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?
-
This is how I see it after some enlightenment.. Google doesn't really come right out and say this (if you do see that they do, please share). The actual term for the change from http to https is a rewrite. We are instructing the rewrite via a 301 redirect. Once the 301 redirect is in place, we set the canonical to https://www.xxxx.com (or non www if you prefer) Google then awards all kinds of SEO juice for the use of https... Right lol...
-
The "force" to https could be handled in many ways so I can't say if it is a 301 redirect or not. But you can check: http://httpstatus.io/ .
http and https indicate two different URLs. That I know of, Google doesn't just automatically assume a one-to-one relationship between them and choose a canonical version for you if both are available to index. In other words, if users end up at https just go ahead and redirect straight to https. Really, if you're site is https you should just forget http even exists as an option. Even an internal text link with the wrong protocol can throw up errors in some browsers.
For what it's worth, I just switched one of my sites over and got burned by listening to Google once again. All went well from a technical perspective, except that revenue dropped by about 30% because Adsense is no longer showing certain types of ads (probably re targeting).
-
That's a great question and I hope someone can answer. I have read that Google sees the http and https as two different sites but since the force to https would typically be handled by the server on the same domain, not really a 301 I would think. But I am out of my depth (again). So is there any loss of linkjuice?
-
Thanks for your response Chris.
The point you made is exactly what I told our lead web developer. Why redirect more than necessary? It seems like it would be just another opportunity to have something go wrong, lose something in the switches, not pass as much of the link juice. If you lose 20% redirecting it seems like it could risk doubling that loss.. (I am just picking 20% randomly for an example.)
Does the site "forcing from http to https" count as a redirect? I know it is a change in protocol... hmmm
-
I think we will see a lot more about this soon but in the mean time I would have to ask, "Why take the chance?".
Just 301 to the https site. 301s allegedly don't pass all the link juice and you are potentially using two 301s when you could just use one. If it were me I would want to redirect to the https site and be building new links and even updating old ones to https.
-
Hi!
From my transitions, pointing to it hasn't had any negative effects. So from my own experience, my answer is that it doesnt really matter much.
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 is a definition engine / Question answering engine
But what do you do to rank when you sell a product and people don't have questions and none of the companies that rank on your keywords answers questions... Let me give you a few example. Title tag for example : People want to know what is it and then have question about it What is the maximum number of characters ? How do you write a good one ? Etc... How to remove stains is another example : Please want to know how to remove all the different types of stains, (ketchup, grease etc..) But what about when you are a online business and want to sell usb keys , rent bicycles https://www.spinlister.com or even sell a software to do A/B testing on your website https://bit.ly/2a6cBuF Can someone explain me how those people mentioned rank without giving definition or answering questions... because according to me they don't do any of that on the pages that I mentioned. I look forward to your reply. Thank you,
Web Design | | seoanalytics0 -
Is having a site map page necessary?
Hello all! So I know having a sitemap XML file is important to include in your robots.txt file. I also know it is important to submit your XML sitemap to Google and Bing. However, I am wondering if it is beneficial for your site's SEO value to have a sitemap page displayed on your website? Or is this just a redundant action if you have already done the above two actions with your XML sitemap? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | Myles920 -
When Site:Domain Search Run on Google, SSL Error Appears on One URL, Will this Harm Ranking
Greetings MOZ Community: When a site:domain search is run on Google, a very strange URL appears in the search results. The URL is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com:2082/ The page displays a "the site's security certificate is not trusted." This only appears for one URL out of 400. Could this indicate a wider problem with the server's configuration? Is this something that needs to be corrected, and if so how? Our ranking has dropped a lot in the last few months. Thanks,
Web Design | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
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 -
How about some SEO tips for small local businesses
The amount of time I hear people say write good content and people will naturally link to you. I appreciate this must be valid for large websites that a driven by content. However, it doesn't really hold much hope for smaller businesses with just service information etc. I work for a small business that does web design in the UK. However, I'm finding it difficult to do any sort of link building. In my opinion nobody is going to link to any of our content naturally or if it is, its going to be small time. Our rankings have dropped slightly (only to 4th in our local county). I've done the following thinks to try get it back up there but its having little or no results. Adding us to local business directories External Articles on site Cleaned up some duplicate title tags. What link building can I do? Is link building the home page sometimes not always the way to go? What content can I write that google will like? See what I mean? My rankings did climb a little bit but then dropped straight back down to their original places 2 weeks later. Help would be appreciated.
