Moving Main Site from HTTP to HTTPS: Seeking Quick Items to Consider
-
Hey Mozzers!
We're going to be moving are main company site from http://whiteboardcreations.com > https://whiteboardcreations.com and wanted to get some of your quick tips for items we need to consider. We are working on a new web redesign now and keeping in WordPress. A couple facts for your info... We have read a lot about it, but wanted to get some quick tips we need to take into account from your points of view.1. March 2010 domain age
2. Ranks very well locally for our targeted keywords around web design, WordPress, SEO, social media, blog writing, web maintenance
3. Not many of our competitors, especially the SEO competitors, have moved to HTTPS
4. Site is hosted at WP Engine
5. Going to be purchasing a Domain Validated SSL... Is there any advantage to an Extended Validated SSL in Google's eye/mind?
6. Should we expect rank decrease or increase?
7. Anything else we should expect or prepare for from your experiences?Thank you!
Patrick -
Hey! Yes, we made the switch to SSL and everything went smooth. We set up our 301 redirects and submitted to Google right away. No real loss in traffic and our rankings for the 100+ keywords we monitor either remained the same or increased a little over the first couple months. So, that was pleasant to see and experience.
The real test is when we finish and launch the new design, however, we will be working to keep our URL structure the same, but will be adding many more pages to the site focused on more educational/SEO friendly content. Not really caring if searchers stumble across it in their browsing, but moreso that Google indexes the content for our targeted keywords those pages are designed to capture and rank for (inner landing pages).
As long as we're keeping our authoritative pages un-drastically changed, the URL remains the same and the content is about the same, we shouldn't experience much loss in rankings of traffic. If anything, we should see new keywords ranking very well in a short amount of time and our traffic increasing. We'll see come end of 2015, into 2016!
-
Hi Patrick,
did you do the move to https and what were your results?
We did it and lost 50% traffic. I am wondering if it is just us or many others. I have another few cases were the same thing happened and just trying to get more real world feedback. what happened with you guys?
-
I have been postponing the switch on my Wordpress site anticipating grief!
Did you use the WP Enging "sandbox" to build the new site? I'm probably going to use my offline test box (WAMP) since my host doesn't provide a test area.
Best,
-
Andy, great tip on the WP image URLs!! Honestly, that never crossed our mind and will be sifting through to find them and update them all.
I really appreciate the feedback on the rank increase. I would enjoy seeing that for some of the other keywords we see lingering on the top of Page 2... hopefully see those get a little push to Page 1.
We installed the DV SSL yesterday and working through the redirects. We should be finished tomorrow and have all testing completed and verified by end of the week.
All in all, a great new experience for an older domain with some good authority built up. Thanks again!
- Patrick
-
Thanks, Chris! Yes, we are working through the force redirects as the SSL just went through yesterday. A great learning experience and hopefully will have it all resolved soon. Working closely with WP Engine tech guys has been a breath of fresh air too. - Patrick
-
Thanks for your input, Patrick! I actually referenced your post for another client, so I'm glad it is applicable to a HTTPS update as well.
-
Hey Patrick not sure if this is an issue or not but I notice if I enter http and your urls, your site serves the http version. Clicking on any menu item goes to https, but I would think the http should be re-directed to https?
-
Hi Patrick
I answered a similar question of things to consider when moving a site. You can read that here.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Hi Patrick,
First of all, visit Google and follow their guide. This will provide you with everything you need to know and there are even more very good considerations here.
Check everything and then check it again. Make sure with Wordpress that images reference https, not http, as this is a common issue. I have also seen the same with how Google Fonts are referenced.
Going to be purchasing a Domain Validated SSL... Is there any advantage to an Extended Validated SSL in Google's eye/mind?
No, nothing in doing this.
Should we expect rank decrease or increase?
You should expect an increase, but there is absolutely no guarantee of this, and if so, by how much.
When the move is complete, check your pages that show (if any) a warning triangle as this denotes a page issue. You find this in the developer console in Chrome (Inspect Element --> Console). This will tell you where issues lie.
Finally, make sure you set your site to https://www.site.com from http://www.site.com
-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
-
Domain has been redirected our site; but many incoming links from sub domain. Will this hurts?
