What to do when migrating to HTTPS?
-
Hi guys,
I am planning on migrating an entire http domain to https. For it to be successful and making sure that Google indexes these new https URLs and not losing any SEO juice, do I simply make sure all legacy URLs get 301 redirected to those new https URLs?
Finally what is a server side 301 redirect? What are all the kinds of 301 redirects if there are multiple kinds?
Thanks!
-
Taysir,
I imagine that you received this message (added message so if someone is searching able to find this thread):
Starting October 2017, Chrome (version 62) will show a “NOT SECURE” warning when users enter text in a form on an HTTP page, and for all HTTP pages in Incognito mode.
The following URLs on your site include text input fields (such as < input type="text" > or < input type="email" >) that will trigger the new Chrome warning. Review these examples to see where these warnings will appear, so that you can take action to help protect users’ data. This list is not exhaustive.
Gaston links and suggestion are great. This is a pain, but it's for the best. Good luck on the migration.
-
Hello Tay,
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 - SERoundtableAnd, regarding the serverside redirect: (Credits to wikipedia: server-side redirect)
A server side redirect is a method of URL redirection using an HTTP status code (e.g., 301 Moved Permanently, 303 See Other and 307 Temporary Redirect) issued by a web server in response to a request for a particular URL. The result is to redirect user's web browser to another web page with a different URL.
One method of implementing server-side redirects is the .htaccess file supported by most Apache web servers.
Hope it helps
Best 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
-
301 redirect hops from non-https and www
It's best practice to minimize the amount of 301 redirect hops. Ideally only one redirect hop. It's also best practice to 301 redirect (or at least canonical) your non-https and/or your non-www (or www) to the canonical protocol/subdomain. The simplest (and possibly the most common) way to implement canonical protocol/subdomain redirects is through a load balancer or before your app processes the request. Both of which will just blanket 301 to the canonical domain/protocol regardless if the path exists or not In which case, you could have: Two hops. i.e. hop #1 http://example.com/foo to https://example.com/foo, hop #2 https://example.com/foo to https://example.com/bar 301 to a 404. Let's say https://example.com/dog never existed, but somebody for whatever reason linked to it (maybe a typo). If I request https://www.example.com/dog, the load balancer would 301 to a 404 page. Either scenario above should be fairly rare. However, you can't control how people link to you. Should I care about either above scenario? I could have my app attempt to check if the page exists before forwarding, but that code could be complicated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dsbud0 -
From http to https
Hi Guys, I have mixed http and https content on my ecommerce store. My server people is telling me force all to https as it is better for ssl certificate. All versions of the site are declared on search console. Can forcing https and not having more mixed content impact my site badly ? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kepass0 -
HTTP to HTTPS Question
Hello, I have a question regarding SSL Certificates I think I know the answer to but wanted to make sure. One of our clients’ site uses http for their pages but when they started creating Registration forms they created a full duplicate site on https (so now there are two versions of all of the pages). I know due to duplicate concerns this could be an issue and needs to resolved (as well as the pros and cons of both) but if they are already set up with https does it make sense to just move everything there or in some instances would it pay to keep some pages http (using canonical tags, redirects, htccess…etc)? – Most of the information I found related to making the decision prior to having both or describing the process but I couldn’t find anything that specifically related to if both are already present. I thought that the best approach because everything’s already set up is to just move everything over to the more secure one but was curious if anybody had any insight? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ben-R0 -
Can i migrate to a new domain without losing rankings?
we are looking at migrating to a new domain name, but worried about current rankings.. can we do this and keep our rankings if we 301? if we can expect a dip, how long will that generally take? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
International Site Migration
Hi guys, In the process of launching internationally ecommerce site (Magento CMS) for two different countries (Australia and US). Then later on expand to other countries like the UK, Canada, etc. The plan is for each country will have its own sub-folder e.g. www.domain.com/us, www.domain.com.au/au, www.domain.com.au/uk A lot of the content between these English based countries are the same. E.g. same product descriptions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright
So in order to prevent duplication, from what I’ve read we will need to add Hreflang tags to every single page on the site? So for: Australian pages: United States pages: Just wanted to make sure this is the correct strategy (will hreflang prevent duplicate content issues?) and anything else i should be considering? Thankyou, Chris0 -
Http to https question (SSL)
Hi, I recently made two big changes to a site - www.aerlawgroup.com (not smart, I know). First, I changed from Weebly to Wordpress (WP Engine hosting with CDN + Cloudflare - is that overkill?) and I added SSL (http to https). From a technical perspective, I think I made a better site: (1) blazing fast, (2) mobile responsive, (3) more secure. I'm seeing the rankings fluctuate quite a bit, especially on the important keywords. I added SSL to my other sites, and saw no rankings change (they actually all went up slightly). I'm wondering if anyone has had experience going to SSL and can give me feedback on something I might have overlooked. Again, it's strange that all the other sites responded positively, but the one listed above is going in the opposite direction. Maybe there are other problems, and the SSL is just a coincidence. Any feedback would be appreciated. I followed this guide: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl - which helped tremendously (FYI).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Should I redirect images when I migrate my site
We are about to migrate a large website with a fair few images (20,000). At the moment we include images in the sitemap.xml so they are indexed by Google and drive traffic (not sure how I can find out how much though). Current image slugs are like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArchMedia
http://website.com/assets/images/a2/65680/thumbnails/638x425-crop.jpg?1402460458 Like on the old site, images on the new website will also have unreadable cache slugs, like:
http://website.com/site_media/media/cache/ce/7a/ce7aeffb1e5bdfc8d4288885c52de8e3.jpg All content pages on the new site will have the same slugs as on the old site. Should I go through the trouble of redirecting all these images?0 -
When migrating website platforms but keeping the domain name how best do we add the new site to google webmaster tools? Best redirect practices?
We are moving from BigCommerce to Shopify but maintaining our domain name and need to make sure that all links redirect to their corresponding links. We understand the nature of 301s and are fine with that, but when it comes to adding the site to google webmaster tools, not losing link juice and the change of address tool we are kind of lost. Any advice would be most welcome. Thank you so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WNL0