Http to https what should one look out for
-
Hi, we are moving our site from http to https and would like to know what should one look out for. What are the things that can go wrong, and what is the best way to go about it.
Regards Tai
-
Hello Murray!
-
Do you have any specific advice for sites on Shopify? It seems they made the decision to move to https in 2016 and just leave a swaythe of small site owners to sort out redirects etc after it happened
Sorry, i've little to none experience in Shopify. Can't help here. -
One 'gotcha' that I keep finding is with backlinks. When the site moves to https, backlinks that were previously set up to point to http are not recognised as backlinks on https, which appears to impact backlink profile and domain authority on the new https version. Does this make sense? Therefore, all the old backlinks need to be changed to point to https. Is this correct?
Here there are 2 points make. On one hand, if the redirection to https is done correctly with a 301 all the backlinks will point to the last page. On the other hand, IF, only IF, you have some way to change the URL in the backlink, it could be a nice idea. I'd prefer assuring a correct redirection rather than changing the pointed URL in old backlinks.
Remember that non-google backlink profilers (such as Moz, ahrefs, magestic or others) will take some time in collecting all the information in the HTTPS site. That is simple it is a whole new site/page for them. -
I typically use the Traffic Control app to redirect URLs, but they seem to use relative links. So how do we redirect http to https?
Don't know how large and/or complicated is the site. I do handle (or say to the IT team to handle) the redirection strictly with 301 redirection rules. Most of them with some sentences in the .htaccess file or with a plugin if Wordpress is used. Hope i've helped.
Please feel free to ask more if i haven't answered you or if I haven't explained well.
GR.
-
-
Thanks for this Gaston. I have a few questions/comments to add:
- Do you have any specific advice for sites on Shopify? It seems they made the decision to move to https in 2016 and just leave a swaythe of small site owners to sort out redirects etc after it happened
- One 'gotcha' that I keep finding is with backlinks. When the site moves to https, backlinks that were previously set up to point to http are not recognised as backlinks on https, which appears to impact backlink profile and domain authority on the new https version. Does this make sense? Therefore, all the old backlinks need to be changed to point to https. Is this correct?
- I typically use the Traffic Control app to redirect URLs, but they seem to use relative links. So how do we redirect http to https?
Murray
-
Wow, thanks you for the links Gaston, I will look in to these..
All the best
-
Hello Tai,
Take a look on these three articles. They might help you.
The Big List of SEO Tips and Tricks for Using HTTPS on Your Website - Moz Blog
The HTTP to HTTPs Migration Checklist in Google Docs to Share, Copy & Download - AleydaSolis
Google SEO HTTPS Migration Checklist - SERoundtableBest luck!
GR.
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
-
One page ranking for all key words, when other targeted pages not ranking
Hi everyone I am fairly new to SEO but have a basic understanding. I have a page that has a lot of content on it (including brand names and product types and relevant info) ranking for a quite a few key words. This is cool, except that I have pages dedicated to each specific key word that are not ranking. The more specific page still has a lot of relevant text on it too. eg. TYRES page - Ranks first for "Tyres". Ranks okay for many tyre key words, including "truck tyres"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDadd
TRUCK TYRES page - not ranking for "truck tyres" Further on, I then have pages not ranking all that well for more specific key words when they should. eg HONDA TRUCK TYRES - Then has a page full of product listings - no actual text. Not Ranking for "honda truck tyres". ABC HONDA TRUCK TYRE - not ranking for "abc honda truck tyre" key word
These pages don't have a lot of content on them, as essentially every single tyre is the same except for the name. But they do have text. So sometimes, these terms don't rank at all. And sometimes, the first TYRES page ranks for it. I have done the basic on page seo for all these pages (hopefully properly) including meta desc, meta titles, H1, H2, using key words in text, alt texting images where possible etc. According to MOZ they are optimised in the 90%. Link building is difficult as they are product listings, so other sites don't really link to these pages. Has anyone got ideas on why the top TYRES page might be so successful and out ranking more specific pages? Any ideas on how I can get the other pages ranking higher as they are more relevant to the search term? We are looking in to a website redesign/overhaul so any advice on how I can prevent this from happening on essentially a new site would be great too. Thanks!0 -
301 from old site to new one , Should I point to home page or sub category page ?
