Will using https across our entire site hurt our external backlinks?
-
Our site is secured throughout, so it loads sitewide as https. It is canonicalized properly - any attempt to load an existing page as http will force to https. My concern is with backlinks. We've put a lot of effort into social media, so we're getting some nice blog linkage. The problem is that the links are generally to http rather than https (understandable, since that's the default for most web users). The site still loads with no problem, but my concern is that since a redirect doesn't transfer all the link juice across, we're leaking some perfectly good link credit. From the standpoint of backlinkage, are we harming ourselves by making the whole site secure by default? The site presently isn't very big, but I'm looking at adding hundreds of new pages to the site, so if we're going to make the change, now is the time to do so. Let me know what you think!
-
We run one site with all https and there is no problem at all - we link build as usual and see no bad impacts, in fact we are doing very well.
It's not usual practice but for SEO as long as you are playing by the rules it will have no impact whatsoever.
-
Yes -- I actually just got done reverting back from HTTPS -> HTTP because of the handshake. Think about this.
- How many images does the page have? All of your images need to have SSL.
- How many styles and external style sheets? All of your style sheets need to have SSL
- Does all of the sites you link to have SSL as well? I found that if I link something it can sometimes red flag that there are elements in the page that are not secure.
It's a lot of work and a lot of maintenance and at the end: the visitor gets frustrated and leaves. Even if you are at rackspace and you have a dedicated SSL proxy server with load bouncers and it auto scales. The clients browser still needs to form a relationship with the SSL certificate for all of the images/scripts on your page.
-
your backlinks will suffer. You need to go and 301 each of the http pages to the https ones. That being said 301s do not pass 100% of link juice on and many people will continue to link to the http pages.
Do you really need every page to be https? why not just have the key data exchange pages as https and the rest as http?
-
I would seriously consider the possibility of making only as much of your site https as is really necessary.
That said, the portion of your link juice being lost due to the redirects is probably relatively insignificant. But if you could keep half the site as http, that would cut your leakage in half.
-
There's very rarely any reason to force SSL for an entire site. Any content that you're trying to SEO, obviously has no need to be encrypted.
SSL puts a huge overhead on page load time.
-
We have the same issue. Our site is 100% SSL. We use 301 redirects for any http requests to go to https instead. We rank well in the SERPs for phrases we care about. I'm pretty sure the link juice is flowing from http to https because of the 301s (many of our external links are http).
(and, SEOMoz folks: really looking forward to your crawl tool working with https sites!)
-
Don't really see a way around it. Only force HTTPS on pages that need it. If you can operate at 80% HTTP and 20% HTTPS, that is much better, as people rarely link to HTTPS pages.
So yes, change it
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
-
What effect does HTTPS have on SEO for a public site?
I have a client who I've been working with for 4 months but getting NO TRACTION at all on their SERPS. This is unusual for me! The only difference to their site from other clients is that the whole site is https so I'm wondering if that's making a big difference. The site is: https://www.cnc-ltd.co.uk Any help of hints would be great thanks in advance Steve
Technical SEO | | stevecounsell0 -
Linking out to authoritive sites from my ecommerce site
Good afternoon SEOmoz community. I was looking for a specific answer or advice or opinion about linking out to other sites. My Site www.tacticalbootstore.com has been undergoing a complete content rewrite. In the process we have been told and read where it can be good to link out to other authoritive sites. One of the pages we have rewritten is here. http://www.tacticalbootstore.com/belleville-boots-sizing-chart-a-97.html We have not added the graphics yet as they are being built now. This is just an informational page about sizing of a particular manufacturers boots. Once you get to the bottom of the text we have added a link to the actual manufacturers page. Is this helpful for us in the SERPS or not? Thank you for your time. Chris
Technical SEO | | scamper0 -
Cross links between sites
hi, We have several ecommerce sites and we cross linked 3 of them by mistake. We realize that the sites were linked through WMT, We have shut down 2 of the sites about 2 months ago, but WMT still shows the links coming from those 2 sites. how do we make sure that google will see the sites are shut down. Is there a better of way resolving this issue. We are no longer using those sites, so do not need them to be active. whats the best solution to show google that the links are no longer there. Crawler shows that it was able to crawl the site 45 days after it is shut down. thanks nick
Technical SEO | | orion680 -
SIte cloned my entire website and is now outranking me
My site is http://www.medic8.com and http://www.mealldubh.org has cloned my site and is now outranking my site. I have submitted DMCA requests to Google with no response. I do not know what to do now but surely it should be obvoius that this site has cloned me and there must be a way to have this scraper removed from the index? Im lost in terms of what I can do next so any help would be greatly appreacited.
Technical SEO | | thefresh0 -
Free Blogs Backlinks
Hello I have a very basic question, hope you people don't mind answering this. I plan to create a 10 blogs with keyword specific domain name, where in footer i can place back-link pointing to my website and thought to run on C-Class IP's which will cost me of-course. Now 2nd option which will be free, where i can plan to have my blog on wordpress, Timblr, blogger etc free blogging website and use the backlinks from there and all will have different IP which will also best for SEO prospective. Can you suggest me which will be the best option to have blogs on owned domain name or free blogging site, keeping in mind this will be just s prospective to generate backlinks. Do recommend is this a genuine way to get backliks or its another spam, and where we will keep on updating the all blogs regularly. Thanks in Advance! Regards Danish Wadhwa
Technical SEO | | DanishWadhwa0 -
How to find all the links to my site
hi i have been trying to find all the links that i have to my site http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk but i am not having any luck. I have used the open explorer but it is not showing all the links but when i go to my google webmaster page it shows me more pages than it does on the semoz tool. can anyone help me sort this out and find out exactly what links are going into my site many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Site command
How reliable is site command? Is there any other way to check indexed pages.
Technical SEO | | gmk15670 -
Will Google index a 301 redirect for a new site?
So here is the problem... We have setup a 301redirect for our clients website. When you search the clients name it comes up with the old .co.uk website. We have made this redirect to the new .com website. However on the SERPs when it shows the .co.uk it shows the old title pages which currently say 'Holding Page'. When you click on that link it takes you to the fully functioning .com website. My question is, will the title tags in the SERPs which show the .co.uk update to the new ones from the .com? I'm thinking it will be just a case of Google catching up on things and it will sort itself out eventually. If anyone could help I would REALLY appreciate it. Thanks Chris
Technical SEO | | Weerdboil0