Hi all, This is the scenario: Our website is newwebsite.com. Our old website is oldwebsite.com which has been redirected to newwebsite.com (years back). But one of the old website's sub domain has a lot of back links to our current website like: seo.oldwebsite.com to newwebsite.com. Will this scenario hurts with any wrong linking? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Wordpress Blog Integrated into eCommerce site - Should we use one xml sitemap or two?
Hi guys, I wonder whether you can help me with a couple of SEO queries: So we have an ecommerce website (www.exampleecommercesite.com) with its own xml sitemap, which we have submitted to the Google Webmasters Console. However, recently we decided to add a blog to our site for SEO purposes. The blog is on a subdomain of the site such as: blog.exampleecommercesite.com (We wanted to have it as www.exampleecommercesite.com/blog but our server made it very difficult and it wasn't technically possible at the time) 1. Should we add the blog.exampleecommercesite.com as a separate property in the Google Webmaster tools? 2. Should we create a separate xml sitemap for the blog content or are there more benefits in terms of SEO if we have one sitemap for the blog and the ecommerce site? If appreciate your opinions on the topic! Thank you and have a good start of the week!
Algorithm Updates | | Firebox0 -
Ecommerce - SEO Quick Wins?
Hi I wanted to find out if anyone had any quick wins for an ecommerce site & SEO. I am the only SEO and we have a small online team and an ecommerce site with thousands of product pages. It's impossible to optimise everything, and we have taken the top 100 products and optimised them - starting from scratch with keyword research. I'm now struggling to prioritize what we need next - I know we need better internal linking, content, social and lots more, but this isn't something I can get through alone. I need a starting point and perhaps something with a quick win initially? Thanks 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Do we take a SEO hit for having multiple URLs on an infinite scroll page vs a site with many pages/URLs. If we do take a hit, quantify the hit we would suffer.
We are redesigning a preschool website which has over 100 pages. We are looking at 2 options and want to make sure we meet the best user experience and SEO. Option 1 is to condense the site into perhaps 10 pages and window shade the content. For instance, on the curriculum page there would be an overview and each age group program would open via window shade. Option 2 is to have an overview and then each age program links to its own page. Do we lose out on SEO if there are not unique URLS? Or is there a way using metatags or other programming to have the same effect?
Algorithm Updates | | jgodwin0 -
Penguin 3.0 Site Dropped after Update
Hi We was hit by the Penguin update a long time ago and we lost a lot of traffic/positions because of this. For a long time we worked really hard to identify all off our links that may have caused us to recieve this penalty. After Months of work we submitted the disavow file and reconsideration request and in June 2014 we recieved confirmation from google in webmaster tools that the manual spam action had been revoked. over time we then started to recieve more traffic and better positions in the serps, however since penguin 3.0 we have dropped again for a range of keywords. many going from page 1 to 2 or page 2 to 3/4 Any ideas what we should do here , any help will be really appriciated as I'm totally confused We havent done any link building at all since the penalty / recovery
Algorithm Updates | | AMG1000 -
Https slower site Versus Non https faster site??
Hey all, I know that everyone is going on about https as a ranking signal (as far as I read it is not a very important ranking signal, but a low ranking signal) but Site speed is a ranking signal https is now a ranking signal as well https makes sites slower So in view of the above, what's better? An https site that is slower A non https site that is faster Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | bjs20100 -
Our Developer Site randomly drops 10+ places in Google searches for our Company Name. Why?
Hey everyone, At Betable, we have a player-facing site and a developer-facing site. We also have a developer-facing blog. We have this issue where our developer-facing site will randomly drop 10+ places in Google's Search results for the keyword "betable". This problem can be reproduced by others and in incognito mode, so it's not just one person's results. Furthermore, the developer-facing blog and our social media accounts all suddenly rank higher than the developer site. Even stranger, this problem randomly fixes itself after a few days. This has happened twice so far, and on each occasion there were no changes to the website that would have prompted a drop in rank. After the first drop, we did our best to neutralize any SEOMoz "red alerts" but to no avail, the drop happened again last week. Can someone help us understand what's going on? Are there ways to avoid this? Thanks, Tyler
Algorithm Updates | | Betable0 -
Dedicated IP Address on my forum site www.astigtayo.com?
Hello and Good Day, Does having a dedicated IP Address to my site affect my search engine ranking? https://www.astigtayo.com
Algorithm Updates | | ificallyoumine0