Web Design | | sanchez19600 -
What do web designers consider to be SEO
I'm putting together an article about Web Designers and SEO. The basic crux is that most designers will at most (if you are lucky) add in title tags, maybe pretty URL's and HTML links and call it SEO friendly. (lot's who don't probably but also lot's who are even worse) Of course I want it to be a bit controversial so please feel free to let rip. My argument is clients who have previously had site's that have had "SEO on them", know think that all SEO is a waste of time as their previous experience didn't produce the traffic and sales they were expecting. I don't know many designers who independently consider a site marketing strategy and how a site is going to generate links in the long term. I'm sure most of us have read this post on SEO responsiblities but becasue the first port of call for most business owners are the web designers, our offering is undermined by their misunderstandings and in some cases mis-sellings. So under the working title, "Why Web Designers Are Bad For SEO", any care to share some imput.
Web Design | | FDC1 -
What Is Our Site Missing Causing Our Former Dominance To Slip?
So we have operated one of our retail sites, BonitaJ.com for many years now. Through a lot of work, link building and optimizing around 2009, we were in a prominent spot on the 1st page in google for just about every main term we were targeting. Towards the end of 2009, nearing December or so, we started slipping here and there, and began being displaced for our main terms by newer sites that according to several factors, don't have near the strength our site holds. And by strength, I simply mean, based on link volume, mozbar stats and many other factors, it seems we should rank well above most, but still find ourselves just hanging to 8-10 positions on page one, and in many cases somewhere on page two for terms it seems like we should be in the top 5 positions for. I believe some of our slippage is due to google's devaluing of many of our incoming links. We achieved our early ranking dominence off a lot of directory links and things like that over time, but ever since 2009 when links began getting devalued we immediately broke into getting quality blog links via LEGIT blog relationships where we'd offer up contests, bloggers would review our products and so on, and these relationships continue through today. We also do a lot of guest blog writing, article postings on various networks, as well as press releases, all with the goal of keeping our link profile happy and healthy. So we still have work to do there, but we're on the right track. So my thought is that to get back over the hump, we simply need to continue with the legit link building methods, but I'm also thinking that maybe we need to improve some things navigationally. Things I was hoping people would chime in on are.... 1. If we're mainly trying to target bridal/wedding related jewelry terms, should we ditch the "Jewelry Sets, Pearl Jewelry & Swarovski Crystal Jewerly" terms from our main navbar. They are featured inside each of the categories, and in the end, we don't rank or pull traffic for them anyway. Would ditching them from the main nav, help pass more juice from home page and other pages to the pages that better target our niche? 2. A while back, we ditched including actual product on each of the main category pages. I'm leaning towards breaking the main category pages up into sections, for instance once on the "Bridal Jewelry" page, it would list each of the sub-cats, with a 5-10 product sampling of the most popular items, with a link that says "view all necklaces" at the end of each sub-section. Do you think that more wise than just trying to direct them into the sub-cats with no actual product offering? 3. Anything else you see glaringly wrong with what we're trying to do? This site is just on the edge of blowing up from a ranking perspective if I can just get some confirmation on some things that I know I should do, but I'm wary due to fear of screwing things up. If I can get some solid feedback, the rest is history.
Web Design | | AarcMediaGroup0 -
Ecommerce web site with too many internal links
Hi, We're using Magento CE 1.4.0.1 for our ecommerce web site with a fairly flat navigation system i.e. 9 major categories display across the top menu that when you roll over display 2-20 sub categories (which take you to a groups of similar products) and then individual product pages. The categories and sub categories are available to click on as part of a dynamic Html menu system on each page. Each page also shows a small number of related products. This linking structure seems fairly standard and yet Seomoz throws up the error message, "Too Many On-page links" for most pages on our site. Do I need to really worry about this? Is there much can be done to improve this on an ecommerce web site with a large catalogue of products? I've looked at the Knowledge Base but I don't feel the existing responses adequately address the issue for ecommerce sites.
Web Design | | languedoc0