Will Switching to HTTPS Lower My Domain Authority?
-
Hi All,
I had a quick look online but couldn't find any information regarding this so thought I would ask. Please point me in the right direction if it has been asked before of if there are any useful articles online.
We are currently in the process of switching one of our clients old sites from http to https, we have done all of the steps except from making the https version the main domain, or 301ing the http version to the https version.
If we were to do this would we expect to see a drop in domain authority? a drop in keyword rankings? or is there anything else we should be worried about?
Thanks Mozzers
-
There's a couple of questions to answer here. The first is the difference between asking "Will our Domain Authority Decrease?" versus "Will our Traffic & Rankings Decrease?". The second question is more important so I'll cover that first.
The official answer from Google is that, no, your traffic and rankings will not decrease. In practice, however, a number of people have seen 5-15% traffic drops for weeks or months after the transfer - even when completed correctly. The general assumption is that this is due to creating redirects for http -> https, which traditionally reduces the value of your inbound link profile.
With that said, it's small enough that you can recover quickly with some link reclamation - basically you should update the links you have control over and also email friendly webmasters and say "we changed our site to be HTTPS secure and were wondering if you could update your link on domain.com/xyzpage/".
Deacyde's notes on updating internal links are also correct. You should also reference popular "ssl migration" guides like this one from Yoast: https://yoast.com/dev-blog/move-website-https-ssl/
In regards to your exact question - "Will our Domain Authority Decrease?" - this could reference the literal Domain Authority that is measured by Moz, or you could be referencing the broader concept of domain authority in terms of how Google views your website. I don't have an exact answer for how Moz handles normal 301 redirects and if they treat https redirects different. I would assume that Domain Authority might drop slightly, but that's a guess and not an official answer. As noted above Google says that your website will be treated the same, and I think that is the case within a few months, but there can be initial traffic drops, and worse if you handle the migration incorrectly.
-
I'm going through this right now, am a month and two weeks into it so far.
I went through the whole site to confirm no http urls were hardcoded that all urls used either relative or //site.com, images and resources too if you host your own.
After that I made a new google webmaster site for the https version I was about to redirect to. So I could monitor the amount of pages indexed compared to the http site,
As long as you have the redirect in order, there shouldn't be a reason to lose Domain Authority, since moving to a https sitewide is promoted in google seo, via the indexing more of https sites as long as you followed their guidelines: https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/12/indexing-https-pages-by-default.html
As far as I've read and understood, you're more likely to lose DA from losing a high DA backlink, being penalized, loosing a good chunk of indexed pages from google, and so on. Converting to an https sitewide is improving your site and the user experience via adding that extra layer of security, which I haven't heard of penalizing a site for that yet.
Keyword rankings I feel have better chance of improving over time, long term that is, since users will tend to want to click on https sites when choice is with an unsecured site, especially when using credit cards, so that would improve your ranking signals overall.
Just make sure your https site is gaining indexed pages and the http site will drop in total and you're doing great! Keep up any 404 fixes prompt to keep index rate constant.
Hope this helps!
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
-
What is the best practice for redirecting a lower authority TLD to a high authority TLD?
Hi there moz community! My organization is blessed with an extremely high authority TLD (91). Powers-that-be want to start using a lesser authority (though still a respectable 62) TLD in marketing materials because they think it's more memorable/less confusing for users. We currently have a 302 redirect in place from score-62 to score-91, and our situation relative to the engines is strong. However, if they ramp-up a branding campaign using the 62-score TLD, should we change the 302 to a 301? I don't want to risk infecting that 91 score with any juice relative to the score-62 TLD. There isn't a lot written for the best practice in redirecting a lower-authority TLD to a high authority TLD - almost all the literature is about preserving your score/juice when redirecting an old TLD to a new TLD. Thanks for anyone/everyone's help! Brian Alpert; Smithsonian Institution
Technical SEO | | Smithsonian1 -
Acquired domains for SEO
hi there, For one of our insurance websites we acquired a domain, this domain is going to be redirected to our domain. After some research we discovered the domain we've bought also includes other domains which 301 redirect to specific 'insurance products'. These domains are also included in the deal. But what is the best technical solution for redirecting these specific redirected product domains? They already redirect to the product pages of the domain we've bought, so after redirect this domain, the sub (product) redirected domains will also link to us. It would be like this: A) www.sub-carinsurancesite.nl (301) -> www.domain-we-bought.com/car-insurance -> www.ourdomain.com/car-insurance
Technical SEO | | remkoallertz
B) www.sub-carinsurancesite.nl (301) -> www.ourdomain.com/car-insurance & www.domain-we-bought.com/car-insurance -> www.ourdomain.com/car-insurance etc0 -
HTTPS for form pages?