Hey Seo Experts, I have a small website ranking for few terms like cabinets sale, buy etc . However what i have now decided is to launch a New website with more different products like living room furniture, wardrobes etc . Out of all these categories on new website Cabinets is one of the SubCategory . Now I do not want to have 2 websites . So wanted to 301 from small cabinets website to newly created website. Some of the doubts I have at the moment is ? 1 Should I REDIRECT 301 to sub category (i,e cabinets) which is purely related to Cabinets or Do a Redirect to HOME PAGE . As I also need more Authority to home page as well , as this is relatively new website ? 2 Second question related to this. If you have multiple sub domains does it divide the total authority & TF.Or it is just Ok to have multiple Sub domains if needed ? Any advice appreciated !! Thanks .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aus00070 -
Content From One Domain Mysteriously Indexing Under a Different Domain's URL
I've pulled out all the stops and so far this seems like a very technical issue with either Googlebot or our servers. I highly encourage and appreciate responses from those with knowledge of technical SEO/website problems. First some background info: Three websites, http://www.americanmuscle.com, m.americanmuscle.com and http://www.extremeterrain.com as well as all of their sub-domains could potentially be involved. AmericanMuscle sells Mustang parts, Extremeterrain is Jeep-only. Sometime recently, Google has been crawling our americanmuscle.com pages and serving them in the SERPs under an extremeterrain sub-domain, services.extremeterrain.com. You can see for yourself below. Total # of services.extremeterrain.com pages in Google's index: http://screencast.com/t/Dvqhk1TqBtoK When you click the cached version of there supposed pages, you see an americanmuscle page (some desktop, some mobile, none of which exist on extremeterrain.com😞 http://screencast.com/t/FkUgz8NGfFe All of these links give you a 404 when clicked... Many of these pages I've checked have cached multiple times while still being a 404 link--googlebot apparently has re-crawled many times so this is not a one-time fluke. The services. sub-domain serves both AM and XT and lives on the same server as our m.americanmuscle website, but answer to different ports. services.extremeterrain is never used to feed AM data, so why Google is associating the two is a mystery to me. the mobile americanmuscle website is set to only respond on a different port than services. and only responds to AM mobile sub-domains, not googlebot or any other user-agent. Any ideas? As one could imagine this is not an ideal scenario for either website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrewv0 -
Multiple Domain Names Pointing to One URL
Hi! A company I work with has purchased several (70-something) domain names that are relevant to their business. According to their IT pro, they're currently using DNS to point those domains to our IP address, with a catch-all header on IIS for that IP address. Essentially, we have 70-something domain names that direct to the homepage. I noticed that some have been indexed by Google and are pulling in the meta of the homepage they're being directed to. Is this potentially an issue? If so, would 301 redirects fix this or are we okay with the status quo and the indexing is no big deal? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 199580 -
Merging two existing company sites into one
Hi Moz community, I have recently started a new job for a Fire & Security company in the UK to help with their non existent SEO efforts. Currently they have two separate websites. One of the websites is for their services and the other website is for their eCommerce store selling fire alarm equipment etc. The eCommerce store is higher up in the SERPs and overall has a lot more links. It also uses a better branded domain name. As I have never attempted such a project I have a few questions. The current eCommerce store is hosted and maintained by another web company which uses their bespoke CMS. What I want to do is take the service website and merge it with the ecommerce domain, however the service site runs on wordpress, which I want to continue for its flexibility. The service page wants to be the new homepage with a link on it to go to the store. I just cant get my head around the whole operation so if anyone could give me some advice to point me in the right direction that would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNichol0 -
Multiple Domain Names Point To One Site
I spoke with a potential client yesterday and for legitimate reasons they have multiple domain names, all very closely related in name to each other pointing to one site. His main site. So for example this is how things look, mainsiteva.com, mainsitedc.com, mainsitepa.com, mainsiteca.com, mainsitega.com, mainsitela.com ALL forward to mainsite.com This is being done because they used to have different sites for different geographies. Will google look at this as some form of manipulation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebbyNabler1 -
So I am creating an xml sitemap but what can I do to make it look better?
I want to make viewable the xml sitemap I created with the xml tool. However I am not sure that if I throw in html code to make it look nice if it will interfere with the site map. Should I just use the xml with google and submit it there then have a separate stiemap.html that is viewable on my site? Or will two sitemaps complicate things?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ENSO0 -
Web site Migration from one server to another does cause any impact in SEO rankings?
Dear Seomoz members, We are going to migrate our website to different server location(new data center). does this impact on our SEO rankings? If so what and all checklist i have to do....to retain my SEO rankings. Regards, kathiravan subbiah Caratlane.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kathiravan0