and what were your results?
I have a hunch that it is not the "positive" thing all the preachers claim it is.
-
Patrick, everybody should definitely check external links. We had hundreds of linking domains to our site, but after the switch to HTTPS we lost them all. Google now shows only one single linking domain in GA. Our rankings for performing key words have dropped six to ten spots from our page one 1-4 rankings in less than a month. Indexed pages went from nearly 300 to only six in the same time. Structured data records show a drop from nearly 220 to only 17.
Since Google recommends this, we'll give this another month or two, but if this Google recommendation switch to HTTPS doesn't start showing positive results, we'll surely switch back. My recommendation for now is to only use HTTPS for pages that transmit sensitive data.
Marcel, wait until Google gives the countdown notice to HTTPS like they did with mobile before you migrate your whole site.
Background: I run a Magento 1.9.2/WordPress 4.2.3 multilingual site on LEMP with fine-tuned Google PageSpeed module, Magento FPC on dedicated Memcached instance, and Redis session caching. I know what I'm doing here, but if anyone has suggestions please do share. https://www.88k.com.tw
-
Hi Andy & Jonathan,
Thanks again. I'm going to use this information when we are ready to migrate.
Cheers,
Marcel -
Hi Marcel,
301s can be done in the htaccess, just make sure as Patrick noted above that your site does not link to http version but directly to the https. You will want to avoid redirecting people from one version to another without need.
Another thing that might be important. Webmaster tools might require you to add another property as if I'm not mistaken it considers http and https as separate entities, it will be good to set it up and monitor both versions to notice that you don't have strange errors during and/or after the migration.
-
Is the htaccess code enough and does it fix a correct 301 redirect?
You also wouldn't specify a direct 301 when forwarding http to https. You can read about this within the Apache wiki here.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy & Jonathan,
Thanks for your response. This helps me a lot :).
Actually we do a lot of 3rd party advertising. I realize that we need to change all scripts but also URL's in tools of 3rd parties. This will be an important process I need to execute carefully.
Is the htaccess code enough and does it fix a correct 301 redirect?
Tnx!
Marcel -
Hi there
Along with the great points above, I would check your internal links, as well as your sitemap, to make sure URLs now reflect the https:// structure. Don't worry about updating your external backlinks.
If you have any major structure or URL structure changes, I recommend reading this migration guide.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Hi Marcel,
A switch to https shouldn't hurt but would most likely have a positive impact on your baseline. Which is significantly more important than any loss in traffic. That said if you do the strategy properly and you redirect all the pages to the equivalent in https it should be fine (assuming you are not changing URLs and/or content).
What you might want to be wary of is the following.
1. Make sure that your CMS is able to automatically serve all your assets in https. So if you have images which are linked directly with
http://domain.com/image.jpg
you'd have to run a script to change the http into an https.2. Any third party scripts / images also need to be run over https. As you have a web shop I don't think you're doing some kind of third party advertising but check in case you have any other http content.
Any of the above two will mark your site as unsafe, which will deter visitors and possibly be a negative flag to google.
Good luck on the migration.
-
Hi Marcel,
Please have a look at this similar post here. You will find lots of useful information.
http://moz.com/community/q/moving-main-site-from-http-to-https-seeking-quick-items-to-consider
****Does this change impact organic search results since the URL changes? ****
In theory, it should be a positive move. Last year Google advised this was to be a new positive ranking signal.
Is a simple 301 on the highest level enough to keep all of our positions with every page?
I would advise you do this through htaccess. The code below should work fine for you. However, add it and then do your testing.
RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]
Are there any other possible issues we might think about before deciding?
Check how internal images are referenced and don't continue to point to http. The same goes with external resources like Google Fonts.
-Andy
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
-
Can you keep you old HTTP xml sitemape when moving to HTTPS site wide?
Hi Mozers, I want to keep the HTTP xml sitemape live on my http site to keep track of indexation during the HTTPS migration. I'm not sure if this is doable since once our tech. team forces the redirects every http page will become https. Any ideas? Thanks
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Keeping external links after moving from http to https?
Hi, Does anyone have experience moving a website to https? I am about to do so. I have 84 linking root domains and around 2k+ external links. If i move a website to https will these links be lost? And how to keep these links? Many thanks, Dusan
Technical SEO | | Chemometec0 -
Wordpress migration
Hi i wonder if anyone can help. I have migrated my site to a new host, with a temp domain name i.e., http://www.test1.com The current site is still live on another host with the domain name http://www.perfecttest.com The temp site is now ready to do live. but we want to use the domain perfecttest.com a. What is the process to move the domain to the new host and to change the test1.com to be perfecttest.com. I kneo that we need to change the domain perfecttest.com nameserver to point to the new host but i am sure there must be more that need to be done inorder to not have issues. Your help will be grateful T
Technical SEO | | Taiger0 -
Robots.txt on http vs. https
We recently changed our domain from http to https. When a user enters any URL on http, there is an global 301 redirect to the same page on https. I cannot find instructions about what to do with robots.txt. Now that https is the canonical version, should I block the http-Version with robots.txt? Strangely, I cannot find a single ressource about this...
Technical SEO | | zeepartner0 -
Migration to New Domain - 301 Redirect Questions
My client is migrating their site to a new domain. I just did a big redesign, including URL structure change, and 301s from old URLs to new URLs. Now they want a new name, so we're moving forward with a new domain name. However, we're going to keep the site on the current domain while we ease customers into the new name. During that time, I'm going to be building links to the new domain name and 301 Redirecting that new one to the current domain name. Then, once we migrate the site to the new domain name, I'm then going to redirect the current domain name to the new domain name. So, my question(s) is/are: Is the above process the best way to use 301 redirects to to build links to the new domain while we transition everything? Should I (or can I) do 3 redirects from the oldest URLs, to the current URLs then to the new URLs? General question... I can't seem to find this anywhere online, but what is the best practice for what order URLs should be in in the htaccess file? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Kenny-King0 -
Moving my website that is currently fully https (ssl) to http (non ssl).
Hey MOZ Community. I have a site that is currently full https (ssl) and what to move it to http (non-ssl). How will this move effect my SEO and what would be the best method of doing so without causing to much damage?
Technical SEO | | Bonx0 -
What is the best practice to re-index the de-indexed pages due to a bad migration
Dear Mozers, We have a Drupal site with more than 200K indexed URLs. Before 6 months a bad website migration happened without proper SEO guidelines. All the high authority URLs got rewritten by the client. Most of them are kept 404 and 302, for last 6 months. Due to this site traffic dropped more than 80%. I found today that around 40K old URLs with good PR and authority are de-indexed from Google (Most of them are 404 and 302). I need to pass all the value from old URLs to new URLs. Example URL Structure
Technical SEO | | riyas_
Before Migration (Old)
http://www.domain.com/2536987
(Page Authority: 65, HTTP Status:404, De-indexed from Google) After Migration (Current)
http://www.domain.com/new-indexed-and-live-url-version Does creating mass 301 redirects helps here without re-indexing the old URLS? Please share your thoughts. Riyas0 -
Website Migration - Very Technical Google "Index" Question
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specifc: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" connects to the "page directory". I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I ask is I am starting to work with a client who has a newly developed website. The old website domain and files were located on a GoDaddy account. The new websites files have completely changed location and are now hosted on a separate GoDaddy account, but the domain has remained in the same account. The client has setup domain forwarding/masking to access the files on the separate account. From what I've researched domain masking and SEO don't get along very well. Not only can you not link to specific pages, but if my above assumption is true wouldn't Google have a hard time crawling and storing each page in the cache?
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750