I am creating a small business website for a friend in Recruitment. It’s very small and mainly just a shop window for the business. There’s no login area for the website, but there are two areas were users can enter information: General contact us form (giving email and phone number) Applying for a job (attaching a resume) The forms are using Ninja Forms – which I believe are secure in passing information. But am I missing anything? Do I need to make these pages https at all? I’m quite new to building sites from scratch. Thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | joberts0 -
Preferred domain
In GWT it gives an option to do the following but which is best? and why? If you specify your preferred domain as http://www.example.com and we find a link to http://example.com, we'll consider both links the same. | <label for="no_assoc">Don't set a preferred domain</label> |
Technical SEO | | jwdl
| <label for="use_www">Display URLs as ** www.example.com**</label> |
| <label for="use_nowww">Display URLs as example**.com **</label> |0 -
Page Rank 7 - Domain Authority of 6 (How does this happen)
Iv never seen this before, but what do you guys make of this? http://www.becitywise.com/ According to Google, its a PR7 website. SEOMOZ are reporting a DA of 6 (1 link to the domain) http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php Any thoughts as to how or why Google have assigned such a high PR? According to Whois, the domain was registered on 16/07/12 so its brand new... The funny thing is, many people purchase links based on the Page Rank, so this guy must be making a fortune. (the Friends links I assume are all paid links) Greg
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets0 -
Mobile Theme Switching
Hi - wondering what one should do with a mobile theme in relationship to Google. We are using wordpress and then a plugin that detects whether or not the user is on a mobile device. Should you no-follow the mobile theme since it is effectively the same content as the main site? Or just leave it be and not worry about it. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | leeg0 -
How much authority does a 301 pass to a different domain?
Hi, A client of mine is selling his business to a brand new company. The brand new company will be using a brand new domain (no way to avoid that unfortunately) and the current domain (which has tons of authority, links, shares, tweets, etc.) will not be used. Added to that, the new company will be taking over all the current content with just a few minor changes. (I know, I wish we could use the old domain but we can't.) Obviously, I am redirecting all pages on the current domain to the new domain via 301 redirects on a page by page basis. So, current.com/product-page-x.html redirects to new.com/product-page-x.html. My client and the new company both are asking me how much link juice (and other factors) are passed along to the new domain from the old domain. All I can find is "not the full value" or variants thereof.My experience with 301 redirects in the past has been within a single domain and I've seen some of those pages have decent authority and decent rankings as a result of the 301 (no other optimization work was done or links were added). Are there any studies out there that I'm missing that show how much authority/juice gets passed and/or lost via a 301 redirect? Anybody with a similar issue see any trends in page/domain authority and/or rankings? Thanks for any insights and opinions you have.
Technical SEO | | Matthew_Edgar0 -
Moving Blog to Custom Domain
Hi All - I am currently attempting to move a blog (companyname.blogspot.com) that has a 2/10 GPR to a custom domain name so that I can get my targeted keywords in the domain name. The new domain will just be www.targetedkeyword.com. There are easy instructions for doing this with the A record and CNAME changes in the Blogger help, but I am worried about losing rank and links if I do this. Can you guys help me understand what the ramifications would be, and how I can accomplish this without losing the 2/10 mojo? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Bandicoot0