URL Re-Writes & HTTPS: Link juice loss from 301s?
-
Our URLs are not following a lot of the best practices found here: http://moz.com/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls
We have also been waiting to implement HTTPS.
I think it might be time to take the plunge on re-writing the URLs and converting to a fully secure site, but I am concerned about ranking dips from the lost link juice from the 301s. Many of our URLs are very old, with a decent amount of quality links.
Are we better off leaving as is or taking the plunge?
-
Thanks all...Much appreciated!
Looking at the examples below, does anyone think this move could result in a negative effect?
**From: **http://www.xyzwidgets.com/widgets/commercial-widgets/small_blue_widget.htm
**To: **https://www.xyzwidgets.com/small-blue-widget
**From: **http://www.xyzwidgets.com/info/videos/general/what-are-widgets.htm
-
If youre going to be updating your URLs for best-practices, I would incorporate the conversion to https as well - do it all in one shot, as you've said.
Just ensure you're implementing 301 redirects properly. Not doing so can have disastrous results.
-
In addition to what Robert just said. If you add a 301 now to format url properly, and later add a second 301 to move to HTTPS, you will add redirect to redirect losing that little bit of page juice twice.
-
The only downside to that approach is if there is no benefit to moving to HTTPS, you have wasted time (if that was the only reason for you doing so). However, if you are using 301's either way, you may as well move to HTTPS - it won't hurt you and it might help you.
-
My thinking is that the potential for increase in CTR in the SERPS can have a greater affect than the potential 301 harm.
I notice many of you are still waiting for the jury to be a bit more conclusive on whether to move to HTTPS. However, if I'm redirecting all pages using Moz's bes practice, shouldn't I just take the HTTPS plunge at the same time? Is there any reason not to?
-
301's of any kind can result in a slight decrease in "link-juice" moving forward, although it can be hard to determine exactly how much (not a large amount relatively speaking). That being said, as Massimiliano stated, I haven't personally come across this scenario in my work.
The HTTP/HTTPS debate is still going and as Ray said, it might be best to adopt a "wait and see" strategy.
Of these things, you have pointed out that your urls do not follow best practices stated in the link - it is likely that new urls combined with 301 redirects to HTTPS will not hurt your rankings and may in fact help you. As Ray stated, it is about cost and whether you think the potential rankings are worth the time, effort and money you will spend making it happen.
-
In my experience the power of proper url, with the right keywords in the right place, is so great I wouldn't wait a second before to fix them.
Again based on my experience I never noticed a decrease in ranking due to 301.
I recently moved three websites from http to https and I didn't notice any decrease in ranking I could associate with the redirect.
Of course since we daily work on improving ranking is hard to distinguish a small decrease due to 301 from the general improvement.
-
The benefit in the ranking influence for http / https sites is still unclear. Many SEOs are still holding off on this conversion to see what its impact, hopefully measurable, may end up being.
Moz has a great post on Https necessities and practices here: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
If it is going to be an intense project (costs an mount of money that makes you question its worth), I would hold off until more information is exposed about https as a ranking factor. If the conversion is easy, then I would get it implemented now and reap any benefits that come from https.
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
-
My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!
Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
URL indexed but not submitted in sitemap, however the URL is in the sitemap
Dear Community, I have the following problem and would be super helpful if you guys would be able to help. Cheers Symptoms : On the search console, Google says that some of our old URLs are indexed but not submitted in sitemap However, those URLs are in the sitemap Also the sitemap as been successfully submitted. No error message Potential explanation : We have an automatic cache clearing process within the company once a day. In the sitemap, we use this as last modification date. Let's imagine url www.example.com/hello was modified last time in 2017. But because the cache is cleared daily, in the sitemap we will have last modified : yesterday, even if the content of the page did not changed since 2017. We have a Z after sitemap time, can it be that the bot does not understands the time format ? We have in the sitemap only http URL. And our HTTPS URLs are not in the sitemap What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZozoMe0 -
Google WMT/search console showing thousands of links in "Internal Links"
Hi, One of our blog-post has been interlinked with thousands of internal links as per search console; but lists only 2 links it got connected from. How come so many links it got connected internally? I don't see any. Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
If linking to contextual sites is beneficial for SE rankings, what impact does the re=“nofollow” attribute have when applied to these outbound contextual links?
Communities, opinion-formers, even Google representatives, seem to offer a consensus that linking to quality, relevant sites is good practice and therefore beneficial for SEO. Does this still apply when the outbound links are "nofollow"? Is there any good research on this out there?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielpressley0 -
Disavow Links & Paid Link Removal (discussion)
Hey everyone, We've been talking about this issue a bit over the last week in our office, I wanted to extend the idea out to the Moz community and see if anyone has some additional perspective on the issue. Let me break-down the scenario: We're in the process of cleaning-up the link profile for a new client, which contains many low quality SEO-directory links placed by a previous vendor. Recently, we made a connection to a webmaster who controls a huge directory network. This person found 100+ links to our client's site on their network and wants $5/link to have them removed. Client was not hit with a manual penalty, this clean-up could be considered proactive, but an algorithmic 'penalty' is suspected based on historical keyword rankings. **The Issue: **We can pay this ninja $800+ to have him/her remove the links from his directory network, and hope it does the trick. When talking about scaling this tactic, we run into some ridiculously high numbers when you talk about providing this service to multiple clients. **The Silver Lining: **Disavow Links file. I'm curious what the effectiveness of creating this around the 100+ directory links could be, especially since the client hasn't been slapped with a manual penalty. The Debate: Is putting a disavow file together a better alternative to paying for crappy links to be removed? Are we actually solving the bad link problem by disavowing or just patching it? Would choosing not to pay ridiculous fees and submitting a disavow file for these links be considered a "good faith effort" in Google's eyes (especially considering there has been no manual penalty assessed)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls
Hey there. For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
For example: http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.com This is happening to all pages, posts and even category type 1. Site is in Wordpress
2. Using Yoast SEO plugin Any suggestions? Thanks!0 -
How to Have Flat Navigation w/out Diluting Link Juice
I have a client with a very flat navigational structure relying on a menu with CSS hover dropdowns using simple items to get to just about every page on the site through the main navigation on every page. They want this ability to remain. The issue is stat is send link juice all over and does not concentrate into pages that are key search landing pages. I don't want to "no Index" "follow" the less important pages since there are some brand related long tail searches that I would want these pages found. These are useful pages to consumers who are already engaged with the brand, but not ones we would not care to rank for outside of branded search. If there was a way to have some links be non-crawled via javascript (or some other method) and those that are more important use a more standard html type link that would seem ideal. Does anyone have a suggestion for menu tool or technique for exposing to consumers all the links to consumers but restricting google bot's path while being in line with Google Webmaster guideslines? Blair
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlairKuhnen0 -
Is there any SEO advantage to sharing links on twitter using google's url shortener goo.gl/
Hi is there any advantage to using <cite class="vurls">goo.gl/</cite> to shorten a URL for Twitter instead of other ones? I had a thought that <cite class="vurls">goo.gl/</cite> might allow google to track click throughs and hence judge popularity.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | S_Curtis0