Are there any concerns moving a site to https?
-
I am currently having analytics issues where the non-secured (http) front end of my site is not properly communicating to the backend (https) of my site.
When a user jumps between the the secured and non-secured, it will display as a bounce in GA and I get duplicate visits. GA has a work around for this but it is messy and not working.
So my question is, has anyone had good/bad experiences moving a non-secured site over to the secured side?
Thanks!
-
Thanks. It was kind of a non-answer by Mr. Cutts. Ha
-
I think I will let Matt Cuts answering to your question, as he covered it in a webmasterhelp video.
The video is quite recent (may 2011).
-
I've just done this for a site which was part http and part https. The change was mainly for appearance - the client wanted the whole site to appear 'secure'. This was in December, and we haven't noticed any massive changes in the rankings for terms.
The obvious thing to consider is making sure you set up 301 redirects for http:// to https:// which can be done with a simple rule in .htaccess, something like RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] though there may be other things which affect this, so check this through first (there's a big discussion on this here with various other options).
You'll need the https version of GA, and to make sure that pages aren't referencing anything on a non-secure server (e.g. an image) else users may get warning messages.
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
-
Google Indexed Site A's Content On Site B, Site C etc
Hi All, I have an issue where the content (pages and images) of Site A (www.ericreynolds.photography) are showing up in Google under different domains Site B (www.fastphonerepair.com), Site C (www.quarryhillvet.com), Site D (www.spacasey.com). I believe this happened because I installed an SSL cert on Site A but didn't have the default SSL domain set on the server. You were able to access Site B and any page from Site A and it would pull up properly. I have since fixed that SSL issue and am now doing a 301 redirect from Sites B, C and D to Site A for anything https since Sites B, C, D are not using an SSL cert. My question is, how can I trigger google to re-index all of the sites to remove the wrong listings in the index. I have a screen shot attached so you can see the issue clearer. I have resubmitted my site map but I'm not seeing much of a change in the index for my site. Any help on what I could do would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cwscontent
Eric TeVM49b.png qPtXvME.png1 -
Why does some sites rank with no seo
Why is it that some site rank with zero efforts? I have been working on some seo for a while on my main site and i have been getting more info competition analysis with sem and moz. Looking at the states from this website which tends to popup often in the searches on page 1-2 before my site. This site is not keyword optimized, meaning they arent even trying to rank.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CooperStrzelecki
There is no content, articles etc.,
6 backlinks (nothing powerful just 2 directory links and 2 from developer)
Site really isnt even designed to get traffic as its a trade only ecommerce website
I doubt they are hiding anything as far as backlinks etc. as it will get them too many visitors they dont want
The city i am searching isnt even on the page (it is a city within a city so maybe google still relates it)
PA 24 DA 15 Now my site:
Optimized reasearched keywords
175 backlinks
All my main pages have content with images, alt tags, internal linking
full of content, blogs, videos, products (probably 4000, could a site being too big be an issue?)
Site gets regular updates
I probably have 200 citations
All the social media which gets done often
PA 32 DA 20 They do get a good bit of traffic but that is probably the only thing i would see but it would be direct traffic mostly i believe as it would be people going to order regularly since it is a print reseller. They may have some age on me 15 vs 8 years. Could it be some kind of penalty i am not sure about lingering? According to what i know to check everyything looks ok, no shady links accoding to sem. I am working more and more on all the pages but this competittion site really doesnt have crap going on probably 8 pages and 1 page does all the ordering. What the hell does google want from me exactly!0 -
Ajax tabs on site
Hello, On a webpage I have multiple tabs, each with their own specific content. Now these AJAX/JS tabs, if Google only finds the first tab when the page loads the content would be too thin. What do you suggest as an implementation? With Google being able to crawl and render more JS nowadays, but they deprecated AJAX crawling a while back. I was maybe thinking of doing a following implementation where when JS is disabled, the tabs collapse under each other with the content showing. With JS enabled then they render as tabs. This is usually quite a common implementation for tabbed content plugins on Wordpress as well. Also, Google had commented about that hidden/expandable content would count much less, even with the above JS fix. Look forward to your thoughts on this. Thanks, Conrad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conalt1 -
On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile
We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Multilingual Site and 301 redirection
Hey there awesome people of Moz I have this site that has many languages in it. The main language is English and my developer did the following www.example.com ( is the main site ) which redirects with a 301 to www.example.com/en if your geo location is supported by our languages then you will automatically be redirected to whatever language you have in your country but does the first language with is english have to 301 redirect to www.example.com/en ? I thought that the right way is to just leave /en at the root file. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
SEO firm site audit
needs recommendation for a site audit. Post panda/ post penguin experience preferred. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | skyao0 -
How would you fix this site?
We're currently in the IA and design phase of rolling out a complete overhaul of our main site. In the meantime I've been doing some SEO triage, but I wanted to start making a longer term plan for SEO during and after the new site goes up. We have a pretty decent domain authority, and some quality backlinks, but we're just getting creamed in the SERPs. And so on to my question: How would you fix this site? What SEO strategy would you employ? http://www.adoptionhelp.org Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdoptionHelp0 -
Push for site-wide https, but all pages in index are http. Should I fight the tide?
Hi there, First Q&A question 🙂 So I understand the problems caused by having a few secure pages on a site. A few links to the https version a page and you have duplicate content issues. While there are several posts here at SEOmoz that talk about the different ways of dealing with this issue with respect to secure pages, the majority of this content assumes that the goal of the SEO is to make sure no duplicate https pages end up in the index. The posts also suggest that https should only used on log in pages, contact forms, shopping carts, etc." That's the root of my problem. I'm facing the prospect of switching to https across an entire site. In the light of other https related content I've read, this might seem unecessary or overkill, but there's a vaild reason behind it. I work for a certificate authority. A company that issues SSL certificates, the cryptographic files that make the https protocol work. So there's an obvious need our site to "appear" protected, even if no sensitive data is being moved through the pages. The stronger push, however, stems from our membership of the Online Trust Alliance. https://otalliance.org/ Essentially, in the parts of the internet that deal with SSL and security, there's a push for all sites to utilize HSTS Headers and force sitewide https. Paypal and Bank of America are leading the way in this intiative, and other large retailers/banks/etc. will no doubt follow suit. Regardless of what you feel about all that, the reality is that we're looking at future that involves more privacy protection, more SSL, and more https. The bottom line for me is; I have a site of ~800 pages that I will need to switch to https. I'm finding it difficult to map the tips and tricks for keeping the odd pesky https page out of the index, to what amounts to a sitewide migratiion. So, here are a few general questions. What are the major considerations for such a switch? Are there any less obvious pitfalls lurking? Should I even consider trying to maintain an index of http pages, or should I start work on replacing (or have googlebot replace) the old pages with https versions? Is that something that can be done with canonicalization? or would something at the server level be necessary? How is that going to affect my page authority in general? What obvious questions am I not asking? Sorry to be so longwinded, but this is a tricky one for me, and I want to be sure I'm giving as much pertinent information as possible. Any input will be very much appreciated. Thanks, Dennis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dennis.globalsign0