Force SSL. Good or Bad?
-
My website can be accessed with a number of different URL's and I am trying to consolidate the traffic to one point. Is there any problem, SEO or technical, with forcing all users who come to my site to going to our https domain? I have already set a preferred domain in WebMaster Tools and set rel=canonical for each page. For instance, anyone entering the below sites would be forced to land at https://www.1099pro.com.
-
Michael -
I don't see any major SEO issues with forcing an SSL session, other than:
-
SSL is usually a bit slower, due to the encryption overhead. You might want to benchmark this to make sure it's not affecting your site load speed times. If things are slow, more hardware and caching might help.
-
Make sure that all of your content is being served from secure links. For example, if you are displaying a graphic on the home page of the site, use relative paths (../images/super-impressive-graphic.png). If you have content that uses absolute links, such as: (img src="http://www.1099pro.com/images/super-impressive-graphic.png), this will throw an SSL warning and tell users that the site is not secure. This is important with CSS, as well as Facebook, Twitter and other plugins.
Looking at the site, it looks like your Google and LiveZilla tracking codes are set properly to auto-switch to https, but I'd try to test this.
- Also, if you're changing the URLs, you'll want to make sure that older pages with the non-www are 301 redirected to the secure pages properly, too.
Hope this helps!
Thanks,
- Jeff
-
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
-
Is Sitewide Credit Link Good or Bad in 2015?
We are a web design agency thus we get a good number of links (footer) from our client's site. According to Matt Cutt, Google considers all the sitewide links to 1. So is it okay to have those links? Note: Those links are do-follow and most with 2 anchor text. "Web Design" by "Company Name" and "Website Development" by."Company Name". Thanks
Web Design | | Jubaer961 -
Is it Bad to Break Up A Site into Multiple Sites?
I have a big cluttered website with endless pages. It's a non-profit that has content for patients, researchers, therapists, etc.. Would it be a bad idea to turn this cluttered site into 3 or more completely different sites, each focused on their specific demographic? Or should I just figure out how to organize the one site better? Thanks for your help!!!
Web Design | | bosleypalmer0 -
SSL, SEO, and Site Migration question
When migrating a site to a new url and one where the old url had no https and the new url will be full https does it matter if the 301 redirect points at http://thisisthenewsite.com ? Meaning, should the new site have the ssl / https up prior to redirecting the old site? Does it matter if you redirect the old site to http://thisisthenewsite.com or https://thisisthenewsite.com? Since the site will force to https anyway?
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Image with 100% width/height - bad ranking?
Hi, we have some articles like this: http://www.schicksal.com/Orakel/Freitag-13 The main image has a width of 100% and a height of 100%. Today, I've discovered that GWT Instant Preview has some troubles with rendering the page. We have CSS rules to deliver the image with the right dimensions. If a bot like google is not sending any screen height / width we assume the screen size is 2560x1440. Does this harm the ranking of the page? (Content starts below the fold/image) What is a "default" screen size for google? How do they determine if something is "above the fold"? Any tips or ideas? Best wishes, Georg.
Web Design | | GeorgFranz0 -
WIX? is it any good for SEO
Hi people. I have just built my website www.bellagiolimousines.com.au using WIX. I am in the process of optimising for SEO, and after reading a couple of older posts i.e 2012; I read that some SEO consultants do not like WIX. However with their recent upgrades, I was hoping if anyone else has had any recent experience with WIX? I have spent a considerable amount of time building this site, and I don't want to waste anymore time in optimising it, if I am not going to receive a top 3 organic SERP. Hope to hear from someone real soon!
Web Design | | Giorgio680 -
Does Google have problem crawling ssl sites?
We have a site that was ranking well and recently dropped in traffic and ranking. The whole site is https and and not just the shopping pages. Thats the way the server is setup, they make whole site https. My manager thinks the drop in ranking is due to google not crawling https. I think contrary, but would like some feedback on this. Site is here
Web Design | | anthonytjm0 -
Footer Links For Web Design Agencies - Bad?
So today Google have updated their Webmaster Guidelines and they have drawn particular attention to their update relating to Link Schemes. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 Unless you have had your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears since February then most people are aware of the types of link schemes that the updated is refering to but there is one area that isn't so black and white for me. "Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that violate our guidelines: Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites" We are a design agency and we design and build lots of websites for our clients. It is pretty standard practice for agencies to add a credit to the footer of websites and we pick up a lot of work from people that see a site that they like and click through the footer link to our site. Our footer credit is standard on all of the websites that we create:- Website by Teapot Creative Only the 'Teapot Creative' part of the credit is anchor text so we are only linking using our brand name with no intention of manipulating search results. Is this going to hurt us? or will the fact that we are only linking using our branded term and without any SEO intent keep us in the clear? Thanks.
Web Design | | AdeLewis
Ade.0 -
Websites with only one "html file" and page href # is good for SEO?
I bought one website from templatemonster that contains only one HTML and the pages are generated by links (PROGRAMACAO) My website: www.nextformaturas.com.br This is good in term of SEO? or it is better an website with deveral pages with diferent contents? What are the pros and cons? I really lost on this.
Web Design | | Naghirniac0