Does anyone know if an increase in 804 HTTPS errors will affect SEO rankings?
-
We recently moved our whole site over from HTTP to HTTPS and we went from having 106 keywords in the top 3 positions to 80 in just one week. The only thing that I can think of that caused the drop is the HTTPS changes to our site. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
-
Jennifer,
Some of your pages still reference http images - example https://www.tsheets.com/proadvisors-we-trust.php calls image http://cdn.tsheets.com/images/pros/denise-loter-koch.png
"Your connection to www.tsheets.com is encrypted with obsolete cryptography. However, this page includes other resources which are not secure. These resources can be viewed by others while in transit, and can be modified by an attacker to change the look of the page."
This is probably the reason for the 804 errors in Moz.
You should also check your internal links - some of them still point to the http version which is then again redirected to the https version
Example https://www.tsheets.com/infographics/time-tracking-infographic-hr-industry links to http://www.tsheets.com/infographics/time-tracking-infographic which is then redirected to https.
Unrelated to the https - but you might want to optimise the image on https://www.tsheets.com/online-invoicing-and-billing/ (https://www.tsheets.com/online-invoicing-and-billing/images/main-image-billing.png)
rgds
Dirk
-
This is very helpful. Thank you Dirk.
Just for clarification our site is https://www.tsheets.com
-
Hi Jennifer,
Migration to https has certain risks (like any other migration of your site). Without the actual url it's difficult to asses what's wrong with the site.
1. You can check here if the SSL was properly implemented: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/
2. There is an interesting article on the technical migration on the site of Yoast (https://yoast.com/move-website-https-ssl/) - and about the potential SEO impacts here: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl - even if you have already migrated you could check the different steps & check if you have skipped one.
3. Try crawling the site with Screaming Frog - it has a tab Protocol that can show you if all pages are on https or if some are missing. You can also check if all your internal links are updated to the https version.
4. I guess you have created a WMT for https version of your site - check if specific errors are listed.
5. Check pagespeed with google page speed analyser & webpagetest.org - check your scores. It possible that adding the https also made your site slower.
6. Sample pages in different browsers - do you get security warnings when visiting pages. These messages can really frighten your visitors, and have impact on stats like bounce rate & avg. visit duration, and as result have an impact on your rankings
7. Check vital stats in Analytics - like bounce rate, pages/visit, avg visit duration, avg time on page... - did you see major changes after migration. Also check if you see an increase in 404 pages.
Hope this helps in solving your problem,
Dirk
-
Hi Jennifer
Take a look at the questions and answers here as this has been discussed and referenced a resource I would have posted.
http://moz.com/community/q/804-https-ssl-error
If crawlers see issues with your servers and protocol, that could potentially be a negative checkmark against your site in the SERPS. I would discuss with your web dev and SEO team how to properly implement changes to fix these issues.
Hope this helps! Good luck.
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
-
Will subpages performance affects the overall SEO performance of the entire site?
I have site issues on certain subpages which I am not focusing for SEO, e.g. "News". I was wondering does the issues of these subpages affect my overall SEO performance (those pages which I will like it to be rank, e.g. "Products" page)?
Technical SEO | | erica.lee0 -
Can anyone tell me - in layman's terms - any SEO implications of a Netscaler redirect?
We are in the midst of exploring the best options for developing a "microsite" experience for a client and how we manage the site - subdomain vs. subdirectory... Netscaler redirect vs DNS change. We understand that a subdirectory is best for SEO purposes; however, we anticipate technical limitations when integrating the different hosting platforms and capabilities into the existing site. The proposed solutions that were provided are a netscaler redirect and/or dns changes. Any experience with these solutions?
Technical SEO | | jgrammer0 -
Will there be an SEO impact if I switch my rich snippets from reviews to votes?
So, we currently have rich snippets showing for reviews on our site. We've made some new product pages that have reviews on them, but they are hidden behind a tab. Because of this our rich snippets haven't been showing in the serps, so we've been looking for a way to get them showing for these new pages. What we've found is that we can change the rich snippets from reviews to votes, which will show an aggregate score on the page, and this will get the snippets appearing in serps again as votes. What we're concerned about is, if we make this change to these new pages, they will automatically change everything on our review pages and all snippets on our sites will change from reviews to votes (not just the new pages). What we want to know is, if we make this change do you think that we may see a negative seo impact (aside from maybe having a lower CTR)? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | davo230 -
Will blocking the Wayback Machine (archive.org) have any impact on Google crawl and indexing/SEO?
Will blocking the Wayback Machine (archive.org) by adding the code they give have any impact on Google crawl and indexing/SEO? Anyone know? Thanks! ~Brett
Technical SEO | | BBuck0 -
Why does my site rank so badly
its my turn to ask the interminable question why does my site rank so badly? site is: marriagerecords.org.uk. it was #1 for 'marriage records' on google for about 6 months. then it was 5th to 10th for about 2 months. now it is nowhere for this phrase and anything else, none of the pages I have written rank for anything. I have spent hours upon hours researching original content and I have got some great backlinks from sites like wrexham.gov.uk and somerset.gov.uk (some dont show in opensiteexplorer yet). im guessing im over-optimizing something but i'd love some concrete fixes if anyone could suggest any. thanks, tom
Technical SEO | | lethal0r0 -
All in One SEO weirdness
For some reason, I'm getting extra words in my title tags. For example, I wrote "Washing Machine Widgets | Acme Widgets, Inc. | Acme Widgets Inc. Anyone have any idea why I'm getting the extra " | Acme Widgets Inc."? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | PGD20110 -
4XX (Client Error)
How much will 5 of these errors hurt my search engine ranking for the site itself (ie: the domain) if these 5 pages have this error.
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
Will a "blog=example "parameter at the end of my URLs affect google's crawling them?
For example, I'm wondering if www.example.com/blog/blog-post is better than www.example.com/blog/blog-post?blog=example? I'm currently using the www.example.com/blog/blog-post?blog=example structure as our canonical page for content. I'm also wondering, if the parameter doesn't affect crawling, if it would hurt rankings in any way. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Intridea0