Redirecting traffic to https
-
Hey!
i was wondering, should i force all traffic to https address? i know that overall a better secured website will rank better since it earns more trust from users which means less bounce rate and the list of benefits is endless..
but should i FORCE ALL traffic to a https? or maybe only force a http to https? or not at all? -
WOW.. i never even thought about it.. i made sure to make changes in google analytics to track HTTPS only. anything else i should do for a better more accurate data?
-
Yes, you should do it to avoid loss of attribution and many more advantages of HTTPS over Http, as Logan says below.
-
Hi Sharon,
Your site should be entirely one or the other - and since it sounds like you've already got an SSL, I'd go with HTTPS. If you have traffic bouncing back and forth between HTTP and HTTPS, you're resetting the session in Google Analytics when someone clicks from an HTTPS page to a HTTP page. This creates a ton of dirty data and lost attribution.
-
all above has been done already. it just a matter of if i should or not. but i guess i should
-
Hi Sharon. The basic steps are as follows:
- Purchase an SSL certificate.
- Perform a full back-up of your site in case you need to revert back.
- Configure any hard internal links within your website, from HTTP to HTTPS. This show green lock.
- Redirect any external links you control to HTTPS, such as directory listings.
- Update htaccess applications, such as Apache Web Server, LiteSpeed, NGinx Config and your internet services manager function (such as Windows Web Server), to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS.
- Implement 301 redirects on a page-by-page basis.
- Update any links you use in marketing automation tools, such as email links.
- Set up an HTTPS site in Google Search Console and Google Analytics. This is very important too.
I think you don't have any problems whith this steps.
-
Personally, I am redirecting and forcing all users to use https. Https isn't going anywhere and http has no benefits over https, so trying to support both and not doing redirects is just not worth the effort. Keep it simple and just force all users to use https.
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
-
HTTPS - implementation question
Hello, I am looking at a site on which they haven't 301'd http to https, so each URL is there whether you have http or https at the beginning. Why would a site owner not 301 to https? Is there any logical reason not to use 301? This particular website is simply using a canonical tag to point to the https version of each URL.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Setting up redirects from non wordpress
Hi, we are rebuilding our site which was built on WordPress. The old permalink structure was /%post_id%/%postname%/ The new site is a custom build (not Wordpress), however, we are using WordPress for blog posts. The URL structure is www.customewebsite/blog/ As the custom site is not WordPress, we do not know how to create a redirect to push the WordPress url /%post_id%/ to the /blog section of the new site. What we currently get is page not found. Can anyone help with the htaccess redirect code? Many thanks one and all.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger0 -
Keyword rank and redirecting
I'm creating a new amazon affiliate site. I've researched other successful sites. I've noticed that they are ranking for 1000s of keywords, but many of these long tail keywords are redirected back to a main page. I can see how this can reduce the overall total amount of content pages on the site. How are you able to rank for the keyword in the first place if the the page is redirected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lkomontt760 -
Multiple 301 Redirect Query
Hello all, I have 2 301 redirects on my some of my landing pages and wondering if this will cause me serious issues. I first did 301 directs across the whole website as we redid our url structure a couple of months ago. We also has location specific landing pages on our categories but due to thin/duplicate content , we have got rid of these by doing 301's back to the main category pages. We do have physical branches at these locations but given that we didnt get much traffic for those specific categories at those locations and the fact that we cannot write thousands of pages of unique content content , we did 301's. Is this going to cause me issues. I would have thought that 301's drop out of serps ? so is this is an issue than it would only be a temporary one ?.. Or should I have 404'd the location category pages instead. Any advice greatly appreciated. thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Converting to HTTPS
I have a 10 yr old website that we are just now adding a Symantec SSL with Extended Validation. I've seen some older posts about whether switching to URL's to HTTP effects Google ranking and I understand it may in the short run, but I wondered if anyone had any updated info about how best to go about this. Are there any step by step articles that could walk me through this? Our certificate is already installed now, but we haven't forced it out there yet. If I understand right, we will use the HTTPS on the entire site. I am not very experienced with 301's, but I believe I can set this up in Godaddy.com where our domain is reigstered so that our old HTTP forwards to HTTPS. Also, I don't think this effects anything within GWT so I don't think I have to make any changes there. Am I missing anything? FYI, the prices for this on the Symantec site are pretty high for a small business like ours. I looked around and found https://www.thesslstore.com/, an SSL reseller, had cheaper prices listed on their site. As it turns out, I called to ask a technical question and the sales person offered to email me a custom quote that was even cheaper than what was listed on their site. So if you are dealing with a limited budget, I might recommend you call The SSL Store and get a quote from them. I am not an affiliate and having nothing to do with them, I was just happy with their service and I believe it cost me about 1/2 of the price on the Symantec site. Hope that helps someone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacksghost0 -
Blocking some countries and redirecting that traffic
Hi there, I have a video site, which is on CDN and is really expensive to run. So I want to block most of the countries and only keep HQ ones. I wonder if there's a difference if I just block them and show blank page, or if I show them a page with text and let's say a link to a different site or if I just simply redirect to some other site. Do you think I can still get good ranking on google on countries that I don't block?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | melbog0 -
After the 301 redirect
Hi all, A quick question, after you have setup your 301 re-directs in .htaccess - is it necessary to keep your content in the original domains directory? My thinking is that requests do get as far as referencing the directory, thus it should be safe to delete all the files on the old domain? Thanx!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gazza7770 -
Multiple 301 redirects considered a redirection chain?
I need to redirect a ton of duplicate content, so I want to try redirect 301 /store/index.php /store redirect 301 /store/product-old /store/product-new redirect 301 /store/product-old1 /store/product-new1 redirect 301 /store/product-old2 /store/product-new2 redirect 301 /store/product-old3 /store/product-new3 redirect 301 /store/product-old4/file.html /store/product-old4/new4/file.html and then a whole bunch of old dead links to homepage. So we've had /index.php redirected to / on other parts of the site for awhile, and for the most part /store is a friendly URL, but then we have tons of dup content and work arounds that preceded my job here. I'm wondering if those redirects above would be considered a redirection chain? Since the all the redirects below the /index.php -> /store count on that one redirect. Thanks for any insight you may be able to give!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hondaspeder1