Http vs https: which is better for seo / usability
-
Hi All,
Firstly thank you for taking the time to look. My dilemma is as follows;
I have a site on wordpress that I have added an ssl certificate to and the entire domain is secure.
The site has a mix of content including a blog area and product pages.
My question is what does Google prefer, http or https or does it not matter
As i see it my option is to keep the entire site as https and enforce this sitewide so all non secure content redirects to the https version or i could enforce https just in the cart and or product pages, all other content, homepage, blog, about us, contact us etc would be http.
From an seo perspective ie google search engine, is their a best way to proceed?
Finally, as i currently have http and https both displaying ie duplicate, what would be the way to fix this, i have yoast plugin so can set the canonical there and can also edit my robot.txt.
I have come across this resource (http://www.creare.co.uk/http-vs-https-duplicate-content) and am wondering if this guideline is still correct or is there another more current way, if so I would be grateful if you could point me in the right direction.
thanks in advance.
-
Hi tahirekhanvc,
I'm a big fan of Matt Cutts, and you should be, too. Check out what he has to say about duplicate content: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2319706/Googles-Matt-Cutts-A-Little-Duplicate-Content-Wont-Hurt-Your-Rankings
I had a similar issue with a client a year or so ago. As I'm sure you know, secure pages are encrypted and need to be decrypted, which takes more time and requires more resources. And with that, speed may become an issue, and speed is a ranking factor.
A good rule of thumb is to secure pages that communicate private data, i.e. contact pages, carts, etc. If you are offering some sort of security service, or if your business model requires earning a great deal of trust from your visitors, then go secure the site. Now I'm talking about sites like https://squareup.com/ (FYI, I actually do not recommend that service but you can see the home page is secure). And that company actually takes it one step further with an EV SSL, where you can show your company name in the green bar. Go for a purpose, but not SEO in particular.
Matt went over this about the time Facebook switched to https. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4801641 Now it's up to you to make the call, but make it and stick with it. What you don't want to do is go back and forth a couple times trying to rank better thinking that this is a major problem.
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 Schema markup important for SEO?
I have recently come across the Schema markup and have researched what it's all about. Basically in short it helps search engines identify all the elements of the page. Our competitors have this implementated, so is this important for SEO? We have an e commerce store.
Technical SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Can a CMS affect SEO?
As the title really, I run www.specialistpaintsonline.co.uk and 6 months ago when I first got it it had bad links which google had put a penalty against it so losts it value. However the penalty was lift in Sept, the site corresponds to all guidelines and seo work has been done and constantly monitored. the issue I have is sales and visits have not gone up, we are failing fast and running on 2 or 3 sales a month isn't enough to cover any sort of cost let alone wages. hence my question can the cms have anything to do with it? Im at a loss and go grey any help or advice would be great. thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | TeamacPaints0 -
SEO Ultimate Plug in problems for SEO MOZ
Hi Newbee here! SEO ultimate seems to work ok for other url I have on this problem. http://www.pureescapism.co.uk and performing the on page grader for hair salon broadstairsI have canonicalizer on for the plug in and I have made it the rel=canonical targetIt tells me I haven't.Further down I don't get a tick also and am told : Remove all but a single canonical URL tag.Not aware I have more than one.I am also told : No More Than One Meta Description Element ( Cant see how I can do that either as I havent changed any code)Help please
Technical SEO | | Agentmorris0 -
Squidoo vs Personal Site
Hey guys I'm Nikolas a newb, just signed up to the pro membership trial after alot of digging on the seomoz blog for months . First off let me tell you alittle about my story and seo knowledge. I started off online on the well known squidoo site with revenue sharing, because of my day job I had alot of time to work on my articles and build up to a nice monthly salary of just over 1k in less than 5 months which doubled and trippled in the last few months. Seo is like a 6th sense to me , onpage offpage and the lots. Most of what I read here is not new to me or something I didn't already know about, but its good to freshen up and remember things, as theres alot to search engine optimization. I have built up to over 500k unique visitors in less than a year and have decided to move on to my own site 4 months ago. The niche is the exact same one I have targeted on squidoo. My site had alot of issues at the start the classic 301 redirection ht_access fix I had to do,content management system building low quality content pages via tags that i have fixed(noindex) and removed with 404s, build up original unique valuable posts, interlink ,onpage and offpage seo the basics I did for squidoo. The problem here is that I can't seem to get any traction from google where as my squidoo search engine traffic is 80% , my sites google traffic is 5-10%. I have the same number of articles on both sites, similar topics , similar onpage offpage optimisation basically identical but have alot better content on my new site. My bing, yahoo and referral traffic is rising everyday but as I know google is 85% of the market share I am leaving alot of money on the table. I hope that most of you more dedicated seo's can give me a tip or two and explain exactly what is going on with my situation and if possible take a look at my site hardwarepal .
Technical SEO | | NikolasNikolaou0 -
SEO Terms for Internal Vs External
Hey there! I am writing up an SEO plan for our company and wanted to get the groups input on the use of some SEO terms. I need to organize and explain these efforts to nonSEO people. I usually talk about, SEO in terms of "Internal" vs "External" efforts. Internal SEO efforts being things like Title Tags, Description Tags, Page Speed, Minimizing errors, proper 301 redirect, content development for the site, internal linking and anchor, etc. External SEO efforts being things like Link building, social media profile setups and posts (FB Twitter Pinterest, YouTube), PR work. How do you split these out? What terms do you use? Do you subdivide these tasks? What terms do you use? For example, with Internal, I sometimes talk about "Technical SEO" that has do to with making sure that site speed is working well, 301s are setup correctly, noindex tag etc are all used properly. These are things that different versus "On Page" efforts to use keywords properly etc. I will also use the term "Site Visibility" for non SEOs to explain the technical impact. For example, if your site has the wrong robots.txt, if you have 500 errors everywhere and a slow site, if you are sending spiders down a daisy chain of 301s, it is difficult for the key parts of your site to be found and so your "Visibility" to the engines are poor. You have to get your visibility up, before you begin to then worry about if you have the right keywords on a page etc. Any input or references would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CleverPhD0 -
Why is this site ranking better than me
Hi just used the compare tool to try and find out why a site is ranking better than me http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.lifestylemonthly.co.uk%2F my site is www.in2town.co.uk and the site i am comparing with is http://www.lifestylemonthly.co.uk/ Can anyone explain what is going on and how i can achieve better ranking results
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Www vs non-www which is better?
Is it better to have all your pages point to the www version or non www version.
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Local SEO Optimization
hi, Looks for advices,tips, links ressource to improve local seo optimisation in google places for domain "google. fr" as website business is in France ! Tks a lot in advance..
Technical SEO | | mozllo0